More Memorex - The "Clown" Cassette & a couple of hidden gems. 

Love it. Those yellow turn reels! Everything about it makes me think of a fun mixtape with doodles scattered over the spine and tracklisting. I've gotta get hold of them for a cassette release of my next album

Memphis Design influence was all over the 80s including this beautiful Memorex. They look great next to my Swatch Watches!

I have a copy of C+C Music Factory's "Gotta Make You Sweat" album on a Memorex dBS. Can't get any more 1990 then that!

I'm still going through my old tapes and I have a couple of Memorex MRX3 Oxide, taped stuff from looks like 1981 and still playing!

I have a couple of these dBS cassettes which was dBS I in Europe and the UK, and here in the US, it was just dBS instead of dBS I.

I still own and use this exact cassette today and the sound quality really isn't all that bad for recording.

I have some last of the line memorex dbs that are super quality. They pulled out all the stops, even a smokey shell and smokey case, and the tapes are solid. The tapes even auto-lock if not in a player. It's like they went super high end right at the end.

Haha I used that model of cassette to record When I Come Around by Green Day when it premiered on my local radio station back in the 90s

Holy Synchronicity! I just got back from the thrift - after picking up a 10 pack of the 1989 - 90 minute flavor- for $3! :)

I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the work you have done. I've just found your channel with my revived interest in cassettes(born 1976). Thank you thank you thank you. P.s. I know you wouldn't let me but I really want to roll out the dent in your dragon door. Keep up the good work!

I recall having these Memorex tapes years ago. Very colourful tapes.

Back in the day,you got the "Clown Cassettes" for a dollar at the liquor store

Super late to the game, but the reason some tape is warped at the ends is the leader clamp on the hub. Some designs are better at allowing the tape to lay flat than others, and it was recommended that several extra seconds of silence be used past the leader to allow the the creased tape to pass.

I had a Aiwa MW SW FM LW Metal tape capable Dolby B noise reduction twin tape auto reverse ghetto blaster in the 80's, and I used these in Memorex dBSI 120 guise, to record the Top 40 from Radio 1 in stereo via the (better) quality Radio 2 FM Stereo frequencies and thanks to the ultra-reliable Japanese built auto-reverse mechanism, I got the full two hours of the Top 40 in stereo.

i just found 2 unopened TDK D60 cassette's in back alley.. they are the older not as flashy packaging.. I also found 2 unopened JVC T-120ps VHS Tapes... made my morning... thought you might appreciate... just sharing..

If only I could travel back in time and buy these casettes to no end. :) Best I Can do is go to every estate auction and tag sale I can find and buy ALL casettes no matter what. ;)

Yes! A proper appraisal of my beautiful Memorex friends! Cheers, Captain!

never had problems with Memorex even second hand and open since the 80s/90s, still sound fine and have good tape, SKC made great tapes

LOL @ 11:08 ! The dBS's to stay away from are the "Made In USA" versions that have the hubs with the tiny 4 holes. It's a durable tape, but it doesn't have the high end response of the SKC Korean made dBS's. I bought a lot of these in the 90's usually in 5-7 packs for recording my radio shows because they were so inexpensive.

Nostalgic indeed. On such cassettes we received Commodore 64 software from western world.

I have seen about 20 videos of your channel and I think it is safe to say that the majority of tapes (type 1 and II) are fine, well at least you seem to like all of them. That was my experience in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s as well. I never favored any tape brand over the other. The aesthetics of the tape/brand and the price determined my choices. But I must say that I have the fondest memory of the 2000 iteration of the Sony UX-S, that's when I used my Kenwood tape desk for the last time.

Thank you for the follow up on Memorex and giving the MRXI the recognition it deserves. I commented in the last Memorex video that I took a few of the older MRXI tapes (the ones with no head suspension-just the foam block) and put the tape and reels into the newer "clown" shell. Best of both worlds :) excellent tape in a reliable shell

Hey, you don't use the Bic's pen cap to wind tapes! I mean, you somewhat can, but you have to push into the hub, it still loses traction sometimes...It's so much better with the pen shell itself.

