Avocado Memories: Photos of long-forgotten blank cassettes

This was my brother's favorite tape. I've stolen some of those TDKs from his collection back then.^^

 

If I'm not wrong 100s and 120s were rare here in Germany. I had to glue tapes to have more extended running times.

Looks a bit like a Stern-Rekorder, those were radios and tape recording machines in East Germany.^^

 

I have very few of them these days, as I've got a kid who used to love taking tapes apart, and frequently got into my collection. Thankfully I had digitized all the ones worth keeping before they got destroyed.

I started off with Certrons when I was a kid, or whatever other cheap store brands there were. As I grew up, I preferred BASF (the chromium dioxide kind), TDK, and Maxell.

 

Cool, you even have a modern album on tape (Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown)!

 

Yes, TDK made several variants of the D C-180 even. Mainly used for surveillance, dictation, and very long play. Output was lower, and the tape was extremely thin and very delicate.

 

Remember the nice smell when you cracked the seal on a new blank tape?

 

On the second half of the 1980's I used to get Basf Chrome tapes, I remember one being specially good Basf Chrome Maxima I think it was called. I also used to record on That's Type II tapes, ones that stated "Metal Tape for II position" or something like that, they were supposed to be full metal particle tapes that could be recorded on Type II/CrO2 position. I don't don't if they were actually metal tapes or not but they sounded great. I remember I hated Sony tapes.

 

Someone needs to package that smell and make a scented car air-freshener of it

 

Yes, they were from US store JCPenney, who sold their store brand hi-fi equipment under the MCS (Modular Component System) brand. MCS was for most of the years until nearly the end rebranded Technics equipment. Unlike most stores' own brand, they sold the good (higher end models) stuff for most of the time until near the end - like a rebranded version of Technics excellent 3-head cassette deck the RS-M245X with dbx and their SL-P8 CD player. It wasn't low priced either. Later it was just cheap quality non hi-fi from other companies.

Their cassettes also were sourced from Matsushita/Panasonic/Technics at the time, but were MCS versions of some of the tapes Matsushita was selling in Japan that Matsushita didn't make in house (Matsushita made very high performance expensive metal evaporated audio tape -Angrom-DU, later used in MiniDV/DVC video cassettes). These cassettes were instead made by competitor Nippon Columbia/Denon and equivalent to Denon's DX3 (Normal), DX7 (High) and DXM (Metal), which were also sold as 3M/Scotch XS1, XSII, XSMIV, and by Matsushita brands National/Panasonic in some markets, along with then affiliate Victor (Japan)/JVC (world). I think Radio Shack/Tandy sold the metal as a Supertape Metal briefly that also had the same J-card graphics used on other suppliers' tape, including their own at other times, which was confusing.

I had a few cassettes from MCS.

The cassettes were excellent quality and biased for most decks.

 

I hated SONY tapes as well. We used to get the BASF Chrome tapes too and they were excellent. I don't remember if I used the BASF Chrome Extra or Maxima, only that I used the "black" Chrome tape. In the end I always preferred the MAXELL XL II because they tended to last longer in the car.

 

The plain black mate Basf cassette was the Chrome Extra, Maxima had a cassette with a black frame and a transparent glossy body, both of them sounded great anyway. I think the cassette used on the Chrome Extra 'though uglier it looked more robust than the one used on the Chrome Maxima.
I think Sony tapes were overpriced garbage back then. They sounded average, even the most expensive ones, cassettes looked flimsy and tapes after a few playings were plagued with dropouts.

 

I always bought the best I could find regardless of price, and once metal came out that was my standard and once I got my grubby little hands on a Maxell Metal Vertex, that was it, those alone were my choice.

 

Speaking of BASF... does anyone else habitually pronounce it "Basiff?"

 

Yep, that's pretty much summarize the experience I had with SONY tapes. IIRC they were so bad that my friends and I were sure these were counterfeit and that the "real" SONY tapes, which of course were nowhere to be found, must be better. BASF is in fact an acronym, IIRC the origin of the name was from when they used to be one of the first companies to manufacture synthetic dies and the A in their name stands for Aniline from which the colour Indigo is produced.

 

I fondly remember the different smells of tapes. All tapes had different odors, but CrO2 tapes always had the same distinct smell regardless of brand.

 

CrO2 tapes weren't very common here in the U.S.. The only ones I ever saw and bought were by BASF, and I got those at the PX, and only available for a couple of years in the 80s.

 

I got to wondering about this: Couldn't they have made the center hubs a little smaller in diameter?

 

Strange, they were very common in Spain on the second half of the 80's along with TDK's D tapes (Position I).

 

A&M used CrO2 tapes in their late 80s/early 90s pre-recorded tapes and they sounded very good!

 

Not practical to do so, and Philips would have been very upset as this would have violated the Compact Cassette standards, which were enforced while the patent was valid.

 

Someone posted pictures earlier in the thread of cassettes with larger hubs. They were 30 and 45 minute tapes.

 

The larger hubs came in when the Philips patents expired. And as you said used on shorter length cassettes, mainly saw these used on Japanese cassettes.

 

Yes, CrO2 formula was more popular in Europe, and the Ferric type II was more popular in Japan and the U.S..

 

A 1981 NY Times guide to buying blank cassettes:

A GUIDE TO BUYING CASSETTE RECORDER TAPES

 

As mentioned above I love finding vintage cassette tape cases/holders and look all the time in thrift stores especially. Found this one today for .69cents!
"The Dynasound Organizer with their stylized "D" logo on the top, holds 15 tapes in their cases or 24 without their cases: