Type 0 Cassettes - PART 1 - Do they actually exist? 

Remember that the official "Type" designations didn't exist until 1981. Before then there was an especially large variation in the quality and specifications of standard ferric tapes as tape formulations kept changing and improving every year -- to such an extent that some decks, like those from BIC, had separate settings for Low Bias and Normal Bias, to better cover this wide range. On a deck like that, a lot of what you call "Type 0" tapes would probably perform better using the Low Bias setting.

On the Sonya case, I love how the wrapper pull tab covers the "a" in Sonya, so it reads "Manufactured to Sony Standards." I'm sure that's purely coincidental.

@13:16 it's a cumpact cassette :D

Thank you so much for this show, I grew up in the 60’s taping off the radio with a cheap shoebox tape recorder on clearance. I never lost my enjoyment of tapes and the ability to record onto a physical medium that didn’t cost an arm and a leg!

I really suspect something is off with the calibration facilities on the Denon deck. I suggest that all the tapes deserve a rematch using the Dragon, in the interest of science.

I'm pretty sure the factory pumping out these "Type-0" cassettes was sourcing all kinds of tape to salvage which is why it seems to be luck of the draw. Some look surprisingly good and others look like sandpaper and yet others are cut strips of videocassette tape.

For years as a kid, these "Type 0" tapes were prevalent in my life. I didn't become a tape snob until I was in my teens and had better tape decks and Walkmans.

For some reason I really, really like the aesthetics of "type 0" cassettes, especially those in clear shells like the TAC.

9:28 I can’t help but notice that where it says ‘manufactured to Sonya standards’ on the J-card, the red tear-off strip conveniently covers the A of Sonya... probably a coincidence but still...

I love how you made videos out of your friends blank tapes he couldn’t sell. Keep them coming! I’ve enjoyed every videos you’ve made

remember being given some of this hi-tech tapes back in the 90s and thought my deck had gone wrong it sounded so bad! great video

The older Acme "type 1" tapes with the red, green or blue arrows printed on must be some of the worst type 0 tapes ever. They were also sold under the brand "Mark" ”Meltronic” and a few other brands here in Sweden. They were High Noise Low Output sandpaper tapes in a 45 degree flexible shell 😁

37:08 it wasn't a mistake it was a warning from the tapedeck to stop putting garbage tape inside it

I was bought 3 of those Hi Tech tapes by my parents. Two were wound into the case the wrong way, so I was recording on to the rear of the tape, and one had faint traces of someone else's recording on the tape that had not been fully erased!

As of now, I have a bunch of “Type 0” cassettes that I got off of eBay. Mostly Certron’s, Quality Tape, Master Sound, Sterling, CVS, Gemini, and others. Plus a bunch from the 1970’s that were after market brands like Kmart and others. I also have a bunch of Gemini MP 60-minute cassettes and they were “Type 0”. I got it at a Red Hook Yard Sale a few months ago, and it belongs to my collection. These were commonly used for saving data on a computer like Tandy and Commodore 64 back in the 1980’s if you have a data cassette recorder, you can save some data for playing a video game.

I must agree with the fellow that had the comment below this one that a rematch should be done with all of these tapes with the Nakamichi Dragon. Like the man said in the name of science you should try that, Tony! I have a few tapes that I got over the last few months that I'm assuming are going to be type 0 tapes and I haven't gotten the chance to try them yet. They're all attractive tapes and shells. One of them just says Audio Tape on it. I have no idea where it's from or who makes it because there is literally nothing else on it. There's another one called Gemini. Clear shell not too bad looking but I have a bad feeling about that one. There is also two Onn that I grabbed at Walmart just because to be honest, I didn't know Walmart carried any kind of blank cassette tapes and they just happened to catch to catch my eye and I said I've got to try these because they are actually to me a very attractive looking tape. The shells are a little shabby but other than that they look really clean. Once again I haven't tried any of these out yet. So far out of all the tapes I acquired in the last year that I assumed we're going to be type O cassette tapes, I purchased a Scotch Highlander in a really cool cassette case that you just slide the tape out of the right side. Similar to the really cool Memorex MRX 2 or Memorex MRX 3 shells where you just slide the tape in and out of the case. I have a Yamaha KX 390 cassette deck and also a Nakamich CR-2A cassette deck and one of the really cool things that's on the Yamaha KX 390 is a play trim feature. Even after you bias a cassette tape and record on it you can still adjust the frequency during playback with the play trim which I think is bloody brilliant! This Scotch Highlander cassette tape recorded So dull on the Nakamichi cassette deck but using the Yamaha cassette deck which I prefer over the Nakamichi any day, the Yamaha actually made this Highlander tape sound listenable. If I were you Tony, I crack this down to two choices: a rematch with all those tapes in your Nakamichi Dragon or use them for spare parts. And if that doesn't suit find a nice little Cliff nearby your home and throw them over the cliff and have some fun! This was a really fun video, Tony! Thanks!

