My fondest memories of crap tapes are indeed of those in plastic bags with no cases and paper labels. I was a kid in the 1980s and that was storage for my computer, a VIC-20. They were Grand Prix brand, and I put a lot of type-in programs from magazines on those things!
I am learning so much from this channel. Back in the 80's I recorded all my demo's on a portastudio and 'mastered' to a consumer Teac double cassette for duplicating as well. So it was just TDK SA or Maxell XLII for recording and TDK D's for sending out. Metal was way too expensive.
I remember in the 90's my cousin and I used to drive around in the car and listen to the same TDK cassette every day for months at a time. Never any reduction in quality, never any dropouts, never any high-end loss. TDK was DA BOMB! Best cassettes ever!
High quality producers of tapes have abandoned production through the nineties, when they realised that there is no future for the format. All what is now available is Hitachi-Maxell as the last serious producer and some chinese manufacturers. In reality I am impressed that cassette survived and even has production and sale growth.
Best tape I ever bought was a TDK metal tape was gold , rec a cd it didn't sound no diff to me at all , was about 9 quid in mid 80s lol good videos mate I'm hooked on this channel after stumbling on it 👍also local to me used to be a company called hellerman that made tapes.
Someone had to dedicate a video to type 0 cassettes, and you did it! Well done. My dad had many of them as they were plentiful in the 70s - names like Happy Sound, Yankee and Buccaneer. In the 80s I sadly bought Kaytape cassettes from the market for 50p each, and one with the name Seiko - which contained tape with corduroy stripes. The 90s gave us names like Maxim and Waltham, but by then I had learned to leave them well alone.
@@CassetteComeback I actually bought quite a few. Not for audio, though. They were cheaper to buy in packs of three (the 'bags' you mention) than it was to buy the individual 'cassette repair kits'. Because most of the commercially-sold tapes at the time came in welded shells, and once they inevitably jammed, you had to split open that shell and THAT meant you needed a new shell. The Brand X tapes actually came in decent housings that were actually screwed together rather than welded. I revived many of my 'legit' cassettes that way.
@@xaenon A lot of people used those cheap cassettes for spare parts but what most people didn't realize is that the plastic cases were also made with cheap plastic... You would have found this out if you ever left the tape in your car in direct sunlight on a hot day... Once bananafied... LoL impossible to get it into your cassette deck... So it's off to the discount store for some more type O spares LOL... I have even had pre recorded tapes melt in the hot Australian sun... Must have been that huge hole in the ozone layer hanging above our heads LoL... Type O cassettes are nothing more than ozone layer depletion detectors LOL just let it sit on your car dashboard...
@@PeterMilanovski I was fairly obsessive about my cassettes, and whenever I bought a new tape, CD, or record at the store, I'd also buy a three-pack of decent-quality blank cassettes. I didn't screw around with cheap generic or store-brand blanks; I would get the decent ferrics by TDK, Maxell, or BASF, for only a couple of bucks more for the three-pack. Once home, I'd dub the tape or record to the blank. The record, CD, or 'master' tape then stayed safely home, the dub was the one I used in the car or the boombox or Walkman. That way, if the dub got filched, eaten, damaged, stolen, or lost, it was a simple matter to make another from my master copy. That said, I still took pains to keep my tapes - master or copy - out of the sun. Of course, being able to make copies of the master record/tape/CD also facilitated an early form of music sharing, lol.
I been using the Maxwell UR type 1s for all my recordings. They sell them at Walgreen stores exclusively here in the states. Great video and I think I’m gonna try those chinese cassettes for a different type of sound(effect). Thank you for all the valuable information, I appreciate it.
Some of these Maxwells are quite decent, but original Maxell is simply original. I always prefer originals to knockoffs. Malaysian/Indonesian Maxell UR is good enough but not perfect for music.
These cheap tapes actually had a specific purpose: Speech recording. In many places, the sound quality doesn't really matter all that much, like in dictation machines, answering machines, language teaching in schools, talking books and also as cheap, disposable give-away items for advertising and such. All those situations where the most important thing was the price, not the quality.
