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. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yeah toward the end I think the quality of the Fuji stuff might have exceeded TDK and Maxell, even in the same price class. I vaguely recall buying some other brand of tape in the early 2000's on sale - probably Maxell - that was in the same class as my regular Fuji, cost more, and that I thought was worse. Last time I made that mistake, although I think the last time I bought any sort of tape must have been before 2005. I think in 2005 my old cheap 'n cheerful Sanyo VHS deck I'd got back in '93 or thereabouts finally died and I replaced it with a combo Panasonic VHS/DVD recorder. That was another world!
     
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  2. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    I didn't try them enough to conclude on something but however on the photo films of the 80's, Fuji 135 rules or at least better than Kodak.
     
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  3. Grant

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

    I thought they stopped making the one with the white case in 1981. Anyway, In 1981 I was using SA-X, OD, and AD. I wasn't crazy about the OD, but AD was my go-to tape for usual dubs of brand new albums. I started using SA around 1984.
     
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  4. Grant

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

    Fiji wasn't common around here. They didn't sell it at the PX. But, when I did find it, I bought them in the early 90s and did not care for them.

    Maxell? I used them all. My favorites were the UD and UD XLS II

    Videotape? I started off using BASF in 1983. Again? Terrible! I quickly moved on to TDK, Maxell, Kodak, and Scotch, all standard formulations.

    Funny thing: you'd think Sony tape would be an ideal match for my top-of the line Sony deck, but that wasn't the case. Maxell worked better. Around 2002, I bought a Panasonic combo DVD/CD-R recorder. I don't use it much anymore, and it has issues recording DVD-R now, probably because I so rarely use it for time-shifting.
     
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  5. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    I picked up these 2 machines from my neighbor garage sale 3 weeks ago. I was so lucky they were both running and a perfect timing that one of my old teac will be difficult to resurrect now. I end up changing the belts and cleaning them up. I haven't really played the Nakamichi BX-300 that much. But the Sony I was able to play and record a lot using different types of medias. Its sounds really good on the TDK even with the normal bias its very quiet on idle. I even have boxes of 75pcs blank 3m/TDK high and normal position for corporate use that I bought back in 1987. I was able to record some yesterday and this morning it just sounds amazing. Problem now is it might cost me more just to buy the jackets since these boxes didn't came with it...

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
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  6. macster

    macster Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Diego, Ca. USA
    Are you referring to having to purchase blank boxes for your cassette tapes?

    M~
     
  7. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    yes... Blank tapes with no jackets or individual boxes.
     
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  8. Basf tapes on a distant third? I always found Basf's Chrome tapes, specially Chrome Maxima II to be superb.
     
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  9. macster

    macster Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Diego, Ca. USA
    Here and here.

    M~
     
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  10. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    That works and problem solved. Thanks,
    I cant wait to get my hands on that new network player that's arriving on Tuesday. I'm gonna start recording.. Lol.....:sweating:
     
  11. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    The ones you have in your country are the genuine good ones. There are a lot of fakes and overseas made that went to us and got sold in black market.
     
  12. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    They worked well on European decks, which were optimized to use true chrome tape. They sounded like hot garbage on my Sony deck, which like many if not most Japanese decks, was optimized to use "high bias" formulations.

    I got good results once in college out of a BASF tape for a friend on a Teac deck at the university that had an auto-bias circuit. That's the first time I suspected it might be the decks themselves causing the issue, not the tape, since BASF had a good reputation but I'd never made a good recording on the 2-3 BASF tapes I'd tried up until that time.
     
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  13. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    The earliest version with a white case, was in 1973. Which continued to 1977. There was a later white case version in 1978, which continued for a few years into
    A note: 3M/Scotch cassettes in the 1970's had excellent tape inside for their era. Their weakness was their shells, the foam pressure pads, and those metal fixed rollers caused much squeaking, poor tape/head contact, and many mechanical sins. The Memorex MRX oxide had the same foam pressure pad issues, and welded shells as their problems. The tape inside was excellent. The BASF cassettes were excellent tape, inferior shells until around 1980, then excellent in terms of the USA. The Scotch Master series were superb on their Type I and II formulas, and had superb shells which were stable and reliable, and have aged well. Sony's weaknesses were always splices at the leader, though excellent. 1970's-1986 TDK/Maxell cassettes were stable, reliable, and have aged well. Maxell was for me the best cassettes up to the end of USA XL-1 and XL-II formulas. Some thoughts from the archivist and transfer engineer point of view. On the first Scotch Dynarange cassettes with 5 screw shells, and superb build and construction, those have fared the test of time well.
     
  14. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    From 1973-1978, I mainly used Sony Low-Noise or UHF tape. Advent CRO2 for Type II, rarely Sony Chrome (Advent CRO2 tape was $3 for a C90 when Sony Chrome was nearly $5). 1978, my HiFi shop began carrying TDK tape, so I used D and AD often. And SA for CRO2 equivalent. And Maxell UD and UDXL and UDXL II when they slightly later became available locally. If I needed tape in a pinch, on a Sunday, I used Scotch Dynarange or Memorex MRX oxide.
     
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  15. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    The earliest version with a white case, was in 1973. Which continued to 1977. There was a later white case version in 1978, which continued for a few years into 1984l n
     
  16. CMT

    CMT Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sebastopol, CA
    Used a variety of brands back in the day--mostly Memorex for stuff that didn't matter much but mainly TDK and Maxell C-90 tapes. The girl I was in love with at the time, who lived about an hour's drive away (I was 12 and had no car, of course; met her at summer camp) and I used to record stuff for each other off of our record players (placing the cassette recorder between the speakers pushed together) and send them to each other in the mail. Every three days or so, I'd get new music. Did that for several years. This would have been between 1972 and 1976 or so.
     
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  17. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Memorex as I recall had very different pressure pads from some. Instead of a little pad on a springy metal bar like most cassettes, they just had a huge hunk of fabric in there, didn't they? I don't think it was foam - seemed more like some unwoven cloth. I'm trying to think of where I've seen fabric like that before - maybe a chalkboard eraser?
     
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  18. jusbe

    jusbe Modern Melomaniac

    Location:
    Auckland, NZ.
    I think it was a type of felt, but it was not very stable in consistency or performance. Some became dense and even gooey. Others just perished and stopped functioning as a damping mechanism for the tape path against the heads. Easy to replace though.
     
  19. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yeah, I recall seeing one - years later - that was kind of pressed down. But I don't remember any turning to "goo". I don't think they were foam, although maybe the felt was only on top and there was foam underneath. Or else the glue gave out...
     
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  20. jusbe

    jusbe Modern Melomaniac

    Location:
    Auckland, NZ.
    Might have been humidity local to me. Still love those old 70s tapes though.
     
  21. Grant

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

    I know that. The question was when they stopped using it. I say about 1981.
     
  22. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    In desperate times call for desperate measures. I have to square roll a toilet paper and replace the missing felt on the saddle just to finish a recording...:rant:
     
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  23. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    1984-1985 was the last of that design, with minor variations.
     
  24. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    The TDK AD was my favorite Type I cassette, though I also liked Maxell UD-XL (later UD-XL1) a great deal. I was never a fan of OD. SA was excellent for many years.
     
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  25. Grant

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

    They didn't sell them around here, then, because the Ds I bought had black or grey shells starting in the 80s.
     
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