Chrome cassettes (real chromium dioxide) are still available new, Made In USA, from National Audio Company (and a nice standard ferric tape too) Audio Cassette Tapes You'd have to buy in some bulk, but maybe just 50 or 100 pieces. I have dealt with this company one time. They are very friendly and will try to accommodate what you need.
In my opinion, as long as a deck was made by Nakamichi, has 3 heads, and can use Metal tape, it is one of the best decks ever made. Exact model is not important. Easily adjustable or automatic bias and azimuth are nice features to get more perfect high-frequency response. I happen to love the 680ZX, 682ZX and CR-7A. The Dragon and RX models never interested me because I don't care about auto-reverse. The 700ZXL and 1000ZXL seemed overly complicated and probably unreliable, but many would say those were Nakamichi's best. Speaking of my favorite Nakamichi decks, NONE of mine work anymore, due to lack-of-use for MANY years. Does anyone know a talented Nakamichi tech who is not very expensive? Luxman, Akai, Sony and others made some very high-end cassette decks that I would be equally happy with. But my Luxman ALSO doesn't work, due to lack-of-use. It probably just needs a new belt.
Them and Maxell yes. Do not let that scare you away from using them though. They should still work excellent. That is assuming you bought them sealed. One might worry about the storage conditions they were under. One could assume that if someone bought expensive things brand new, they probably didn't just throw it in the attic for years to come. Worried about if they have degraded? Quality blanks were built to last even with a lot of use. Sitting there unused they would be fine. A while back I cam across several TDK SA blanks and sold them on ebay. A few buyers paid a decent amount for them. Of course they would expect the best. I never heard any complaints so the tapes must have been fine. The better news though - if you thrift shop on a regular basis, you will often come across Maxell and TDK type II for less than $1 each sealed which is way cheaper than most ebay sellers are trying to get. Even type I from Maxell and TDK sound great. Sony is not bad at all. The blanks to avoid though would be things like generics, Certron, Lazer, Sentry. Memorex tends to get mixed reviews. Also, the Maxell "communicator series" is to be avoided.
Yep. If using NOS Tapes, just make sure to re-tension them before you use them to record and they should be fine.
I had mine overhauled about a year ago by Willy Herman. When I bought it used it was in poor shape, now it works like brand new.
Although I wasn't buying it because I thought it was one of the best, but I had a Superscope CD-302A at one time. To me, it was a simple deck but it did have a couple uncommon features. Besides having Dolby NR, it also had a switch on it which turned it into an external Dolby processor. You could run other components through it and into your amp. I couldn't believe how good it made records and FM radio sound. Another feature was a built-in switchable limiter so the peaks wouldn't over saturate the tape when recording. I found out that this model had been used to record live concerts. I can't remember which album, but it states in the liner notes that the CD-302A was used to record the concert. When it came time for me to move up in the world with a new cassette deck, when people found out that I was retiring my Superscope, they lined up to buy it and I got more than twice what I paid for it new.
I'd like to mention the famous Sony Walkman: File:SONY WM-D6C.jpg - Wikimedia Commons It was able to record to metal with Dolby C. And, it had vari-speed. It could eat a lot of larger and more expensive stationary decks for breakfast.
I started using the Maxell cassettes with their head cleaner leader tape. Problem was, they kept changing the tape formula and it seemed like they were adding lower quality tape and putting it into the base LN series while introducing a new series like UD, which seemed closer to the original LN series. A friend was using the TDK SA cassettes and swore by them, so I gave them a try. I stayed with the TDK SA ever since and I think that I even still have some sealed SA-90's left.
One? That my friend is sad, very sad. You've never really tried to use metal tapes to their full capabilities? They are/were THE revalatory advancement in cassette that made the format VERY competitive with digital when it came out. I'm blown away at the amount of people here talk about cassette but have never used metal tapes. Let alone using them with Dolby S HX PRO. It's no wonder folks diss the cassette format, they've never used the best of it's capabilities. They are stuck back in cassette's 1975 sonic quality. MAXG, Metal Vertex, even the budget Sony metal Xr. KILLER tapes. They can and do allow recordings to give simply astounding results when paired with a serious deck that could utilize them to their full potential. The comparison would be like a ceramic phono cartridge to a MM cartridge. Metal cassette tape is/was the zenith of perfection for the cassette format. A high end metal tape when used with Dolby S & HX PRO in a serious deck is what finally made cassette an astounding format for recording. Sadly that was at it's end. But it's end was glorious. Anyone that has not utilized metal tapes with Dolby S & HX PRO really has no clue as to what the cassette format really could do. Oddly most folks that had a metal capable cassette deck rarely used them, understood their use, or realized their potential. I have Maxell Metal Vertex tapes using Dolby S & HX PRO that are nothing less than astounding sonically. What happened here folks? It seems a generation just simply skipped over the best that cassette could offer, metal tape, Dolby S, HX PRO. Instead they are stuck in the earlier offerings of lesser tapes, lesser decks, lesser Dolby B/C. No wonder cassette gets bagged on so much, most folks never used it's best configuration. Until you fully utilize metal tape in a proper deck with Dolby S HX PRO, there really is no way to have a discussion about cassette and it's capabilities.
I do understand, the best metal tapes did cost a lot back then. I paid a whopping $15+ each for my Metal Vertex blanks back then and the top dog Aiwa XK-S9000, THE best ever Dolby S HX PRO cassette deck ever made was $1,200 in 1994, BUT..... Fact is there were many great budget metal tapes like Sony SR for only $3.50 for a 90 minute one, so one did not have to buy the esoteric best metal tapes to get near the best results. Amazing metal capable Dolby S HX PRO decks could be bought for under $400 by 1995. I bought an AIWA AD-S950 metal capable deck with Dolby S/HX PRO for $385 new (MSRP list was $500 in 1995) so the decks that had Dolby S/ HX PRO had come down quite a bit in cost in less than 3 years. It would seem the zenith of cassette was short lived at 1991 to 1995 more or less, seeing the best ever decks come and go as well as the blank tapes. So I guess I can see how most folks missed it, as it was a short time span for the best ever offerings, sadly so.
I know a few folks who back in the day bought really nice decks, but then would use Scotch and Radio Shack cassette tapes. Yeah. My brother-in-law recently spent thousands on a vinyl setup, B&W speakers, expensive integrated amp. But he thought the Ortofon Red on his table was "good enough". Yeah. - People don't get the "big picture" sometimes and follow through. No wonder they are not satisfied.
1995 price list: Sony Metal SR $3.49 for a 90 minute Sony UX high bias $3.19 for a 90 minute. So the price for metal tapes had leveled near the lesser grade of tapes by 1995.
Think 1980s prices ( 1981-89) Did not buy many cassettes in the nineties. Stopped around 1996/97 when I got a Philips CD recorder. If I was buying a blank cassette it would be a SA-X.
I had bought a nice 3 head deck a year or so before getting my first cd recorder (Marantz). The good thing was, that I didn't use the new deck much after getting the cd recorder, so my (Denon) tape deck is still practically new. Got 2 new cases of Maxell XLII tape, as well.
Ironically even though I didn't buy blank cassettes in the nineties in the same abundance as previous decades I did buy a lot of pre recorded cassettes from 1992-95 purely for economical reasons.
