I'm quite shocked at the violent force of nostalgia I experienced looking at Project C-90, a huge Russian library of pictures of old cassette tapes. I must have spent weeks of my young life worrying about Metal vs Chrome, and which brand was best (I remember a good batch of That's tapes that Richer Sounds were selling cheap). I also remember hearing tell of a fantastically expensive cassette that either a) Had an aluminium shell or b) Had little reel-to-reel spools that went round when you played the tape (depending on which of my friends I listened to). Anyone remember them? (Thanks to Tommy Walker III for the tip. Why don't you download his mixtape and tape it onto one side of a C90?)UPDATE: Well, the tape with the little reel-to-reel spools was the Teac Cobalt (top left), which was presumably such a bad design for a cassette that they could only make them 52 minutes long. It's is now so rare and fondly remembered that one single tape recently sold for €75 on German Ebay. Imagine what you might get for the truly bizarre Teac Open Cassette System (top right).
Looking for the litte reel to reel tapes? Look at the Teac section of the web page. I remember those were the coolest ones to have, and were usually the tapes shown in ads for tape players.
ReplyDeleteTDK made a thick metal shell cassette in the mid 80s. They said it was supposed to sound better because of improved tracking, but it was bull I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteI am so totally making icons out of all these when I get home. They'll be perfect to represent my media drives.
ReplyDeleteGotta admit, looking through the design changes in the TDK section brought some scarily warm pangs of nostalgia (Hey, I was exclusively TDK - Take your Memorex and stick'em, boyo).
ReplyDeleteAs a bonus, if you haven't seen it, look here:
http://my.reset.jp/~inu/ProductsDataBase/index2.htm
for some wonderful shots of the kind of hardware that tapes like that deserve, and much much much more....
If you just click one, look at the top entry for AKAI - Behold... the revolutionary "vertical" cassette deck... the absolute height of jap-geek fashion in '74.
This brings back memories of my TDK thieving ways while getting work study hours at the university music hall's recording studio. Ah, 5-packs galore. And P2P meant taping off my roomates CD collections.
ReplyDeletewow, that just brought me back. i use to collect tapes and put them up on my wall in the 80's. bought a bunch from japan and reading this made me dig them up. tdk mar-90, nakamichi zx-90, maxell mx90, sony metal master. i'll try to submit the ones that aren't on the site. kenwood md-46, yamaha metal r, sony gokkigen, teac mirror bowl.
ReplyDeleteThe TDK MA-R was a metal cassette with 2 slabs of plastic screwed to a an aluminum core.
ReplyDeleteI still have some Sony cassettes made with a ceramic composite shell which date to the early 90's. I think they were some of the last premium cassettes that Sony made.
I have about 100 old-80's-country music tapes that I need to move for lack of space. Any body out there interested?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.c-90.org
ReplyDeleteProject c-90 returns with some improvements.
haplishe
I think if you pay for the Teac clear Gold reel to reel cassette tape on eBay for $50 each or higher, not only do you need to check your sanity but your I.Q level as well!!!
ReplyDeleteWhy does human think that paying this price for one cassette tape is a good idea? Why???
Teac cassette tapes were the worse performing tapes ever made besides Memorex tapes.