Although with a cold, makes a video of one of my favorite cassettes. Champion!

The BIC pen is for use without the cap P that's why we use BIC and not others :)

You’re such a howl! So glad we have you to give a care about this hobby. You make taping fun and that is really what all this is about! By the way, got me one of the tape head gauges to check my none auto aligning decks with. All of us can’t have Dragons and Revoxes Tony!😊💖👍🏻

I've got a couple of those cassettes kicking around. A 60 & a 90. Both full of Sex Pistols.... Yeah, I was a bit obsessed with the Sex Pistols back in the very early 90s. 🧷🧷🤪

Those were my first cassettes, bought for me at the tender age of five for my Fisher-Price cassette recorder. (SKC-style dBS-60.) I was into tapes until maybe high school, when they were still a convenient way to record garage bands in stereo using two mics and a tape deck. I even got my hands on the translucent gray 1990 MRX-1 which was less clown-y, and later when a Best Buy opened up in South Austin, TX, my parents bought me a 12-pack of Scotch BX-90, which stuck around my house for years, and I recorded a few band shows on them.

Here in the US, the SKC variation was what I purchased back in the day...typically at any drug store, K-Mart or Target. In later years, when I had better equipment and was buying Type II & Type IV cassettes...I'd see these at the local 99 cent store. The sound quality was surprisingly decent. I recall these first being available in 1987 or 1988 actually. The first decent quality deck I ended up with was from Teac...looked about from the late 70's with the analog VU meters and metal casing (I couldn't tell you the noddy model # as I had it for about 2 years and didn't pay attention)...actually found it on my 15th birthday (so April 1990) outside a dumpster. I took it inside...it powered on but needed new belts. Got it working properly and it served me well. Around 1992, a friend of mine traded my Teac for his Technics deck that not only had Dolby B & C but also DBX. He just wanted mine for the VU meters but quality wise, I got the better deck. I made many a mix tape for friends with it...usually using the dBS cassette. Keep in mind, back then most of us just wanted something that sounded decent on our portable cassette players with (usually) rubbish over the ear headphones and I usually copied from CD rather than the radio and used Dolby B. All in all though, that SKC variant of the dBS was actually pretty good for our purposes. My personal recordings (when equipment permitted) were on Type II TDK or Sony cassettes as I got the best results with those.

Yes lost my virginity with the help of the clown Memorex (,think it had. then jerico on? ) To a girl I use to chat to on the CB radio, Roger that!

Yep, I remember my dad getting these by the 10 pack at K-Mart. At one point I think they even gave you a "free" zippered cassette case with the 10 pack. I finally got a 46 min version of these with orange tones, I had 60 (red), 90 (blue), 110 (purple) and 120 (green) even as a kid. All of mine are the SKC variant. Just did a recording on one a few days ago and to me it's quite good for a type 1.

Pretty sure I used these around 1987, but your knowledge will be better than my memory from being ten!

1:59 I’m ten years old again...

hi great channel. watching your videos made me dig all my old cassettes out of the loft.now started to build another hi fi after all these years.i forgot how much fun it was recording music.also i have had to repair a few cassettes as pressure pads fell off. ohhh what fun i have had when the tape unwound itself. back to the good old days.look forward to watching more videos.

I never used the "clown" tape but recently came across some used for free. I tried em and was dumbfounded. I sat back and stated WOW! Back then I used only TDK SA and Maxell XLII. I was a "snob".

Those hazy looking leaders are the head-cleaning ones, the SKC (though clipped on to the reel sloppily) and not like the Saehan. I like their high bias tapes.. like the Cire' and HBS-II. Those early Memorex tapes had that big felt head pad with a layer of foam that rotted just like Scotch had.