Worst experience I ever had was a couple of 70s? Curry’s branded ones I got in a big box of random tapes once. Didn’t even try using them for music, but figured they might at least do for voice. Stuck one in a crappy shoe box recorder I had and it refused to move past the leader... turned out the tape had become slippery enough that the capstan was just spinning over it - not even my XK-007 could get those things to move an inch. Really noisy on winding as well. They went in the bin, and my XK-007 got an early cleaning - amazingly they didn’t really shed though! I’ve never even considered refilling these with something decent and you’ve made me want to try that now, haha!
Contek!! That brings back memories. I had an uncle who bought me a pack of those for my birthday sometime circa 83-84 when I was 13/14. Any yes they were truly horrible.
I remember getting "Kayetape" from petticoat lane market circa 1988.....my grandad went crazy when I put them in his Sony k81....instead of my old pye mono cassette..instead have now got the Sony. ...not the kayetapes
I remember having a real mix of cassettes when I was young. It depended on whether it was birthday or Christmas in which case I'd get treated to TDK or occasionally EMI, but in between I'd have to make do with these MADE IN HONG KONG jobs with names like KAYTAPE/KINGSONIC (black with silver swirls and "World" logo, name in circus lettering) KISNI (with a large lion logo) HAYLEY (with overlapping orange and yellow circles design) MSC/DSC (came from a shop called Pricebusters which took over many ex-Woolworths stores... in *1986*!!!) KEYNOTE (Littlewoods own brand, but same crappy quality)
my go to tape when i was a kid , was the old k mart tapes , believe it or not , they sounded good to me , at least when i was a kid , i am 53 now . the had the red and white label on them .
joseph pray What these audiophiles don’t understand is that people don’t care how bad the tape sounds. I just want a few blank tapes to make a mixtape and a few tapes from my favorite bands. A small Walkman for my Sunday run and the smartphone stays home.
You are right, some of the old "crap-type" tapes are still crap, but at least they have a charm because of the retro/nostalgia looks. However using those on a Nakamich DR-10 is a sin. Even though this deck was produced at the "decline era" of the company (one of the last models before the Grande Holdings era, if I recall correctly), it's still a Nakamichi and deserves better tapes than that. 🙂
Originally (1964) the format was meant for dictation and answering machine use. Later on, tape formulations Chrome and Metal improved S/N ratio that made it almost comparable to reel-to-reel. So maybe el cheapo tapes, back in the day, were never meant to record music on, but rather for voice only. Maybe that's what they should have put on the labels, rather than "HiFi". Even though I had newspaper routes, kids like me back in the day couldnt afford the more expensive brands.
LilZebra has more than my share of type 0 tapes. In the mid 80s, even if I could afford the Maxell XLII’s, they wouldn’t of sounded much better on my crap boom box.
Just come across your channel. I’m recently rediscovering the joys of cassette and I love it. Just a thought but someday could you do a tutorial on swapping tape from one shell to another maybe? Keep up the good work:)
Ooh!, I remember set of 4 tapes in a plastic carrier (no individual boxes), very pretty crystal colours - and even to my non-discerning ears, absolute junk - come to think of it, the name might have been kaytape
When I was a kid all I could afford were crap certron tapes which were fine considering we only had those little mono portable tape recorders with the built in mics and all we recorded were things like pretending to be Howard Cosell giving a play by play of a race or recording something from the tv's speaker. It wasn't until my teens that we had a component system stereo with cassette decks and the first time I bought a decent quality blank cassette and used it to record LP's with to listen to in the car the difference was like night and day. Never bought one of those old cheap tapes again.
The other day, I got more “Type 0’s” off of eBay, along with the rest of 80+ more cassettes that I added to my collection. I got 9 Universal cassettes from the 1970’s, 12 Certron cassettes from the late 70’s and early 80’s, and two Ampex 350 cassettes from the 1970’s, because of its groovy graphics design. Ampex did put a lot of “Type 0’s” cassettes in the 1970’s, which was made outside of its reel-to-reel tapes. Ampex started to put out cassettes in the 300 series, beginning with the 350, and then 358, 361, 362, and 370. Before that, Ampex did put out original albums from various labels like MGM, Elektra, ABC, Dunhill, WB, Reprise, Atlantic, London, Parrot, Deram, Buddah, Motown, Tamla, Gordy, and many more.
