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Vintage Tape (Audio), Cassette, Wire and Magnetic Disc Recorders and Players Open-reel tape recorders, cassette recorders, 8-track players etc.

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Old 8th Jan 2021, 12:12 am   #21
ben
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

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...TDK CDing (Type II) tapes in the late 1990s that sometimes seemed to play slow in the middle of a side, especially when played on a personal stereo.... My sister had a talking book of The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe which had similar problems...
Two cassette devices which were largely responsible for the poor reputation of the format!

Tape drag in playback is almost always caused by a dirty or worn pinch roller. At the start of a side, when the takeup reel is almost empty, torque is higher so this can compensate. However, as the spool fills up, the capstan-pinch combination does not have enough drive.

The quality of many walkman and car mechs was pretty dire. In the latter, the tape path was almost impossible to clean properly with the limited access through the slot.

Then you have poor shell design of many prerecorded tapes. Even some of the tape itself degraded, such as Ampex. I have already mentioned elsewhere on here the abysmal tape used in Warners and EMI pre recorded releases that grind to a halt after a few minutes!
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Old 8th Jan 2021, 12:21 am   #22
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

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And that's why fine, or auto bias adjustment is an important feature on a cassette deck.
I would say it is THE most useful feature above all else. I have a 3 head AIWA with manual bias and it is amazing how, with tweaking of the bias pot, you can make even old formulation type I tape from the 70s sing!

Bear in mind that since about 2003, TDK and Sony and possibly Maxell no longer made their own tape. A lot of it was Saehan of Korea, or who knows what. Check if the TDK stuff was actually made in Japan - if not, it's inferior and not 'real' TDK.

The mid 80s to late 90s was probably the best era for tape quality.
Ask on freecycle or check ebay for job lots of tape and you can probably end up with a good size collection of reusable blanks quite quickly and cheaply.

The ones to look for are collections of home recorded classical and easy listening, which probably only got played once or twice before being stashed in a drawer of someone's G plan wall unit!

Tapes that have had rock, pop and dance music would likely have been trashed in someone's 20 pound walkman or bedroom ghetto blaster Tanashin horror.
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Old 8th Jan 2021, 12:26 am   #23
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

I dont want to go too far off topic, but as regards tapes grinding to a halt I watched a video recently where someone was advocating lubricating such tapes with silicon spray applied along the playing side of the entire length of the tape and then being allowed to 'soak in'.

Seems a barmy idea to me. This was on XDR pre recorded tapes.
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Old 8th Jan 2021, 12:56 am   #24
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

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I watched a video recently where someone was advocating lubricating such tapes with silicon spray ...Seems a barmy idea to me. This was on XDR pre recorded tapes.
At best, these are quick fixes to allow you to be able to run the tape and copy off the material. In the USA, I read about people trying what you mention using an upholstery cleaner called Nu finish on reel to reel tapes that had gone sticky but after a while, those tapes reverted to being unusable again.

As said, this is a whole subject in itself - there are endless discussions on tape binder breakdown, hydrolysis and lubricant deterioration, best done in a separate thread if anyone is curious.
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Old 8th Jan 2021, 1:28 am   #25
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

FeCr tapes were never very successful. The deck manufacturers picked up on it very early on as a marketing tactic, but I doubt if many owners owned a single FeCr cassette. The HiFi mags were scathing, finding that the dual layer of oxides produced a very nonlinear response. The Japanese I/II tapes had become very good by that stage, and any potential benefit of FeCr had been eclipsed.
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Old 8th Jan 2021, 10:22 am   #26
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TDK SA was my preferred tape for "best", with AD doing very well for everything else. Metal was more about marketing than anything else, as far as I was concerned. FeCr managed somehow to be the worst of both worlds - the open reel Scotch Classic suffered horrendous print-through.
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Old 8th Jan 2021, 11:10 am   #27
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

Thanks for the feedback Ben, oddly my Dad's car radio was only a few months old at the time & didn't seem to have any problems with other tapes.

I think there was another short lived Type II tape called something like Pseudochrome which used a cobalt oxide formulation.
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Old 8th Jan 2021, 11:21 am   #28
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

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I think there was another short lived Type II tape called something like Pseudochrome which used a cobalt oxide formulation.
Most "Chrome" (Type II) tapes are in fact Pseudochrome, using a cobalt-based formulation rather than actual CrO2. The TDK SA is the classic example: "Super Avilyn" is TDK's pseudochrome material. I think only BASF and Philips commonly made actual chrome tapes. They're radically different in terms of their bias requirements and recording output level to the much more common pseudochrome/cobalt type tapes, and give very poor results when recorded in decks set up for the Japanese standards. They're capable of excellent results but just need the recording deck to be set up completely differently, which is only really possible on a 3-head deck with adjustable bias and recording gain.