You're spot on about the 'clown' cassette having huge nostalgic appeal especially to anyone who was a kid or teen in the late 80s / early 90s. I received a 2-pack of these for my 10th birthday in November 1989 and thought the design was very cool. That 'Memphis' style was *everywhere* by that point, everything from shopping malls to pop magazines to the TOTP title sequence was a riot of pink and blue shapes / lines and that 'Twentieth Century' typeface. Reminds me of the era of dancing flowers and those perspex executive toys full of luridly coloured liquid that used to slosh around or drip into clear oil. Incidentally I still have both tapes. One got used to record the Radio 1 charts just before Christmas 1989, the other I made into a mixtape of tracks that were being played on the radio ready for a family holiday to Torquay the following summer. As you say, nostalgia overload (which lets face it, is why we're all here really!)

I love the Memorex blank tapes alot!!!

I still have that SKC typo clown cassette with two albums of “Camouflage” on it. A bit hissy, sure, but not too bad. I think it’s basically an entry level SKC LX in disguise. Don’t have many Memorex tapes. Just two HBS II 110 and half a dozen of German made Db Series. The later are essentially AGFA HD Ferrocolor.

Wow, this brings back memories. I remember having a lot of “mix tapes” on these. Wish I could go back to that time, not because of nostalgia but because I get a do over on life.

Those Memorex dba cassettes were wonderful

Never really considered Memorex back in the day. I could still buy bricks of Maxell's and TDK's relatively cheap, just became a habit.

Bought a Sony Walkman at the car boot the other day for $1. I was excited to see it had a Clown Cassette in it! How sad is that?! Of course I had to play it. Someone, long ago, had recorded perhaps their own band playing a decent set of original rock songs. They sounded good!

just grabbed a 12 pack of 89' clowns for $20. hands down most nostalgic from my childhood.

Consider me deeply offended by the use of the BIC with the cap on ;-). Great video, get well soon!

My versions from back in the day are the saiyhan and the new sealed i have is the same i always liked the look of the dbsi,s i will keep my eye out for an skc version back then i had no idea who made what so all these years on there is still a lot i never new and still lots to learn about cassettes .

@Tony: A ring with the HD-8 on it...yes, please!!

I forgot that these had yellow J cards inside them. I think I threw all the cards away (used to like making my own!)

I happen to have two of the SKCs and one of the Saehan. Different types of music on each, but now I want to listen to them, and see how they've held up. Well, the Saehan has Live, Throwing Copper on it. I recorded too hot, and it has some distortion, but it was probably recorded for a car stereo so that wouldn't have been a big deal back then. No dropouts though, and otherwise it sounds decent for the age and all. One more edit: Playing one of the SKCs, it has Joe Satriani, Surfing With The Alien. Recorded at a more proper level for the type of tape, highs are just a bit muted, but the mids and bass have great punch to them, no Dolby so there is a bit of hiss, but not enough to detract from the rock music at all. Quite happy to hear it after all these years.

Excellent video. I had that dBSi SKC cassette as a kid. What a shock seeing it after so many years. I wish i remember what was on it.

Wasn't there a green and yellow (instead of pink) version of that dbs1 aswell?🤔 great video as usual.

Used to get these in Tandy, pretty sure they were exclusive to them, could never find them anywhere else

I found some data in my memory banks you might find interesting. MRXIS Treble lever (10khz) -0.3db Sensitivity - 0.3db Hiss -50db Mod noise -39db Overload 315hz MOL +3.4db Overload 10khz SAT -1.5db Dynamic range 53.4db CRXII TL (10khz) +0.2db Sens +1db Hiss -54db Mod noise -42db Overload 315hz MOL +1db Overload 10khz SAT -4db Dynamic range 55db I will see if I can find anything about DBX I in my library.

One time in 1977 I bought new a pair of Memorex in an unusual box open system . The recording was good but very fast the tape stuck itself on the reels and was unusuable... Never again !

