Chrome tapes always remind of an old radio advert on Capital FM for one of the big companies (BASF?), with a guy driving his flash car with chrome everything (even a chrome fluffy dice). He then puts on a tape and it slurs and break. The punchline:
Not a problem, I'm sure a mod will be along soon enough. It might interest you to know that all those high bias type II tapes we were all so fond of weren't actually chromium dioxide at all! There were a few, BASF in particular that were, but all the others were ferric doped with cobalt.
If you are going tgo go for a new deck, all I can say is that I've owned two Pioneer decks, and whilst both sounded great, when the heads wore out it wasn't possible to replace them and because they were auto-reverse heads they couldn't be lapped either. Now my current deck is a Yamaha KX 393 - and the heads CAN be relapped once they go, and for the 35 quid I paid for it - hell, I'll just buy another if it gets too bad! Seriously, the Yammy KX decks sound amazing, far better than they have any rights to, but you do need to use a good tape and then auto-tune that particular tape to get the best from it. If you are looking for new old stock cassettes, then Maxell XL-II is the tape I'd recommend, although the TDK SA and CDing II's come a very close second. One more thing - expensive, yes, but you will never get a better ferric tape than a TDK AR-X. Those will outperform the best of the high bias tapes given proper treatment!
If there is one thing I remember about early 90s cassette tapes was that the styles got occasionally quite inventive, and most cheap tapes came in a transparent case.
Some of them I remember looking about as gawdy as a Jimmy Saville shellsuit:
Scottie I would suggest to be patient, save some money and buy a dual capstan, with either Dolby C or even better Dolby S, professionally serviced and calibrated, 3 head deck with no autoreverse. Otherwise 90% you will throw money on a pit. :(
Since Death has mentioned them. Yamahas! Superb. They have the Play Trim functionality. I always wanted a Yamaha KX 690.
Packs of sealed and brand new tapes often appear at charity shops, at fairly cheap prices as well !
Yeah but be careful, they're not in a charity shop for no reason. Stick to a named (branded) quality tape to compliment your new deck. Be prepared to a) take a chance on a 30 year old tape, new or not - and b) pay good money for decent new old stock tapes, your ears (and equipment) will appreciate it!
@Pyjamerama - yes, the autotune function of the Yammy is pretty good, the play trim is pretty much only a tone control for playback though. Whilst it does work, it's nothing other than a treble booster really.
@Death but Play Trim allows you to have more chances of listening to other people recordings decently (especially when there is a tape path allignment difference).
Well, I plumped for another Sony TC-KE500 only because I got it for $50 odd. I will then bide my time and get something nice. I was tempted by a Nakamichi BX-300. However, given that they were produced from 1983, my guess is a lot of parts would be on their bitter end.
Some, myself included, will tell you that the Nakamichi range of decks are the best ever made! They are perhaps, the only decks you can actually get spare parts for.
@Pyjamarama Yes that's true, but it's just a tone control, nothing more! It does not shift the azimuth of the head one bit, all it does is control the tone of the output signal from tape. It DOES help with recordings made off azimuth, but it does so by boosting/cutting the tone. I suppose I could set up some sort of demonstration MP3 file for you to actually hear what it does? Of course, I will have to find an off-azimuth recording from somewhere :\
A bit more than a tone control I think. It helps reduce mistracking and the even nicer part is that it resides before the Dolby chips. Very hand if you are borrowing tapes from others...I don't...none of my friends have any liking for tape decks :)
I got a really good Sony machine back in the 90s (can't remember the model - it's been in a box in a cupboard for years now) with all the bells and whistles, including Dolby S. I was amazed at how far they'd pushed the cassette format by that time, considering all the years I'd suffered with crappy cassette players and poor recordings on bad tapes.
I also had a high-end Pioneer tape deck and speaker setup in my car and I remember once a mate of mine was seriously impressed when I put on a recording of Metallica's Black album and a light popped up saying "Metal" (having detected a Type IV cassette) - my mate exclaimed, "Wow - it can even detect the music genre!" :P
I always used TDK D90 and then later on i used TDK CD 90 which were really good.
Also, what's the difference between chrome and metal tapes? I always thought they were the same thing.
Blank takpes are getting harder to buy and now the sharks on ebay are charging silly money for anything even slightly above an ordinary pos cassette tape.
Does anyone remember their parents buying cheap pos cassettes from the pound shop (or what ever they were called in the 80s?). My mum would by these red white and yellow caseless cassettes with a K on them. I don't remember the brand, but even in a shoe box tape recorder they sounded noticeably more crap than cheap crap tapes. Like lots of hiss, mostly mid-range and frequent dropouts.
Yep there's been some poor ones. I'm remember getting these from Poundstrecher in the 80's.
