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. Thanks for your history lesson,you can't imagine how many years I wondered why Japanese tape brands bothered developing "exotic" High Bias tape formulations with big sounding names like "Finavinx" or "Super Avylin" when they could use plain CrO2 formulation that worked so well on BASF tapes.
    As soon as BASF's Chrome Maxima II was marketed in Spain, I think it was in 1987, I tried it and as I found it to sound outstanding,much much better than any Sony or TDK High Bias tape I used before, and I got it at a discounted price from a friend of my father, I never again used another kind of tape.Actually I did,when a friend asked me to record one of my CD's to tape for him/her,they used to relied on my judgment and gave me the money to buy the tapes for them, I used them as Guinea Pigs to test different brands and tape references/models. One that I found good was That's Metal For High Position tapes (were they actual full metal tapes?), Sony, Maxell and TDK. I personally found Maxell's and TDK's, specially SA-X, to be overpriced and lousy performers compared to BASF's Chrome Maxima II.
     
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  2. Izozeles

    Izozeles Pushing my limits

    I remember buying Denon and Phillips
     
  3. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I bought a couple of Denon tapes. I might still have one floating around here somewhere - gave most of my music cassettes to the daughter of a co-worker about 15 years ago. Kinda regret it, but I probably would have trashed them anyhow during the many moves I underwent between then and now. At least they got some play before they died.
     
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  4. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yeah, I got my first tape recorder - a largeish Sankyo shoebox unit - circa '76. I used it to record stuff off the TV - this was before home video recorders were a thing for working people - and cassette letters to an older cousin. Lots of Audio Magnetics and Certron tapes passed thru that thing. Some Realistic cassettes from Radio Shack as well. When I finally got my Sears all-in-one stereo circa '81 I "upgraded" to Memorex. :uhhuh:
     
  5. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
    Lol... those were the tape labels. Every Saturday me and a friend use to go to some swapmeet. Oh man talk about haven of Marantz, Pioneer receivers and sections of caste decks like Aiwa, Akai, Technics, $10.00-$15.00. I remember spotting a silverface sansui deck but there was a lady looking at it already. I said man I came in too late. And for a second, a miracle happen. she looked at another cassette box and bought the mongromery wards instead. Oh man.. I almost kissed that sansui and told myself. "Oh thank god its not a sony" and no wonder why I looked at the door there was a "realistic cassette tape inside"........:biglaugh:
     
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  6. Rupe33

    Rupe33 Senior Member

    Location:
    Maryland
    75-minute tapes really came in the wake of the popularity of CDs, when the max runtime on those was 72 minutes. It was a way you could guarantee to get the entire disc onto tape for the car. Some pics below.

    What *really* mystified me was some companies started putting out 50-minute tapes, something I got reminded of while searching for these images.

    [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
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  7. Did really LP cassettes sound different? I remember that, while I liked 90-minute tapes because of the extra amount of music I could record, I avoided them because the thinner tape was more fragile and prone to tangling. But as far as I can recall (and memory may be betraying me here), the sound quality was the same when compared to a 60-minute tape of the same kind.
     
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  8. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Honestly, 50 minute tapes made more sense than either 45 or 60 minute tapes, since LPs tended to max out at around 50 minutes and were generally no more than 25 minutes per side. 60 minute tapes often wasted a lot of tape when copying an LP, while depending on where the breaks happened 45 minute tapes could be too short. 50 and 100 minute would have been better standard lengths, although 100 would have been difficult to achieve back in the LP era due to tape thickness - 90 was the best you could do back then before the tape became dangerously thin, as on 120 minute cassettes. As the substrate became tougher in later years and the quality of decks improved it had become less of an issue by the time 100 minute tapes rolled out.
     
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  9. Classic Car Guy

    Classic Car Guy - Touch the Face of God -

    Location:
    Northwest, USA
  10. Grant

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

    I have all of these Billboard CDs on CD. though. I even have a vinyl LP for 1963.
     
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  11. PhilBiker

    PhilBiker sh.tv member number 666

    Location:
    Northern VA, USA
    I think the 60 minute tape length is a relic of the compact cassette's original dictation recording focus. One hour is a nice round number if you're sitting with a tape recorder at a lecture or something.
     
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  12. Yes! I had a college professor who had rather distracting mannerisms. I'd tape his lectures, and was able to concentrate better on what he said, when I played back the tape, later. 45 minute lectures, but the extra tape made it easy to flip the cassette over near the end of the side, during a moment when he'd stop to look at his notes.
     
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  13. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yes, I was thinking about this topic the other night and had the same idea. Good length for recording lectures, meetings or - back in the day - radio shows.
     
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  14. digdug67

    digdug67 Hockley's Hits Here!

    Location:
    Hockley, TX
    I often pick up old cassette suitcases that I find, and many have pre-recorded and blanks in them still. Here's a few cool tapes in my recent find:

    [​IMG]

    Norelco head cleaner, never been used!

    [​IMG]

    InterMagnetics 60
     
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  15. Grant

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

    Oh man! I forgot all about this one! I had a few of them around 1977 and they were all junk!
    The one I had was made (or an OEM) by Audio Magnetics/Tracs.
     
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  16. Mbe

    Mbe Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
  17. moomaloo

    moomaloo All-round good egg

    I have a Denon DR-M12HX. Not three heads but three motors and works like a dream after all these years. The only thing I wish it had is an illuminated tape bay. Other than that, it's great.

    I need to upload some tape pics...
     
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  18. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Like Grant I had one of these, dating from the late '70s. I think it was used for tape letters I exchanged with a much-older cousin up in Oregon. She was a sweetheart.
     
  19. digdug67

    digdug67 Hockley's Hits Here!

    Location:
    Hockley, TX
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  20. Grant

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

    I few months ago I got off into a cassette kick and found several still-sealed blank tapes. I even re-purposed a few older ones for future use just for fun.
     
  21. OneStepBeyond

    OneStepBeyond Senior Member

    Location:
    North Wales, UK
    I'd give you another 'like' for your avatar as well if it was possible. :D
     
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  22. digdug67

    digdug67 Hockley's Hits Here!

    Location:
    Hockley, TX
    Lol, that's my favorite pic of the guys :)
     
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  23. DRM

    DRM Forum Resident

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  24. anonsequitur

    anonsequitur Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA
    [​IMG]

    I bought a bunch of these Memorex MRX3 Oxide cassettes in 1979.
    By the mid-1980s, every single one was unlistenable.
    They all had a phasey/swishy/underwater sound no matter what deck I played them in.

    Fast forward to 2020 and I popped them into a newly acquired Nakamichi BX-300. Voilà! They play like it’s 1979 again (minus some high end). Glad I didn’t trash them back in the ‘80s.
     
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  25. OneStepBeyond

    OneStepBeyond Senior Member

    Location:
    North Wales, UK
    That brings back memories! I recall we had one of those cassettes, that would have been bought in the same year because my mum had a 'music centre' (all-in-one thing but flat! ...radio, tape, record deck and twin speakers they liked to call them at the time) new that Christmas and the whole of the Radio 1 top 40 Sunday chart rundown was recorded on it. Being a two hour long show, it was of course a 120. Yep. It chewed up very soon and the tape was ditched. I ended up repairing it with sticky tape and keeping it to play in my little shoebox recorder - too dodgy to play on an expensive machine!! It had tracks on it like Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 and I think Brass In Pocket and Message In A Bottle as well. Could have been an end-of year show. :cool:
     
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