YOKO CASSETTE... GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOUR RECORDING SOUND LIKE A TURKEY WARBLER....

The most interesting thing is that Maxim logo: while you were claiming it was a Maxell soundalike, it uses the same exact font as the Mazda logo!

I suggest you keep these cassettes for spare parts (apart from the tape inside them) :-)

You actually found a semi-usable Maxim tape? Something seriously wrong there! They were usually far worse. The Yoko is more representative of a lot of market stall tapes... She'll is not moulded right so the tape comes off the hubs and gets itself in a right old mess. Often this would happen after half an hour and the tape would end up wound all over the recorder's mechanism and sorting that out would be next to impossible without taking the recorder to bits. I've had a couple of the Incas tapes, they're later than most of the ones you have there and mine were fairly usable. Pyral were quite respected, and I had some Sprint tapes back in the day. I think they were just standard 70s LN tapes, voice grade but OK for what they were. They were priced between the real type zeroes and say a Sony CHF, and they perform to the price. Pretty good for computer games and reliable. The clear-shell tape was made by Swire Magnetic rather than the usual HK tapes that I think were made by 100 different small factories, usually by hand. Swire were a more professional outfit, they made a range of tapes from crap to quite decent. I have some Cambra tapes from the same maker and although the tape is sandpaper they sound OK. One thing to note with these type zeroes is they usually had 1/8", rather than the slightly wider cassette standard. This meant that the right channel was usually down on the left. I think this was because they were slitting computer tape that was 1/2" into fours.

This Video was very satisfying for me because even I could hear the SONYa drop out at -20 :D That gives me hope that I, as a non "audiophile", will still be able to make decent recordings on decent quality tapes. But at the same time I'm shocked that tapes of that bad of a quality existed and were allowed to be sold. A waste of resources and an insult to any persons ears. Lucky are we present day Tapeheads that we have somebody who tests those tapes for us so we know which ones are bad. Thanks a lot for another great video!

Cool channel. Just discovered it. I am of the cassette generation starting in the early mid 80s, when some of my friends and I would only insist on using BASF Chrome and the like. My main interest in cassettes going to the present time is as a musician. Did a lot of home recording on Tascam 4 track cassette recorders which are biased for Type II and often run at double speed, or have the option of running at half/normal/double speeds. I still have my Tascam 424 machine which I bought ca. 1995. Beautiful machine, well looked after, still use it!

I tried to record some Beatles music on a Yoko tape, but it kept breaking up.... 😀

Tony that Hi Tech type brought back memories! When I was 10 years old in the mid 90s I purchased some off the local market. Believe it or not when I put one in my deck there was music already recorded on them but I had been erased (badly) you could hear music fading faintly in and out. I always wonder if it was the market store owner who had used them and wrapped them back up?! A mystery.... and confess I still have one with some childhood memories on it along with another cheapo brand ' :Power makes sense' .... brilliant video mate

I bought one of these unknown tape brands once and recorded over it. It sounded so awful I threw it away. And I don't throw tapes away I collect them as much as I could. It was that bad.

