Avocado Memories: Photos of long-forgotten blank cassettes

Correct! Cassette tech for $500 Alex! Sony was not the inventor of Metal Evaporated, it was 3M/Scotch. Matsushita (National Panasonic Technics) licensed it and then further developed it to something viable.

Matsushita came out with its Angrom-DU line of ME tapes, first in microcassettes sold under the National and Panasonic brands to greatly improve the energy density of the cassette vs. ferric in the late 70s. It required a "metal" position on microcassettes, which were a hard sell considering most MC recorders were mono and for dictation. Matsushita was trying expand MC into stereo boomboxes and walkman type players that could sound good. Olympus, Aiwa, TDK, Maxell and other followed with MP MC tapes using tape similar to full size cassettes made by TDK and Maxell. All of which were expensive and didn't sell.

In Japan regular size cassettes were sold in the mid 80s under the National brand (National was the main global brand for Matsushita often used with Panasonic ('National Panasonic') for audio was in most of the world outside of North America due to a US trademark conflict until the 80s through 2000s when it migrated over the years to just Panasonic globally gradually) and later sold the same ME tapes in Europe under the Technics brand, they introduced a line of Metal Evaporated tap es from normal to metal position. These tapes had the highest energy density of any cassette sold and the highest dollar/euro/yen density with it. Too expensive, but amazing. I have two National cassettes and the rec level was beyond all the metal tapes I had used to date. The price for C-54s was beyond a TDK MA-R 90......

These tapes with dbx had unbelievable dynamic range for a cassette.

As they got the cost down over the years, it became the standard for DV video tape. Panasonic went onto to make its own mini-DV tape, as did Fujifilm, TDK, and Sony. Panasonic supplied OEM to Maxell and Fujifilm to JVC.

The problem was as CD came out, the tapes were often more expensive than the actual CD! Great quality though.

 

Beautiful....

 

Does anyone remember "Irish" tapes?

 

DVCPRO cassettes used exclusively MP tape along with 18 μm track pitch. Sony was ok with either MP or ME, using 15 μm for DVCAM.

 

Hey, thanks for the additional info! Yeah, Techmoan did a video on a Sanyo stereo microcassette deck with Dolby NR from I think '82:



The verdict was, impressive considering the form factor, but sounded like something between an AM and FM radio station. I assume if they'd kept at it they could have eventually maybe gotten it up to cheap cassette deck quality, but it would have cost considerably more and not surprisingly nobody was desperate enough for a Walkman that small to pay the high price.

Interesting. My guess too is that a lot of conventional decks weren't really setup to handle ME tapes. They probably needed the peak level indicators to be changed, and bias tweaks as well I'd imagine.

When Philips came out with DCC in 1992 they didn't use any fancy tape formulas, just standard CrO2 or cobalt-doped ferric oxide tapes, same as videotape formulas. You'd have thought they'd need metal or evaporated metal tapes to make a digital format work, but that apparently wasn't the case (which is good, since it kept costs down).

The tapes that really interest me are the superferrics. Apparently some of those normal bias tapes had performance specs similar to metal tape.

 

I was just recording something on ferric chrome. I tried it on the nakamichi which doesn't have that setting. so I did type I and 70 eq. and I even played around with the bias and tape monitor output. It just sounds "very good."
But when I record it on the JVC ferric chrome setting... WoW!

 

Irish was its own company and brand in the 1950s, one of the originators of US-manufactured magnetic tape, then it merged into Ampex in 1960 leading to their Shamrock brand of lesser grade reels mostly made from short lengths and overruns (you could never be sure what type of Ampex tape it was or how many splices on a reel, up to 3 splices, sure only of the length) and a budget brand of cassettes.
How Irish Tape Saved Civilization | WNYC | New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News

 

I had always read about 'em, but never saw one until now. I should probably be happy for that, huh?

 

Exactly, the ME and MP tapes greatly improved MC fidelity but to nowhere near hi-fi full size cassette quality by then, so value proposition was limited for the cost. Idea was super small walkman/boombox with the good sound. Just like a cassette vs. reel to reel - more tape = better sound.

