Avocado Memories: Photos of long-forgotten blank cassettes

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Clark V Kauffman, Mar 23, 2014.

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  1. tootull

    tootull Looking through a glass onion

    Location:
    Canada
    Replacement for earlier lost images:
    [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  2. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    This'll bring back some metal memories, I'll bet.

     
  3. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    I can't believe that he opened a sealed TDK MA-R in that video! Talk about a way to burn a $100 in a matter of seconds.
     
  4. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    To my ears, the That's tape sounded closest to the source.
     
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  5. jusbe

    jusbe Modern Melomaniac

    Location:
    Auckland, NZ.
    That's type 2 or type 4?
     
  6. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Ferric normal bias, 120 microseconds = Type I

    Chrome or ferric high bias, 70 microseconds = Type 2

    Fe-CrO High bias 70 microseconds EQ on record, normal bias 120 microseconds on playback = Type 3

    Metal High bias 70 microseconds EQ = Type 4
     
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  7. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    That's did indeed make some awesome tape! I believe that it was made by TY. My favorite cassette tape was TDK HX-S, followed closely by BASF Chrome Maxima. I preferred these over most metal-position tapes.
     
  8. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    They made a Type II "Metal" tape which was fantastic. Those type II "metal" tapes all sounded great to my ears.
     
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  9. Raynie

    Raynie Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Snortland, Oregano
    I always thought the Sony Metal-SR series were a little better than any other tape I tried this side of $2. This would mean all variants of XLII, SA, and a few random metal tapes that I didn't use a lot. I think they don't get much credit because they were kind of boring looking.
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2019
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  10. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I never cared for the true chrome tapes (which were mainly from European countries). I preferred the sound of the Japanese type II formulations, and that was usually TDK SA or SA-X.

    For metal tapes, I got the best result from TDX MA-X.

    But, my favorite all around tape that I used for comps was TDK AD. I liked TDK OD in 1981 but they discontinued it because of...well, would you buy a tape called "OD"? A couple of years before that, TDK offered another tape formulation called "ED". Yeah. Try marketing that today!:laugh:
     
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  11. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    FYI - Bias only impacts recording, and EQ settings primarily impacted playback. So your descriptions could use a little tweaking.

    Type I "Ferric" => Normal (low) bias on record, and 120uS Playback EQ
    Type II "Chrome" or Chrome equivalent => High bias on record, and (normally) 70uS EQ on playback .**
    Type III "Ferrichrome" => Medium bias on record, and 70uS EQ on playback.
    Type IV "Metal" => Metal bias on record (almost twice as much bias as Type II tape required), and 70uS on playback

    The two exceptions to the above rules are:
    ** Specially recorded Type II tapes where a machine is setup to record with a non-standard record equalization curve. Doing this allowed for Chrome tapes to playback at 120uS EQ rather than use the standard 70uS playback EQ curve. This was possible to do with some of the better Naks, and Tandbergs but it was highly non-standard, and few people ever did this.
    - Type II "metal" tapes which came out in the late 80s. These were specially formulated metal tapes which were designed to have bias and EQ requirements which were the same as Type II tapes. These were my personal favorites.
     
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  12. PhilBiker

    PhilBiker sh.tv member number 666

    Location:
    Northern VA, USA
    I loved ADs and AD-Xes because they sounded great in the cheapish car decks and portables (both boom boxes and Walkman-type) that I had that couldn't handle high bias correctly.
     
  13. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Yeah, I know bias only affects recording. I even own a couple of three-head decks with adjustable bias.

    Type I "Ferric" => Normal (low) bias on record, and 120uS Playback EQ
    Type II "Chrome" or Chrome equivalent => High bias on record, and (normally) 70uS EQ on playback .**
    Type III "Ferrichrome" => Medium bias on record, and 70uS EQ on playback.
    Type IV "Metal" => Metal bias on record (almost twice as much bias as Type II tape required), and 70uS on playback

    You could do that with older Sony and Sansui decks from the 70s. Fer-CrO2 (Ferrichrome) tape developed and favored by Sony made use of this feature, but the formulation got little traction in the marketplace, and IMO, sounded terrible.

    Metal Type IV came out in the late 70s. I had a cheapo Sharp deck that recorded metal tape in 1980.
     
  14. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    You had to have a machine which could calibrate to chrome tapes or they sounded crappy. Unfortunately a licensing dispute between BASF and the Japanese tape manufacturers caused the Japanese to all move to ferric-cobalt formulations instead of using chrome.

    And since ferric-cobalt tape had a slightly lower biasing requirements than did true chrome tape, they got revenge on BASF by making their machines deliberately incompatible. They did this by using 12V power supplies on their bias circuits, which biased ferri-cobalt tapes just fine, but which was not nearly the 15V bias signal which true chrome tape required. As a result, true chromes sounded crappy on most Japanese machines.
     
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  15. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    Agreed. Type IV metals came out in about 78 or 79. But look more closely at what you quoted. I was speaking specifically about type II metal tapes which came out in about 86 or 87.
     
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  16. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    OK, my mind is a bit fuzzy on that bit of history. By the late 80s, I had stopped using metal tape for a time.
     
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  17. TarnishedEars

    TarnishedEars Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Seattle area
    No problem. It happens to me too. ;)

    Just to be clear, TDK MA, MA-X, MA-R, and MA-XG were all examples of Type IV metals. TDK HX-X was an example of a Type II Metal tape. But there were a couple of others which fit into the type II metal category such as Memorex CDXII, and some "That's" tape which I have forgotten the model number of.
     
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  18. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I was more of a Maxell fan back in the early to mid '80s - they were my goto brand, barring some huge sale. But by the late '80s most of the major brands were putting out decent tape, at least in the mid to high end of the market. There wasn't a ton of difference.

    That having been said, the TDX MA-XG was on a whole 'nother level...

    [​IMG]

    By the late '80s / early '90s, I was mostly buying based on price. You could score really good deals on chrome and metal tape in midrange packs of 2, 3 or more cassettes, from Sony and Fuji in particular. They weren't quite as high-quality as an MA-XG, but they cost a fraction as much and sounded better than even some of the most expensive tapes from a half decade before.
     
  19. jusbe

    jusbe Modern Melomaniac

    Location:
    Auckland, NZ.
    Actually, I was wondering which That's tape you preferred? I have a few examples of That's tapes (including the CD/MH metal type 2), but by no means all.

    (I'm aware of the differing tape types).
     
  20. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    Been using Maxell MS tape. It is high bias, and what they replaced the XLII tape with at some point. "Audio Pro" "Studio Tape"...
     
  21. jusbe

    jusbe Modern Melomaniac

    Location:
    Auckland, NZ.
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Wish I had more types! Love both shells.
     
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  22. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I often wondered where these tape manufacturers came up with all the RSD to continually reformulate the tape and design new shells.
     
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  23. PJC68

    PJC68 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool UK
    found a few NOS unopened cassettes before in the loft

    The type 1 cassettes

    [​IMG][​IMG]


    And the Chrome ones
     
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  24. PJC68

    PJC68 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool UK
    Oops, the 3 x Maxell SQ90 are Chrome
    I remember someone saying the excel are supposed to be good
     
  25. jusbe

    jusbe Modern Melomaniac

    Location:
    Auckland, NZ.
    Managed to get a fellow cassette lover to part with a box of these recently:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
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