And now, the “Type 0” madness continues. I remember back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, I had many of the cassettes that were “Type 0’s” like ToneMaster, Silver Shadow, Newnational, Melsonic, Muratape, Royal Sound, Martronic, Quality Tape, Certron, Professional Quality, Star, Hoyin, Nippon, Hi-Tek, Astrosonic, Recoton, CVS, Sentry, Concertape from Radio Shack, Sim, and just to name a few. I had recordings of Old Time Radio shows on cassettes that were “Type 0’s” and they were fine, but I don’t think it can cause “Dropout City” whatever Tony says all the time. ONN is a Walmart brand that I am aware of. I have a batch of “Type 0’s” In my collection, a few of them are from the 1970’s. Some of them are rare like Capitol and Columbia which were the two major record companies made “Type 0” cassettes. I usually buy “Type 0’” tapes at cheap dollar stores back in the 1980’s and 1990’s like Woolworth’s, grocery stores, Winn’s Discount, $0.99 stores, Odd-Lot, and others in Brooklyn, NY back in the days, but I missed buying “Type 0” cassettes. That TAC branded cassettes that I have not seen had the same label layout than the early TDK cassette did back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, and the Big Ben “Type 0” cassette from the 1980’s.

That Yoko joke made me chuckle, good one you earned a sub from me

I also remember Melsonic and HH cassettes at 50p a sleeve, they didn't have cases at all which meant they could be easily damaged and before recording on them had to have the slack wound with a pencil or hexagonal biro pen.

Yesterday, I got 80+ cassettes off of eBay, including a bunch of “Type 0’s” from the 1970’s like Certron, Universal, InterMagnetics, and Ampex. The Ampex 530 which is the one I got, but I got two of them has a groovy looking design which is blue and it’s the 90-minute version. The 60-minute version of the Ampex 530 has a red label with the same groovy design which is a typical 1970’s “Type 0” cassette. Ampex made a bunch of “Type 0” cassettes during the 1970’s outside of its reel-to-reel tape production.

where did you get that tape winder? would love to get my hands on one of those! Cheers

I collect these 0 type but only sealed and if open then the J-card and case is the only value in them,I have one that as the Comet electrical stores logo on it. really enjoyed this video and it makes you appreciate the modern Maxell UR versions that are available to us. Personally I wouldn't use that particular model Denon cassette deck for any tape review but then again I wouldn't let them 0 cassettes anywhere near your Revox or Dragon,just my opinion but again I say great video enjoyed every minute of it and loved that TAC shell and design I would definitely put some decent tape in that.

I just ordered two Scotch BX cassettes from eBay today, and they are the later versions from about 1988, but I have a couple of 1986 BX and they had cheap “Type 0” shells and the tape itself looks good and sound pretty darn good.

I think your auto calibration has gone a bit wonky. I stopped using my Denon of the same model because it was making a lot of good tapes sound awful. That might account for why it was calibrating all those type 0 cassettes rather than saying "reference". It is probably just calibrating everything in some arbitrary way.

Very interesting video. Never heard TYPE 0 mentioned before. Look like the sort of tapes your mum would bring home when you asked her.

When I was younger, I didn't know any better and recorded a lot of radio airchecks using these type-0 cassettes, mostly purchased from the local dollar store. Among the "brands" sold in American dollar stores in the late 90s and early 2000s were Sterling, Volt Master, Longway, Sound & Image, Sentry, and Contek. Sterling tapes were literally a scam. Sterling tapes labeled as C60 were really C30s, while Sterling C90s were just C60s. Sentry tapes never worked properly so I ended up avoiding them, and I had to literally re-shell older recordings on Sentry tapes in common Maxell UR shells just to get them to play without jamming up. Nowadays, I stick with well known and trusted brands like Maxell or TDK.