You got 3 in a pack for just £1. No matter what you recorded them on, they playback like a chewed tape with the levels fluctuating all over the place. It still wasn't bad though as I would use the shells and cases from these poor one's to fix better tapes. Another I had trouble with, but could of been a bad batch was these.
These used to shed oxide on the tape heads in cold conditions especially when using the music search function on my car stereo I had. Were fine in warm conditions though. I can't say I had any issues with the basic ferric Memorex's, TDK D's, or Agfa's as is commonly reported.
I tried my Sony earlier this evening after it hasn't had any use for a couple months. I did notice deck A was quite noisy when in use last time I used it. Unfortunately it looks like deck A is suffering with the cracked gear issue. Symptoms are a slight grinding noise in playback, a much louder grinding noise in fast forward/rewind, and the brake isn't working correctly as it slips making a noise what I can only describe as plastic teeth not synchromeshing together. I seen folk repair cracked gears with Araldite, hopefully I can get lucky and do the same. It's been a super little deck till this issue.
That could just be that the capstan flywheel needs a bit of sewing machine oil to lube it up. I've been reading and believe the gear as actually part the the mechanism to engage and disengage rewind and fast forward, so it might not be the gear just that the deck needs a lube after all this time.
I do understsand this love for old technology but too much hassle is just too much hassle. And i do understand this love for LP's over cd's and mp3/flac, but weren't compact cassettes just bad to begin with?
Actually no. The cheap cassette decks that most peoples parents got either for themselves or for you were awful. However, a good quality well adjusted cassette deck can actually sound very good providing the media is of reasonable quality, that is no pound shop 8 for a quid type cassettes.
In the 80s I was given s Sony WM20 that was owned by a wealthy friend of my fathers. It was amazing and knocked the sox of my Aiwa cheapo thingamabob I used to carry around. It was wafer thin too. If was for that that reason I was sold on tape decks. In 1992 I brought an Aiwa FD410 hifi cassette deck and knew then cassettes could sound amazing.
It was almost as small as a cassette,and you had expand it to fit around the tape (see blue player below).
However, a good quality well adjusted cassette deck can actually sound very good providing the media is of reasonable quality, that is no pound shop 8 for a quid type cassettes
I believe you, but reading trough this thread makes me glad my love for old stuff don't include cassettes. I actually threw away hundreds of my tapes some years ago.
Everyone to his own hobbys but for me it's just too much fiddling around when i just want to listen to music. Mp3's and flac all the way for me, a boring way to do it i know, but oh so easy.
I have loads of music cassettes, some bought and some stuff copied from the radio or LP's. There's some pretty rare stuff taped live off the radio (got quite a few rock concerts that haven't been released anywhere). A few years ago i digitised them all to CD to preserve them. Unfortunately due to space i had to make them mp3 format which is shite, managed to save some as HQ though. I've still got the tapes.
Dare i say it but i threw them away too, originals as well as "own compilations". They weren't kept too well so no great loss really. The only one i kept was Pentagram, inlay and cassette in good condition but scratchy jewel case, i have no idea if it would load though. All my some hundreds lp's and cd's i have tucked away in the closet and stored well, i never use them and just can't be bothered flogging them off on ebay. Except pirated cd's, i threw them all away too since there are no worth in those since mp3 took over.
I still play my spectrum and do not feel the experience is authentic if I'm not loading the tapes off the original cassettes.
The other day I saw in a thrift shop a 250 disk multiplayer by Sony. I was half tempted to put my CD singles in their and then throw away the cases. Still, I'm a hoarder and cant bear to separate good disks from good cases.
You could always store the cases in wait for a reunite with the cd's... I have been a severe hoarder myself, until i just couldn't stand the junk filling up every free space anymore. If there was something i needed i didn't remember i had it and if i did I couldn't find it or get to it. I really became a much happier person after I got rid of it. So for me there really is truth in the saying that the things you own end up owning you.
Comments
If Type I is Ferric, Type II is Chrome, and Type IV is Metal, was there ever a Type III formulation?
Yes a short lived type known as FerroChrome (FeCr).
https://tapetardis.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/the-type-iii-ferrichrome-ferro-chrome-audio-cassette/
"Oi mate, need a chrome screwdriver!"
cheesy, but memorable.
@luny@mstdn.games
https://www.luny.co.uk
If you are going tgo go for a new deck, all I can say is that I've owned two Pioneer decks, and whilst both sounded great, when the heads wore out it wasn't possible to replace them and because they were auto-reverse heads they couldn't be lapped either. Now my current deck is a Yamaha KX 393 - and the heads CAN be relapped once they go, and for the 35 quid I paid for it - hell, I'll just buy another if it gets too bad! Seriously, the Yammy KX decks sound amazing, far better than they have any rights to, but you do need to use a good tape and then auto-tune that particular tape to get the best from it. If you are looking for new old stock cassettes, then Maxell XL-II is the tape I'd recommend, although the TDK SA and CDing II's come a very close second. One more thing - expensive, yes, but you will never get a better ferric tape than a TDK AR-X. Those will outperform the best of the high bias tapes given proper treatment!
