A little bit of Maxell Cassette Tape nostalgia

I think that was TDK… :thinking:

A blast from the past. I have some somewhere which is why my wife calls me a hoarder.

My daughter yearns for vinyl and a record player, my son has no use for anything other than streaming, both are bemused by CD as they suspect it has neither sonic value nor emotional value, neither has experienced a full quality FM live broadcast over the airwaves, neither has seen a compact cassette as far as I’m aware (although such content is not blocked on the internet) let alone 8-track or reel to reel.

We’ve probably been lucky to experience the whole lot!

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Hidden inside these cassete storage units (remember them?)at the back of a cabinet, they have been there for a few years now. Heaven knows what lurks inside them. :sunglasses:

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Oh, go on Tony, we dare you to open them up and take a look…

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You’re a bad boy, Richard.
Ok, Just a sneak peek. :sunglasses:

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Still have a majority of my tapes, a lot of which include pirate radio recordings, the goal being to get a shout out of course.
At that time (I was living in London) I had a Marantz based setup with a rather lovely mechanical FM tuner and big clunky tape deck, also had Yamaha, Technics and Sony decks around the same time, we usually made the best of whatever kit people happened to have to form something between us that was loud and fun!
I later recorded mostly to DAT tape, especially vinyl mixes or studio/radio sessions, I had a slot on the weekends on Gaia Radio which had a studio in the Truman Brewery building on Brick Lane, those tapes are fun to playback, and still sound surprisingly good on a modern system.
TDK SA was a common one, as well as the others mentioned above, I still have a few studio recordings on Maxell metal tapes, they sound particularly good.

I started buying and recording my own cassettes, circa 1975. I used to buy quite a lot of Basf and TDKs in those days. I moved abroad in 1986 and left them stored in my garage in my own house. Unfortunately, there was a flood while I was away and I lost a lot of things and among them all my old tapes.

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I see a tape of OK Computer :+1:

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Yes, IIRC, recorded from a CD I bought at the time to listen in my old car.
I have quite a few live recordings but I don’t have the patience anymore to digitally transfer them, so I keep them in a cool dark place trying to preserve their integrity.

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Did exactly the same Tony, we don’t know we are born with the likes of CarPlay, USB sticks etc the norm now

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I had over time a Nakamichi LX 5, CR7a, CR3a loved the LX5. Also a couple of non 3 head decks.

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I found this recently in a cassette storage box:


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I saw Ella at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1983. She was having a great time. As she held one high note, she uttered “… Memorex … ! …,” to the delight of the audience.

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Sony Super Metal Master - an incredible cassette, and undoubtedly the best of the best.

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Great to see NOS Maxell! I have over 900 cassettes and most sound very good even today. The Maxell and TDK seem to hold up better than other brands. I listen to my Nak DR1 at least once a month and always brings a smile[reliving my youth]. Thanks for sharing!

Bic biros were made specifically for the job.

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I thought I would take a look at what I have stashed and here is the result, may have a few more somewhere. Not sure of the quality of the Maxell Communicator ones or the SKC GX brand.

Tim



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When I worked at Tower Records, we used to sell them - good sellers IIRC.

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Those things go for three figures these days, even if opened!

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Hi Richard,
thanks for posting your find, the picture sure brings back some memories. Most of my cassettes were Maxell XL-II or XL-IIS for special cases. and that smell…
When the quality of those began to decline I tried a few different That’s, but they somehow never worked on the Akai deck I had back then. I ended up with Sony UCX, which proved to be quite good.
At least one is still here, with matching player :grinning:

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