The main trouble with those sort of cassettes is not only that they sound terrible but after using them you will have to give your heads a good clean because there is so much rubbish on them

I have a few "type 0", the only use I found for them is creative music production: record on them an already distorted guitar riff or ostinato, or synth pads or drones, the more high frequencies the better and use them in a pinch with other good sounding tracks for contrast, Nine Inch Nails style. Or make a loop and record it playing and dying away like William Basinski did with The Disintegration Loops. Here in Italy I went into a local family owned tech shop, very old, one of those with the granny behind the counter and the nephews serving the clients. I spotted chrome tapes in the internal windows, custom made, with the name of the shop as the brand! They looked a bit like my (actually my fater's) old Denon and TDK with non trasparent case. I thought "they look kinda good, chrome tapes are rare... let's buy 10 of them!". I went home and tried one. It crapped on my GX-75! Wobbly, drop outs and low signal, of course, and particles all aver the place. I went straight to the shop for a refund. Of course they put the other 9 tapes still sealed in the window again O_o. They offered me to scout around for some Sony HF... I said "no thanks, I already have a stash of TDK D and Maxell UR fresh and sealed (bought them for cheap some 10+ years ago before the frenzy), I just wanted chrome..." Lessons learned: - old chrome tapes decay like milk out of the fridge in a hot summer day. - don't trust no name brands. - be happy with nice modern type 1 and a good deck. - forget about chrome and metal tapes (I have some, but not as much as I would :-P).

Wow, I never thought I would see a Leda again. I remember my Dad had a few of them in the late 70s, and I recorded some Radio 4 comedy and Chart hits on them - on my prized Tensai Radio Cassette player.

Fascinating look at the dark side of cassettes and the weird knock offs out there. Love it. Side Note: Took a drink every time you said "crap" in this video. I may regret that later. LOL

That YOKO even had a screw missing from the shell. 9:23

In South Korea, most "Gilboards" used TYPE 0 blank tapes in 1990s. Example, GOLDEN STAR CT(Fake model of GoldStar DJ), and HIFI SR, SMART SD-X, HAPPY MUSIC NT(NOT Type 2), TBK(Fake brand of TDK and NOT Type 2)

I used to have this Maxim back in a days 😁

Reminds me of the Ingersoll, Audiosonic and Viva cheapo 90-minute tapes I bought when I was a teenager. Horrid jammers they were; the expensive high-end deck I used at the time (owned by a friend I was staying with) wrecked a bunch of those due to their flimsy design (but it played/recorded premium branded tapes perfectly). I had less hassle with G-Tape and MFP despite those being cheap as well.

A head cleaning between each K7 would certainly have improved the test. 🤨

Most of them were definitely a type "Negative 1", but 2 were ok. I remember a knockoff name Memex, (for an imitation of Memorex of course.) My dad got a Panasonic LTD amp with AM/FM tuner in the 70's, and some of the type zero tapes actually sounded good on it. But, they did look a bit like light brown sandpaper. Sandpaper tape..... hmmm, sounds like a song.

Superb. I have an International, and maybe a Hi-Tech. I will have to see what delights I have. Computer data is just square waves, so even more basic.

Hi-Tech went all out on the front cover trying to be one of the old The Hits Album compilations. We have a few of them on tape the rare locked shells without screws look lovely but when you give it a flick yeah the shells feels really brittle like you can break a hole into it with your thumb and the tape very stiff to fast forward with your fingers.

I have a few Soundex C-90 tapes that looks like Type-0, also have a ribbed tape, but sounds very closer to Sony EF. Also I have ACME\VENUS MS-400 in cheap black shell that sounds very bad for music, maybe good for voice recordings, and ACME MS-800 in clear True-Mechanism-like shell that sounds good. So sometimes they have levels of "quality" that actually have a difference.

Thanks for the video. I had headphones on for the comparisons and the sound of some of them made me laugh. A case of, it was so bad, it was good.

Damn. Bog roll issue cassettes. I’ve got a few of those. Good as beer coasters or stabilizing a wobbly chair.

Found out I've got a couple of type 0s - never knew they existed. It's a Keybee C60. Cig packet covering, Low Noise. Clear leader. Paper label. Compact Cassette. Flimsy. Can't smell anything though

Oh, Tony you always make me laugh with your snarky comments. I'm definitely getting some of these for the novelty and aesthetic but not without swapping them with a UR or TDK D. hearing the "aluminum foil" (as my friends call it) distortion made me writhe and die a little inside. It reminds me of when I used to record on a shitty lil shoebox player. Oh, the horror. But hey, we all start somewhere..I'm so glad I have a nice lil technics now:,)

I got unsubscribed but I am back, keep up the good work !

yup! i remember the "low noise" cassettes mom used to get them for me at the grocery store when the sound got loud, it muffled it badly they were cheap and easy to find there so.....