Back when I was in college, I volunteered organizing the archives of the local town hall, a good portion of which were town meetings recorded on cassette. There were some absolutely _wild_ no-name brands that came in non-standard cases that I wish I had bothered to write down the brand of; there used to be a lot more variety in tapes, and it was all in stuff like this.
In 1990 I stupidly bought some tapes from "International": ninety minute cassettes. Wow! too cheap to be true. Crap as hell, no highs, tons of noise, harsh as sandpaper and, as a final insult, the mechanism got stuck.
A while ago I decided to record onto an unused Radioshack "Concertape". It was a 90 minute version, and I used it to record a podcast episode. It turned out decent enough for the basic task I gave it, but I did take the time to inspect the tape before I used it and yeah, you wouldn't catch me using one of those for anything other than voice recording and messing around with a crap deck/boombox. I'd be shocked if it's possible to get any kind of impressive performance out of a tape like that. It's got a generic frosted smoky-clear welded shell with crap bubbly sticker labels that scream '80s and '90s, and came in a cheap plastic baggy. About what you'd expect.
@@CassetteComeback Since those tapes were discontinued as of 2017 I now get my cassettes from Duplication.cc they make a good type II in 10 different shell colors and styles. I also recently Got one of the oldest Blanks made by AMPEX it is a 40 minute from 1968 with the green snap case. The recording quality is not great, but I couldn't pass up the novelty of having a really early music blank
One thing to keep in mind, when you compare crap tapes, always look at the heads, pinch roller and capstan to make sure they don't shed oxide and other kind of crap because it's going to affect your tests, dropouts and such. Cheers :)
My Dad bought a daft number of Dindy branded cassettes. There were Contek too but Dindy were offered to him by the ‘back of a lorry’ guy where he worked.
Audio cassette tapes were fantastic. They captured audio for many years for many ears. A good invention. Post magnetic tape, of course technology obviously moves on. However, we should never forget where we've come from. It has its right in history. If its on a comeback.. great. Peace ✌️ out people
My favourite cassettes in the 90s were Boots. They were rebadged Maxells (Boots CD-II was really Maxell UR-II for instance) but a lot cheaper and in much nicer looking shells and boxes which also seemed to have better slip sheets than the actual Maxells. And they've stood the years much better than the couple of actual Maxells I had.
I have to be honest, as much as I have a soft spot for tapes... my dream format is still the memory card, specifically the full size SD card. Albums could have been distributed on tht format and we may still be using full size SD cards (as opposed to Micro SD) in our phones today!
@@theosexpertdaymon2774 IMHO the full size SD card os way more manageable than the microSD card. The full size card is meant to be handled and removed and replaced, a micro SD card is meant to be installed and left well alone. It's way to easy to lose.
In the mid late 80's here in the UK Esso had an offer if you spent £20 on petrol you got a free TDK D-90. That was the lowest tape quality I went for. Great video man I still have loads of those cheap mid late 70's 'sandpaper' cassettes!
We didn't know any better, couldn't afford better, or didnt care (because we thought those tapes would be "temporary"). Cassette tape was a "new" technology in the 70s.
Got a more recent run of the ONN tapes from my local Walmart. After recording one full side, I took the tape out and noticed a thick brown sludge all over the record and play heads. There was a brown residue inside the cassette itself from the reel on the slip sheet. Didn't even bother playing it back to see what it sounded like. This was right out of the wrapper. I advise to avoid the yellow/orange label ONN tapes!
Ashens has featured one that looks like the HOT tape that he got from Wish. I used to use really cheap tapes in computers, and they seemed to be OK. Now, I'd get them made to custom short lengths from Tapeline. The Signalex tapes that Poundland sold are rather good. I really think those are made by Tapeline. And yes, TDK FEs are brilliant cheap tapes.
Back in the early 1990s I bought a bundle of very cheap cassettes at a discount store. The quality was absolutely terrible - you could clearly hear dropouts in music, and when I tried to save computer data (ZX Spectrum) to the tapes, none of them ever loaded up again!
this is why I like to stick with the name brand OGs like TDK, maxell, and sony ! also I'm so happy you have a facebook group bc I need to join! I know a lot about cassettes for a beginner but I still have A LOT to learn.
