Avocado Memories: Photos of long-forgotten blank cassettes

They lacked the ability for documenting the tape's contents - no J-card. As the primary case for a cassette in your home collection they weren't a good choice.

I think they were well suited to walkman user's who carried a spare cassette or two in their pockets - no sharp corners, the reels were secured and there was protection from dust, pocket change, keys and other external elements. The plastic was also not brittle so not as prone to breakage as regular cassette cases.

 

Yeah me too, although I still buy them as NOS on eBay to make mix tapes. I've been getting 60s lately though, my back can't handle the crouching over as long as I used to making 90s!

 

I'd love to have "Certron" or some other branded CD-Rs. That would be a hoot.

 

Certron and Tracs CD-R! Hah!

Seriously, up until 1975, I used a lot of Tracs/Magnetic Audio tapes. I used Certron in 1974 and they almost always malfunctioned in some way.

The Capitol blanks never gave me a problem.

In late 1977, I was limited in my money, and bought a bunch of no-name blanks at Thrifty Drug Store in those blister packs of three. I thought they would be decent because they used screws. But, during that time, I was into 8-tracks (and yes, I bought Tracs 8-track tape, too. ), but the bad experience with those cheap-ass no-name tapes made me stick to the decent brands once and for all. Scotch, Memorex, TDK, and Maxell. Those brands also rose to prominence because better tape decks also started to become popular here in the U.S.. Audiophiles grew in numbers and started buying Japanese decks with high-bias, Dolby, and ANRS. JVC, Sharp, Kenwood, and Sansui. For some reason, Sansui decks were very abundant at the PX.

 

Me same. Back in the day I religiously used the SAs. Now and then I did use the SAXs and later on the TDK and Maxell metal variants but always gravitated back to the SAs. The guy at my local music store said I was one of their best customers when it came to TDK SA 10 packs.

Btw, I liked the metal tapes (though as a teenager they were expensive to buy) as they had an extended high end which was quite noticeable, but they always seemed lacking in bass, relative to type 11 tapes. Anyone else notice this?

 

found some nice blank tapes on a local selling platform yesterday.

 

Good haul!

 

Man, this is a great thread! What memories! (And I still play my cassettes.)

 

Heck of an ad. Both "-S" tapes in this lineup were great, particularly the UCX-S.

 

Isn't it? Google Images can provide quite the rabbit hole of sexist consumer electronics ads.

 

Memorex was/were ultimately horrible. Every one I had eventually died, but the TDKs I recorded my band with in the late 70's STILL work and sound good.

 

My memorex tapes all still play flawlessly, and they weren't all stored under the best conditions, either.

 

I always used TDK. Once I used Denon and it was a total disaster.

 

I always used TDK or Maxell.

I tended to buy Maxell, since they had those stickers you could redeem for free tapes.

 

Fuji and Axia are the same company. Both were brands of Fujifilm. Axia was primarily used in Japan. Same product different branding. Not knock offs. Axia was not sold in North America, just Fuji.

Same deal with Maxell who is owned by Hitachi. Hitachi sold rebranded a Maxell rebanded tape line up under both Hitachi globally and its primarily Japanese hi-fi brand, Lo-D. The Hitachi tapes were rare to see in the US, since Hitachi's hi-fi equipment was not as popular as their TV/video.

 

These cassettes had Maxell tape loaded into them as a deal with Teac. The high bias were XLII tape.

 

I liked the UCX-S, a pretty good tape, but surprisingly hard to find around here, but common elsewhere.

 

Does anyone remember buying this tape?


To celebrate the bicentennial, it even had 76 minutes of recording time I bought a 3-pack.

 

Very cool! I don't remember seeing these. Do you think it was just West Coast since 'Audio Magnetics' was based there?

 

I have no idea, I was in high school, and bought them at the local Longs or Payless at the time (I usually bought Scotch Highlander) to record TV show audio, my family could not afford one of those new-fangled VCRs.

 

I don't recall ever seeing that one, but I used to buy Audio Magnetics tape.