YOKO Have even one screw missing.

In addition this, I got a very old Sentry “Type 0” cassette from the 1970’s and it looks great, and it’s over 50 years old. The label looks like an early Certron cassette. It’s rare and very hard to find, and it was an early “Type 0”. Sentry was based in Mt. Vernon, NY, and it was known for their cheap “Type 0” cassettes.

2:55 I cried from laughter here :'D

Can confirm the Hi Techs were indeed absolute rubbish....

The INT brought me back memories of our first stereo, an "all in one" Pilot (Goldstar) that came with one Sony CHF60 and two International 90min. These INT were terrible and the deck chewed them in every pass (even as a new, clean deck), the Sony played flawless. anyway, great collection of "0"!

By the way - that tune you used to test is brilliant!

Is the Yoko missing a screw??

the only purpose for these i could maybe think of is if someone was making ambient music or something and they wanted that super warm fuzzy very lofi tape sound. they’d be excellent for that, not something i’d want to listen to all my music on though lmao

A characteristic of "Type 0" cassettes is that there are no 4 Phillips screws in the 4 corners so that you can fix them if they jam up. Another characteristic of them is that they are 40 minutes long, or only 20 or 10 or 9 minutes long. You have to put a crumpled piece of paper in the anti-record "tab" corner to record over the crappy music which is recorded at the factory. Most of these pre-recorded cassettes are recorded on a very wide multi-track tape, and then the tape is sliced by a crappy (probably magnetized) blade, and put into the cassettes and GLUED shut !!!

Great job man !

Very good channel. Thanks

Hey Tony @8:15 you said something interesting I wondered before.. about reuse of VHS Stock tape to audio cassette.. do you have evidence this was actually done? It makes sense to me as that tape can be high quality..but wondering what the cross over implication could be. Is there a forum discussion about this somewhere.. i looked but couldn't find it. are you on Tapeheads?

Hi. I'm new at your channel. Once upon a time a saw a very strange kind of cassettes; using tapes with very funny colors, such like bold clear red carmin, clear bold green and bold clear blue. Don't remember if those tapes were for at home recording or already factured music cassettes from artist musicians. They looked strange, but cooler.

Yes, I remember TONY, KDK and BASK very well. Here in Portugal we had a lousy brand Sonovox that used to shed oxide on the heads until the recording was inaudible :) Also Roadstar, Berec, and a few others :) All type -1 actually :)

When it is stuck like that, tap it on the desk or table and then shake it a little bit. It has something to do with it being wound up tightly or other. I am not sure on that one, cause i found out about it long time ago and forgot why they do that. Even press in around the area where the tape is at and around the outside of the cassette wheel.

Thanks for the tape zero marathon :)

Poundland used to sell them!

These are really like tapes your grandma gives you on your birthday when you got a tape recorder as a 7 year old and quality didn't matter!

I've got french Pyral ATA151 reel to reel tape, is quite good. Maybe not good like BASF DP26, but with 19.5 cm/s sound is acceptable. There was no Alme tape, the real trash.

Haven’t seen a cassette since I was a teen in the 90s Hell yes I’m watching 45 minutes of bad cassettes.

Used to see tapes like these for sale in the old exchange and mart in the early eighties

One video I would like to see in future (you're in charge of course!) is TDK D through the years, and how each one biases up on the Aiwa. The early ones will likely need negative bias, but when did they stop needing that negative bias and become the truly trustworthy cassette? Was it the 88, the 90, the 92 or the 95? I am curious....

Dog doo cassettes that aren’t worth playing on a hurdy gurdy! It was fun watching the tape trials. I’m surprised you didn’t throw them against the wall! Oh well trash is trash and you can’t put sugar on it and make it taste sweet! 🤬🤢🤣🥴

I still have some type zeros I had as a kid that I recorded from the radio as a teen in the 80s. I don't remember them sounding as bad as they do and I had much, much better hearing at the time. Point is, if they sounded alright in the 80s, they degraded way more than any other tape from that time that I have and they were all stored together. So even if you get a type zero that sounds half decent, what will it sound like in 5 years?