I have a ToneMaster tape I bought in 1982 (I was a kid; that pack cost all my money). I still have it despite it printing through within a month after I'd recorded something on it. This tape taught me several things: 1) what print-through sounds like; 2) that tapes can squeal like a banshee; 3) even the Concertapes I'd pick up at Radio Shack were far better than this one At least I didn't let this tape near any deck that was even remotely good. ;o)
My dad practically lived on type 0 cassettes and would then have to keep calling the engineer to service his JVC music centre, not accepting that the poor sound of the cassette player was down to the cassettes! I've got a few of those Sound cassettes and a lot of those Contek ones, mainly the ones with the navy blue J cards, my dad got them for me, along with a dozen other different 'brands' when I recorded on my first tape recorder, a Prinzsound from Dixons, portable mono recorder. When I moved up to a proper cassette deck in a hi-fi set up, it was out with those and in with the branded cassettes. But I do still have a fondness for the type 0s and still have them.
I got one of those Chinese BKB cassettes. Semi-sandpaper tape with visible lines. No hum shield behind the pressure pad. The H.O.T. tape looks identical, except for the label. I'd love to source a damaged cassette of reasonable make and stick it's tape into the BKB shell. Got anything with a cracked shell you would sell?
I recently acquired an old Contek C90 in an eBay lot, and I have to say I think you've got them wrong. I've only recorded very briefly at the start of side 2, as the cassette has some very interesting recordings from a pirate radio station of the late 1970s which I am loathe to erase until I've transferred the tape at least, but at 40+ years old there is not one single significant dropout on the tape, and the general sound quality is entirely consistent with the quality you'd get from any basic ferric from the 70s. They're fine, and to be honest that's how I remember them.
Interesting insight. Not personally used audio cassette tapes since the early 1980s. For the mid 90s i was VTR maint tech for Broadcast VTR as in Sony 1", D2, Betacam/Digibeta and SX etc etc. Even did repairs on a few multi-track Studer and Revox real to real studio machines. TAPE TOTALLY RULED. And continued with DAT decks appearing or DVCAM and the TV Station built a larger tape library to store their valuable media.... Then as if by overnight, all the training i'd received, all the tools and jigs i'd bought..... OBSOLETE. There were skips & skips of tapes being dumped and i watched even a few audio cassettes join the tons of 1" VTR spools... The Station moved to a digital era of HDD Raid arrays with a DataTape archive robot. The field news cameras now use memory cards and recently the warning is that by 2025 there will be no serious tape manufacturers even for DataTape. I guess the market for gluing rust onto plastic is over... but worse for me is that the news cameras i care for will soon be linked live from the field permanently via 5G into the internet and every picture or bit of sound will be written to memory at the station and not to a storage device in the camera. I miss tape.
I wouldn't be caught dead with cheap no-name type 0 tapes. All those are good for is making a mural or some other art out of. I've seen someone who covered an entire living room wall with these tapes.
Most of the 'good' cassettes I owned used the same tape for C60 and C90. Thin tape was the reason everyone was cautioned to stay away from C120s and C150s. Allegedly there were C180s, too, but I never saw one. Can't imagine how terrible those would have been.
It was always the way with type zero tapes. I used to buy them in the 80s when they had the 100...50...0 tape indicators in the window... A proper C60 would extend to around the 40-30 mark when fully rewound. Some of the type zeros would barely make it to the 60. Even the C90s would only get to 50-40.
@@jasejj Yeah, there were some really crummy tapes. He mentions Certron in the video.... brrrrr. They were pretty much as you describe. On top of all that, they'd shed their oxide, and worse, the mechanisms were so awful that after only about a dozen uses, they'd bind up, which naturally caused the really thin tape to stretch and break and tangle in the recorder. I took one apart one time, only to discover they didn't even put slip sheets in them. My folks used them in their answering machine, and then wondered why the damned thing never worked.
i remember cheap crap tapes from the 80's usually from poundstretcher and similar......Lloytron, crown (also made crap tape players) the brands i used to use were all the tdk range, all the "thats" brand tapes and the chrome sony tapes
Those Crown cassettes would be quite collectible right now, because even though their ghetto blasters weren't great quality, they are iconic, like Conion.
The worst tapes I have encountered were DSC. Really pretty shells though with five different colours of translucent plastic in a bag of five. Jony Ive probably got the idea for the original iMac from them.