Some of them I remember looking about as gawdy as a Jimmy Saville shellsuit:
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--UjrsRVm0--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/h5ucye20vbpusj7mf2ok.jpg
Since Death has mentioned them. Yamahas! Superb. They have the Play Trim functionality. I always wanted a Yamaha KX 690.
Yeah but be careful, they're not in a charity shop for no reason. Stick to a named (branded) quality tape to compliment your new deck. Be prepared to a) take a chance on a 30 year old tape, new or not - and b) pay good money for decent new old stock tapes, your ears (and equipment) will appreciate it!
Memorex cassettes are to be avoided according to many at https://www.tapeheads.net/forums.php
@Pyjamerama - yes, the autotune function of the Yammy is pretty good, the play trim is pretty much only a tone control for playback though. Whilst it does work, it's nothing other than a treble booster really.
@Pyjamarama Yes that's true, but it's just a tone control, nothing more! It does not shift the azimuth of the head one bit, all it does is control the tone of the output signal from tape. It DOES help with recordings made off azimuth, but it does so by boosting/cutting the tone. I suppose I could set up some sort of demonstration MP3 file for you to actually hear what it does? Of course, I will have to find an off-azimuth recording from somewhere :\
I also had a high-end Pioneer tape deck and speaker setup in my car and I remember once a mate of mine was seriously impressed when I put on a recording of Metallica's Black album and a light popped up saying "Metal" (having detected a Type IV cassette) - my mate exclaimed, "Wow - it can even detect the music genre!" :P
Also, what's the difference between chrome and metal tapes? I always thought they were the same thing.
Does anyone remember their parents buying cheap pos cassettes from the pound shop (or what ever they were called in the 80s?). My mum would by these red white and yellow caseless cassettes with a K on them. I don't remember the brand, but even in a shoe box tape recorder they sounded noticeably more crap than cheap crap tapes. Like lots of hiss, mostly mid-range and frequent dropouts.
You got 3 in a pack for just £1. No matter what you recorded them on, they playback like a chewed tape with the levels fluctuating all over the place. It still wasn't bad though as I would use the shells and cases from these poor one's to fix better tapes. Another I had trouble with, but could of been a bad batch was these.
These used to shed oxide on the tape heads in cold conditions especially when using the music search function on my car stereo I had. Were fine in warm conditions though. I can't say I had any issues with the basic ferric Memorex's, TDK D's, or Agfa's as is commonly reported.
I do understsand this love for old technology but too much hassle is just too much hassle. And i do understand this love for LP's over cd's and mp3/flac, but weren't compact cassettes just bad to begin with?
In the 80s I was given s Sony WM20 that was owned by a wealthy friend of my fathers. It was amazing and knocked the sox of my Aiwa cheapo thingamabob I used to carry around. It was wafer thin too. If was for that that reason I was sold on tape decks. In 1992 I brought an Aiwa FD410 hifi cassette deck and knew then cassettes could sound amazing.
It was almost as small as a cassette,and you had expand it to fit around the tape (see blue player below).
http://d-noz.com/files/attach/images/875/083/002/287616e9954f63aa6459570466bac91b.jpg
@luny@mstdn.games
https://www.luny.co.uk
I believe you, but reading trough this thread makes me glad my love for old stuff don't include cassettes. I actually threw away hundreds of my tapes some years ago.
Everyone to his own hobbys but for me it's just too much fiddling around when i just want to listen to music. Mp3's and flac all the way for me, a boring way to do it i know, but oh so easy.
Dare i say it but i threw them away too, originals as well as "own compilations". They weren't kept too well so no great loss really. The only one i kept was Pentagram, inlay and cassette in good condition but scratchy jewel case, i have no idea if it would load though. All my some hundreds lp's and cd's i have tucked away in the closet and stored well, i never use them and just can't be bothered flogging them off on ebay. Except pirated cd's, i threw them all away too since there are no worth in those since mp3 took over.
I still play my spectrum and do not feel the experience is authentic if I'm not loading the tapes off the original cassettes.
The other day I saw in a thrift shop a 250 disk multiplayer by Sony. I was half tempted to put my CD singles in their and then throw away the cases. Still, I'm a hoarder and cant bear to separate good disks from good cases.
Was really great for copying albums that ran a tad over 45 minutes.
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Member of the team that discovered, analyzed, and detailed the floating bus behavior on the ZX Spectrum +2A/+3.
A few Spectrum game fixes.