Type O cassette? Finally, a tape worthy to copy my OG Bloody Kisses album to!

could you pleae name the device that you have used to rewind the tape?

Donor shells that inconveniently have tape already in them.

When you talk about the cassettes loaded with re-slit video tape. I thought that video tape was not ferric type. Maybe more like a Chrome. What am I missing here?

Omg Tony I did send you some crap didn't I ??? :-O

Had hi-tech tapes before. They are really bad! Most entertaining video 😁

By the way Pyral or RMGI is a well respected reel tape producer, capable of producing very high quality tapes, including master tapes. Now they are know under the brand "recording the masters". But, they are a French based company and the Pyral cassette you have there says "made in England" an evident counterfeit. Check this web site: www.recordingthemasters.com/audiocassettes/

Ironically I don't recall too many cheap cassettes using the "Compact Cassette" logo stateside in the 90's.

I picked up unrecognizable brand sealed cassettes that may be considered "Type 0" today. These were super cheap 3-packs that had no shells. If you don't mind (and maybe if you do mind) I will credit you with the "type 0" designation when I reference them in my thrift haul vid.

TAC. You know - the affordable Teac. 😂 I love how you say "wrapped like a pack of fags" In the US, that's a #TriggerWarning 😂😂

Hello Cassette Comeback. I know its off topic but I bought 3 TDK FE Ferric 90 cassettes from a local record shop (Ireland), and I recorded on them, but there seems to be a problem with them. There's little to no output on the left channel. Do you know why that could be, because TDK cassettes in my opinion are usually very good quality.

13:23 that person who was working at the factory was probably a wanker, .... *cricket noises* Well anyways, you ranting and open cassettes in a half aggressive way makes me chuckle :-P You know what the cassette remainds me of in quality? back when there was this bit rate war between mp3, wma and ogg, some tried to compress as low as possible , and those cassette sounds like if someone re-converted a mp3 64kbps to a wma or ogg 32 kbps . the vocals are drowning in gargling and noises XD

i have only 2 type 0 tapes that i bought in a thrift store in the philippines. one is the "RIVER LN60" and the "CORONET LN" tape. both from hong kong.

Should have recorded some Yoko Ono on that Yoko cassette. And on a related note, there's a flea market that I go to where I spotted some cassettes that look exactly like they would be type 0s. I'm gonna pick them up just for fun. Type 0s are pretty interesting. To me, at least. :)

poundland had some cassettes a while back, i got 2 , havent tried them yet, but heard you sometimes find there are 'joins' in them, so not filled with a full single length!! and the colour can vary within one cassette!!

Memories of Laser Type-I 90-min, Tone Master, K-Mart red or blue label ones that come 3-bag and some other cheapo with a curved rainbows to the left of the label come to mind.

Why do the capstans keep spinning even after the tape is stopped and the door is open? I've never seen that in any deck (not my Denon DRM-800 or any other).

The Denon deck has unreliable self calibration... that's obvious with the level differences.

I once bought a MAXELLITE brand cassette some years ago - it did nothing but leave a trail of rust on the tape transport. Type 0 ? Oh yes!

i think the tokaido chrome was just a normal type 0 ferro with a bit darker tape that was marketed as a type 2, probably because they thought they could get away selling cheap fake type 2

I have some of those clear plastic 3 pack Type 0's. All the signs "Low Noise, High Output" Compact Cassette logo and made in Hong Kong. Just pulled one out to take a look at the tape, and winding it, it was catching down the middle of shell. I had tried one at one point--just sounded like white noise, if I recall. I have some more with less identifiers but I'm still sure they're garbage. I'm keeping them around because I can probably come up with an artistic use for them. (Ex., bounce a recording project to it and back to digital for effect) Really surprised after going through my old tapes from the 90's/early 2000's that I was actually using decent tapes though never having had a great deck to record with. Lots of TDK. I chose well at the time and probably didn't even know it, having tried buying Type 0's at the dollar store and quickly discovering they were garbage.

I have never seen that pocket winder before.