I had bought those crap tapes more than often when I was young. Hurgh! Now I know why they sounded so bad compared to TDK AD. When I had the chance to get myself a decent tape deck I never bought those again. Now with those demonstration with really good 3 heads tape decks, we can find out if a tape is good or bad. But those demonstration shows that often its not the tape but the tape decks that are not quality as it cannot handle the tape formulation. With the calibration of bias and level, it is possible to make good recordings with almost any tapes expept type "0".
I have been using tape since the 1970s . Low nose meant no top end , they were just duff . CDR was just a fail . I use VHS tape for my copying as well , getting up to 4 hours of club mixing . Tape is the best format for audio as it is a sound wave , not a blocky bit stream so the compression is smoooother . If you have a 3 head VCR , that is the best you will ever get as you have 2 playback heads for each channel , thats Hi Fi territory , about the same as open real quality
My son has been doing this also for some time now... Long playback times especially in long play and as a bonus... You get the touchy feely part that you can't get with Mp3 and Cd.s....
I joked about "high end videophile VCR's" once, I had no idea they were an actual thing. I have seen one "high end VCR" on sale in a second hand shop, it's ￥30,000 or so but has a region selector so you can play tapes from anywhere. I want it, but it's 30,000 yen of want.
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The Contek has a shamrock symbol just like the 'Irish' tape of the Orradio company of Alabama, USA. (that has a significant history in the tape development history in the US including mono tape carts for radio stations) This company merged and became Ampex and then Quantegy.
Those tapes are not made for any device that says "deck" on it. They are for those little mono "tape recorders" we used to have back in the 1970s before anyone thought you could get a cassette to do stereo! Reminds me of the Certrons you could get at Sav-On drug stores or Zodys in California in the 1970s. (Perfect tape for that new Yorx sound system!)
I remember crap tapes since I was a youngster, and I remember buying these at a cheap $1 store or a $0.99 store in NYC back in those days where they were selling like hotcakes. I remember buying cheap brands like Certron, Quality Tape, Sim, Muratape, Martronic, Royal Sound, Sentry, Audio Plus, Silver Shadow (the one that I usually get at Woolworth's), Big Ben, Broadway, and many more cheap no-name brands that are "Type 0". I remember Professional Quality, the one I used to have, Le-Bo, and anything from the past where they slapped the Compact Cassette logo on any of the no-name "Type 0" cassettes. Melsonic was the one that I remember when I was living in Brooklyn, Tonemaster was the one you can get at Walgreen's, and also drug store brands like CVS and Rite Aid cassettes, and store bought brand like Kmart. I guess I remember them all. There were others that I had on top of my head, Belmoor. I used to have one of these, and it sounded worst, and then Star which was a common Type 0 cassette that I got at Winn’s Discount in Brooklyn a long time ago. I recorded stuff of the radio for years, along with Old Time Radio, and it sounded muddy. There’s also another novelty brand known as Kids Kassettes. I had one of these over the years, and the cassette shells are multiple colors, and the label variations are yellow with a red or blue bird on it. It was a blank cassette for kids and it says “Type 1” instead of “Type 0”, and it sounds not too bad for a kid looking cassette tape that are not kids songs, they’re regular songs. I got those at Genovese a long time ago.
I have some micro cassettes that I bulk loaded with tape from a cassette that is for recording from CDs and they sound much better. I do have cassettes still but for most of my recording needs I use digital formats mostly my computer and digital recorders.
I remember growing up in the late 70's early 80's our local chandlers shop did multipacks of the brand 'Kaytape' at leat I think that was the name, or at least how i remember them. Similar to what you are showing but also came without outer cases and later on I think also came in different coloured translucent shells. Really, really horrible quality tape, loads of wow and flutter and easily got tangled in my also cheap cassette player. Alas, as a single parent family my mum didn't have much in the way of picket money etc so these were the only option for taping the charts on a Sunday. It was a revelation as I grew older and wiser (and through older friends who got into hifi before me) that the music worship alters of TDK,BASF,etc existed. Although I prefered TDK for no particular reason, I did used to open the shells to transfer and splice tape etc and I found the build quality of the BASF very good,they even had little plastic flappy tape guides at the small hubs at each corner, always thought it was a nice touch. Subscribed btw 👍
I have a few vintage home computer systems such as Atari 800XL,Commodore64,MSX2,Sinclair ZX Spectrum,Acorn Electron which would be the best brands and cassette types for these?