I have one National normal ME Angrom full size cassette tape and one metal. The normal has great output, but noisier vs. the metal. The metal - WOW- best tape I have ever used. Even better than the TDK MA-R and others, which were excellent tapes.

The MC Angrom tapes were sold in the US under the Panasonic brand, but they did not sell the full size Angrom cassettes in the US. Panasonic has sold full size audio cassettes very rarely in the US, but were TDK or Denon OEM made when they did and very good. They, of course, sold their own made video tapes from VHS to mini-DV to DV pro tapes, along with their own made SD cards.

you are are spot on. My Technics deck with extra wide VU FL meters was pretty near the end in peak vs. any other tape I have ever recorded.

As expected, cassettes have their limitations, even with dbx, these tapes can only do so much in linear response, while getting the dynamic range.

 

Speaking about avocado. I found this one on a garage sale. I think it is a 1977 or 1978 cassette. Still works fine. The A side has writing on the label, the B side has clean label.

 

Sony Chrome from mid-1970s. In the late 1970s the Japanese switched to Cobalt-doped Type II tape.

 

Actually, it's an early 80s model. I bought tons of 'em back in the day.

 

Maybe you bought tons of these in the 80s because it was a heavily marked down 1970s version. The one I have is from 1979.

 

That's a nice sounding and long lasting tape. #2 on the SA series.

 

brands

When Philips DCC came out in Europe most DCC blank tapes were sold under the Philips and BASF brands. They were actually the same tape, they used BASF's Chrome Maxima (II?) tape formulation.
A year and a half ago I moved to another town because of job so I had to get all my stuff from my parent's apartment. When I had all my stuff together at the new apartment I checked some DCC tapes I recorded myself on a Philips DCC900 deck back in 93/95 on a Philips "Walkman" DCC recorder/player. I got some digital glitches here and there, four or five on a 90 minutes BASF DCC tape, but that was it.
Just my 0.02 $.

 

One of the good tapes I've tried was "That's" for I'm not even sure if its European. It was very expensive back then so I didn't buy it again.

 

That's made some of the best tapes I've ever used. Their MR-X Pro was one of the true greats. Richer Sounds in the UK used to sell them stupidly cheap, so I bought stacks when I was a poor student.

Always thought it was a stupid name for a tape brand though. Doesn't sound like it belongs in the same league as TDK, Maxell, Sony etc, but they definitely were.

 

That's how you do it. My overall home "upper" high fidelity favorite of all time is TDK SA. When I had the chance they were selling it dirt cheap in 2003. None was buying due to the last digital transition. I grabbed everything that I can. I cannot see my buying one today from a flipper. Its just simply that I cant afford it. In the flipside and pros, there are normal bias out there that will sound almost as good as the chrome. You really gotta have an excellent hi-fidelity deck (doesn't have to be expensive) and match that with the right cassette tape. I been religiously recording since the early 80's but I 've expanded my knowledge more here and especially learning more with @john morris and @macster
As I can share today, I hardly even touched my Type II tapes unless it really calls for it. Like I'm anticipating to play the tape up to 500 times. Out of 300 recordings, I only use 1-SA. But that's just me.. And of course we learn new things everyday.

 

"That's" tape were made by Taiyo Yuden - a highly regarded CD-R manufacturer on this forum.

 

No, I bought them brand spanking new at a U.S. commissary on the mainland. They had that particular label in 1979, but they don't go back as far as you said.

Maybe the confusion is that I consider 1979 as part of the early 80s in general terms.

 

Interesting. Usually people consider 1980 as part of 1970s.

 

Lots of inexpensive options are being sold on Amazon.

 

Sony HF-S46 from 1980s. This is the only cassette with big hubs that I have. I have another 46-minute cassette, but it has regular hubs. I hate cassettes with R2R-style reels, I find them stupid and pointless. On the other hand, I do like watching the hubs spinning. So, a big-hub cassette is the answer

 

Another one from a garage sale. CJRT is a Canadian radio station, it was playing mostly jazz at that time.

 

Man, would I like to try some of these in my ZX-7. Never even seen one in the flesh! Wonder how they'd sound?