I had a few of these dBS I cassettes as a kid, SKC, 60 and 110, along with a 1981-ish TDK D60 and a few '86-ish SA90s. I still have them. :) I don't really have the heart to erase them and tape over most of them because they're really, really good time capsules not unlike a box of old photos. I think I was attracted mostly to the dBS I because I remember it being somewhat interesting to actually be able to see the hubs going around and the tape slowly moving from one side to the other. I'm still that way about mechanical stuff... I never could find 'reel cassettes' at the time even though I saw pictures of them here and there and really, really wanted them... If nothing else, the desire for the flashy dBS I at the time kept me away from the type 0s!

RU-vid's auto caption bot is having a hard time in this video. Especially when you say "Saehan".

Back in the mid-80s, I purchased some MRX-I cassettes that gave me trouble with tight hubs, so I generally avoided this brand. However, a girlfriend made me a mix tape on a "clown cassette" and it still plays fine.

I seem to have the best luck with ferric tapes. They take lots of signal and sound good in pretty much any deck. I cycle a lot and I like to make up mix tapes to listen to when I am cycling and so I am almost always wearing headphones when listening to them. While some have a little bit of hiss, most sound just fine to me. Maybe if I had a better recorder it would make a difference, but with the stuff I have, ferric tapes sound the best to me.

Definitely remember these, but I was more of a Sony UCX fan myself

No doubt the prices for them will go up on ebay

Lol, I bought one last weekend at a swap meet for $1🤣🤣🤣

We always called them 'Neons'. I always preferred the early models with the small holes hubs (which I now know is skc). I've got quite a few MRXIS and I often find the sound a bit 'wobbly' at the start. I wonder if they too are a little un-even at the start like the sahaen branded dbsi in this video 🤔

Nice video...! There is though one inherant problem that I see here. Yes, ‘back in the day’ they were considered crap....because most of the people using them, as you sugggested, weren’t using a decent quality deck..... I remember trying the clown cassette back in the 80’s and it was very ‘dull’, but I was using decent 2-head decks that had no tape biasing controls. Today, even more users of cassettes may still be using ‘average’ 2-head decks/boomboxes, and see this video showing just how good those tapes ‘can’ sound if callibrated correctly - such as with your Nakamichi Dragon, and not realise that those tapes will sound ‘crap’ on their machines, or not not know how to callibrate them on a 2-head deck that Does offer Bias adjustments..... I feel that you really should make it more clear in your videos as to how the tape in question would perform on a lesser cassette deck that may not feature Bias adjustment...... Every recorder, with it’s inbuilt bias settings will respond differently to different tapes.... back in the 80’s, I found that most Japanese decks (without Bias Adjustment) just didn’t work properly with ‘Western’ type tape: - Memorex, Scotch, BASF, AGFA, but were fine with TDK (primarily), and then Maxell...... More modern Chinese Tanishen (sp) decks seem to favour TDK ‘D’ tapes over the ‘FE’ (distorts at anything over 0db), and then Maxell UR, which is a bit more ‘hissy’.....

I had a pile of these cassettes. They were good quality, cheap. I believe a 4 pack would cost $2.99.

I had some MRXIS that were SKC hubbed, as you say, very underated cassettes

Even though I started using cassettes in 2018, somehow the clown cassette was the first one I ever made a mixtape on. Just played it the other day.

Theres a diffrent upc code on the first tapes as well. 4:53

I had tons of those cool clown tapes. I hope I can recover all of them along with my tape collection

you know what I hope there is a hat and mouse pad versions though. i am in for it too.

Depending on the deck,you could get a good sound out of the DBS1s

They sound like almost every cassettes from the show. Softer, smoother, cosy-er and less sharp than the original. But we hear almost no differences when the song shift on the second gear and the music reach a natural ear "saturation point".

Wow how cool is that now I want to see a 70s red, black n white Tdk D one, or an orange BASF One from the same era LH90 SM🤗 anyone remember what the LH stood for?

I never buy one of these , but I remember latest most modern dBS1, solid cassettes.

Another intetesting video. Love the key-fobs. Nice one.