I have a 1973 Sony C60 that has a shell like that sound cassette has, but the write protect tabs are different and it's half as blue than the sound cassette.
Just found an, "Atlantis" brand cassette but can't find any info on it. It has Bob Dylan and Alan Parsons Project recorded on it. Ever heard of, "Atlantis" brand Tony?
Crap tapes are just like 60's tapes. Thank god we have these so i can make hipster-ass lofi music :D I also like the look of the yellow one, i might get one and put a Sony Super EF tape in it
This reminds me of the instruction manual for the Dixons shoebox tape recorder they bundled with the Spectrum. "Cheap, poor quality cassettes wear and deposit particles more quickly than good quality tapes and are best avoided. We recommend good quality tapes such as Dixons cassettes". Fine, except the Dixons tapes of the time were made by Contek :)
The cheapest tape I ever owned was an unbranded type 0 that was so awfull and so cheap that there was no leader tape, the magnetic tape was attached directly to the hubs! (therefore my Aiwa deck that uses a photoreflector sensor to trip the autostop and autoreverse mechanism always failed to actuate properly with that tape). I remember the only writings on the label were "hig fidelity manufactured" with the mispelled "high". Well, that sure wasn't a "high fidelity" cassette and I don't remember were it come from but it was thrown away when it started to shed all over the heads of my tape decks.
As I previously referenced I recently bought a couple of HOT branded cassettes to save me having to blacken the inserts with a marker pen. I think these cassettes should be OK in my LG micro system. If the HOT cassette is that bad I could always transplant the innards of a TDK FE into the HOT shell ( double the playing time too! ). ACME and Scotch probably sound much better than HOT. If you record over decent second-hand cassettes they can sound almost as good as new. If I was copying a cassette for someone else I would give them a TDK FE or a Maxell UR just because I have hundreds of those.
Me too! I have three Irish C90 cassettes from the late 1980’s that looked like an Ampex cassette from the late 60’s and early 70’s, and they’re all “Type 0” cassettes. Irish started as a brand for open reel tapes from the 1950’s which was made by Orradio. It was later bought by Ampex in the 1960’s. In addition, there were other brands like Shamrock, Emerald, and Shannon are all Ampex products.
Rubbish tapes and good ones got us through the 80s when recording the top 40 pop charts on Radio one every Sunday. The supa dupa cheap 120 minute ferrite ones always screwed up in the deck mid recording... Oooow! the memories. And the spools made fantastic party streamers when thrown above telephone lines and trees. And how about the cheap tapes they use to sell with games on... They were nasty too.
Yeah, games load better over cheap tapes for some reason. If they had used better tape and recorded them at single speed, they could have upped the baud rate and they would have loaded quicker...but cost more.
Well the Walmart tapes have improved in tape, but the case has got worse. When I try to record speech, the cassette casing makes a squeaking sound which is pick up by the mic, so I bought the Walmart tape recorder. Disappointed. It started off good, but I realized the tape was starting to run slow, so I replaced the belts in the machine. It was good, but then the same thing started happening with the machine, so I got an old machine, and it works. From RadioShack, still has the original belts, works fine. So there's a crap tape recorder you might want review.
I remeber using a lot of the Audiogold International in the early 80s to tape my dads LPs onto for him to play in the cassette deck in his restaurant. To my young ears, they did fine.
Good video, indeed. Some "0" tapes i´ve bought in the past (with assorted bizarre types of marks, brown dull types, black-no-shining, etc.), BUT there´s a lot of "no names" tapes that make differences (obviously not comparing to sony, maxell, tdk cheap ones, they are the best in this range) on the playing. Low dropouts and so on. Not all "no name" tapes are bad at all. I´ll try this "Aliexpress" Tapes. I´ve noticed that they are no bad at all. Thanks for posting.