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Old 8th Jan 2021, 11:30 am   #29
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I am tempted to get a few Metal tapes simply because some of them look like very nice pieces of engineering.
Metal (type IV) tapes are best considered to be the nearest that cassette got to the quality of open-reel tape recording. Their main advantage over type II is a much better ability to cope with high recording levels at high frequencies, such as would be found in a live recording (straight from a microphone, I mean, not a CD of a concert!). They are much more forgiving of overload as well as having a low noise floor. They are, however, much more demanding of the deck and its head: all this magnetic performance comes at the price of needing a relatively strong magnetic field (including bias) so the electronics and head have to work that much harder and have greater overload headroom themselves. Many budget decks (I'm looking at you, Amstrad) boasting a big "METAL" label, definitely weren't up to the job, but a good quality hi-fi deck probably will be.

All this is academic, however, if you're copying material from CD, LP or download. Generally all such material has already been mastered in such a way as not to show up the limitations of recording media, so a decent type II or even type I tape won't be too taxed by it.

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Old 8th Jan 2021, 11:59 am   #30
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

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Bear in mind that since about 2003, TDK and Sony and possibly Maxell no longer made their own tape. A lot of it was Saehan of Korea, or who knows what. Check if the TDK stuff was actually made in Japan - if not, it's inferior and not 'real' TDK.
It is hard to see from the sealed tapes where they were made - is it likely to be indicated inside?

The only one that states country of manufacture is the Sony one, which appears to have been made in Mexico. They make some very good guitars in Mexico... not sure whether that translates to tapes too
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Old 10th Jan 2021, 4:51 pm   #31
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

I thought the attached file might be of interest. Its from What Hifi? Blank tape special 1988. I've just scanned the pages of TDK cassettes.
I must learn how to use the bias adjustment on my cassette decks, I've always just left in the centre position!
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File Type: pdf TDK.pdf (1.71 MB, 93 views)
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Old 10th Jan 2021, 5:54 pm   #32
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

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I thought the attached file might be of interest. Its from What Hifi? Blank tape special 1988. I've just scanned the pages of TDK cassettes.
I must learn how to use the bias adjustment on my cassette decks, I've always just left in the centre position!
Regards, Andrew.
Thanks, great information but a somewhat bewildering amount of tapes to take in. My main 'stock' tapes are TDK SA and SA-X, and Maxell UDXLII. Angus McKenzie always praised SA very highly and if it's good enough for him..
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Old 10th Jan 2021, 6:02 pm   #33
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

By the late 80s the big Japanese manufacturers had brought out a large number of very similar tape formulations in order to exploit different segments of the market and charge premium prices. TDK were probably the worst offender in that respect.
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Old 12th Jan 2021, 6:25 pm   #34
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

Many years ago I acquired a B&O Beocord 2200 cassette recorder (still in use).

Soon after some testing I realized that the EQ was wrong following an old EQ standard.

After some mods I finally changed it to the correct IEC standard (3180/120us and 3180/70us).

I run some REC/REPRO test-measurements of adjusting the REPRO EQ with BASF test cassettes as well as the correct REC EQ and BIAS for TDK tapes used at that time. It sounded and sounds...great...

I found some measurements plots in my archives and I scanned them for you. Take a look at the charts taken via B&K equipment at that time for TDK AD90 and TDK SA90.
Attached Thumbnails
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Old 12th Jan 2021, 7:34 pm   #35
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

I use Maxell UR all the time on my Revox B215 Deck and they sound amazing
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Old 12th Jan 2021, 7:40 pm   #36
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

That's quite an impressive cassette machine @Courtney Louise - I've just looked it up
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Old 12th Jan 2021, 11:36 pm   #37
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

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I use Maxell UR all the time on my Revox B215 Deck and they sound amazing
Almost any cassette can sound pretty good on a 215, especially as it has dual capstans and auto alignment.
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Old 13th Jan 2021, 12:00 am   #38
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

You won't be getting the best out of a good deck if you use Maxell UR with it, though UR is certainly capable of good results in the right circumstances.

I thought the B&O decks were set up for BASF standards ex factory.
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Old 13th Jan 2021, 4:47 pm   #39
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I thought the B&O decks were set up for BASF standards ex factory.
The B&O deck was a 70's product and may be it was set up for BASF tapes. The pre/de emphasis circuits followed the standards at that time had been changed later. I replaced the installed ferrite rec/reproduce head by a new sendust head with which B&O equipped it's later decks and applied some modifications to the unit. The use of TDK was my choice after some experiments at that time which gave good results.
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Old 13th Jan 2021, 5:28 pm   #40
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Default Re: Cassette tape types

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Quote:
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I use Maxell UR all the time on my Revox B215 Deck and they sound amazing
Almost any cassette can sound pretty good on a 215, especially as it has dual capstans and auto alignment.
Ted, what is your favourite, money no object cassette deck?
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