I have one of these, but they are called dbs, not dbs I. Still same colors lol

We only got the skc versions in the states,you were lucky if you found the Saehan version.

Yes the cassette I used to tape all my 45s for my car. Still have the cassettes but not the car.

Please make a video about RAKS cassettes. I've only used the type II and they are really really nice. The SP2s performs great. Nice tape nice shell. Plus they are a lot cheaper than others

I bought those at Radio Shack by the pack and TBH I only used them for recording songs off video tapes and FM radio so there's always background hiss anyway. Plus the clown tape design fits the hip hop songs I put on them. From better audio sources I spend a little more on better brands...

@Cassette Comeback Volkswagen took a page from Memorex and created the Harlequin Golf, and Polo back in the mid 90s! Most folks that remember the Harlequin affectionately call the it the "Clown Car".

I had the same problem with warped tape back in the day! Take care of that cold , man! You sound rough!

i always hated those dbs I tapes. i know i've had a few, but i don't anymore. cool reel idea. it'd be cool to swap out the reels and load up some Maxell tape on to them. and then put it back in a Maxell case.

I live in the USA we had them I still got one left I recorded my records on I coved one side with silver paint marker I was 12 in 1989 lucky I got that one left for the most part I've had Scotch brand tdk maxell radio shack realistic Sony

could only find memorex tapes in tandy where i live... bought a memorex single cassette deck aswel,,, made good recordings from memory.. unlike my top of the line technics TR 979 which always sounded dull

I remember using SKC cassettes when I was a teenager.

Great video my friend! I have alot of these memorex's and there pretty scratched up but the tape is clean.

Check european crome “Memorex Ciré II”. Its almost like these you show, but type 2.

To the point "not as many people say, shit" lol love it. I never found them terrible as I use dolby c hiss is never an issue.

All i remember about most memorex was they were down on treble

Ever since I found your channel, I've been taking a look at the hubs to give me a clue who might have actually made the tape. Does SKC make chrome tapes that aren't pure chrome? I'm asking because I've seen a couple of the HBS II tapes that have the SKC dotted hubs, but I'm not sure if they could be pure chrome tapes. I remember only using HBS II once or twice and not being overly impressed with it; could it be that they were true chromes that I was using in a deck that couldn't compensate for that (no bias adjustment)? That's the thing I really like about your channel; I'm learning so many new things after I thought I knew cassettes inside and out.

I hope that one day you can turn your attention to pre-recorded cassettes. My experience with cassette tapes these days is all about revisting the music from my youth, taking a break from CDs and mp3s for a while. Those tapes that I recorded myself still work as they did back in the eighties, from Sony HF to TDK SA, but when it comes to those tapes that I bought pre-recorded, it's a whole other matter. Some still play as on the day of purchase, some just stick in the shell and are useless, some suffer from dropouts. Is it down to pot luck, is it down to studio, is it down to tape manufacturer?

Yes Tony dauthers and wifes know that better. 💖

I’m on a quest for some new in wrap Clownies. I remember them well from the 80s.

Those clown tapes actually work really well

Great video again and a very nice idea those keyrings. Are you watching your video's back after you uploaded them? If so turn on the subtibles just for fun. 😎😎

I remember buying them from Dixons.

The clown one was just the same as the grey one in Memorex Part 1 because of the letters DBS used in it so expecting good results from a same tape later compound don't let me down by changing the tried and tested too much. lol DBS1 or DBS rebrand to include the Type the version 1 of it I'm expecting to be little to no difference but the conversion from Grey to Colourful but later on they switched compound brand so we might see them come down the line from good rebrand adding the number 1 to El Cheapo or good to better who knows they may all sound good.

How about the 'Boris Johnson Cassette'?

Some cassettes you should open (tdk c90 maxell ur90) and memorex dbs 1 shouldn't be opened because it's more of a collectors item than an average recording cassette also anyone heard of cassette display cases like the ones for records but for cassettes

7:13 I remember those were yesterday