eBay, Etsy and Facebook marketplace is selling “Type 0” cassettes like hot cakes. The brands were: 1. Concertape 2. Audio Plus 3. Quality Tape 4. Certron 5. Martronic 6. Go Cassette 7. Sentry 8. Audiovox 9. ToneMaster 10. CVS 11. Silver Shadow (Woolworth US brand) 12. Capitol Records 13. Columbia Magnetics - from Columbia Records 14. Soundcraft 15. Nippon 16. Kmart 17. KMC And many more that are “Type 0’s”
Just thought i'd revisit this video, as, I was in the local Poundland in Sevenoaks last week, and i noticed the HOT cassettes on sale. I remembered that Tony had reviewed these and found them to be pretty crap. But, that was almost a year ago. Anyway, I bought a pack of 2, expecting to pay a quid for it, but when i went to pay, it was actually only 50p, meaning 25p per tape. Even the cassette shell off ebay costs more than 25p for a new one. Anyway, long story short, i took it home, biased it up in my rather lowly Yamaha KX-393, and did some recording. I didn't notice any drop-out city occurring, and the channel balance was OK. other than that, levels were down from the source even after aligning - probably something to do with the KX-393 being a 2-head deck with no level compensation knob. I think, for 25p per cassette, it was pretty good. It got to about +2 before the bass started distorting with Dolby B, and pretty much the same without Dolby, but pretty hissy. Not sure if it is worth revisiting these HOT tapes, as I know Tony really doesn't like them.... 25p each... 25p! twenty five p...
Tone Master... Walgreens in the United States carried them, in packs of 20/$7.99. Were of such poor quality, all the ones a friend recorded on degaussed within a week.
I liked the melsonic story. I've got a NAK DR-1 and IMO its a mediocre recorder, great play back, mediocre recorder. Just a simple BIAS knob. Need a visual BIAS and Level indicator to get anywhere. Another thing I should have figured out in the 80's.
I really got a handle on cassette quality once I bought a used Nakamichi 580 which has both bias and Dolby level pots. They had clearly calibrated their decks with TDK because both AD and SA worked best at 12 o'clock settings. Maxell XL II's needed a 2 o'clock bias setting and 11 o'clock Dolby level setting once I raised the bias to an optimum level. The best I could do with these crap tapes was to drastically lower the bias, raise the Dolby level, then record a few dB lower.
@@1mctous did the nakamichi 580 have adjustable Dolby level? I have never seen that feature on any other cassette deck... Usually you only have a switch to select between off, B type and C type... It might be a good thing to be able to dial in the amount of noise reduction that you feel that the tape needs... I might have to look into this cassette deck...
@@PeterMilanovski The Dolby B circuit was fixed, but the tape's response varied greatly by type and brand. The Dolby level (+0 on a properly calibrated meter) is the threshold for the compression to stop. If the recording and playback levels are mismatched then the Dolby circuit will compress either too much or too little. The 580's adjustment allowed the user to match the recording and playback levels.
Martin Tousignant oh ok I see what you mean... your talking about the Dolby logos on the level meters at roughly around the +3db mark... I thought that that was there for people to use it as a reference guide for level settings and using Dolby noise reduction.... I generally just set the levels as high as possible before the onset of distortion and I always use Dolby C type noise reduction. Some brand and types of tape can be recorded louder than others, the louder you record the lower the noise floor becomes... Now, not all Dolby noise reduction are the same, and buy that I mean Apple's for Apple's comparison.... There's a few Dolby chip manufacturers. Sony made good ones... Hitachi also made them... there's a list that someone posted online somewhere... it lists manufacturers, type of Dolby noise reduction, brand of decks it was used on and part number... the list was pretty concise. The person who made the list put a lot of time and effort into putting it together.... So in saying that... I have noticed that the same tape is affected differently by Dolby noise reduction in different cassette decks that I have tried... so far the best Dolby C type noise reduction that I have experienced is in a high end Kenwood car cassette deck that I purchased new for $1200 in the 1990's. this thing can play a tape that has been chewed and still make it sound amazing... I might have to pop open the covers and look see who made that particular chip... the head unit only has pre outs, so if you want to be able to hear anything... You need to connect amplifiers to it because it only has pre amplifier stages and not built in amplification to drive speakers.... it was the first time a car stereo came out with the detachable face, before that you had to pull out the whole unit and carry it around like a handbag LoL... remember those....
@@PeterMilanovski You're right, the Dolby logo is at +3 dB. The 580's trim pots match the recording and playback levels for Dolby B so that the tape gets exactly what you see on the meters. In turn it allows the correct amount of treble cut during playback.
