Boom boom boom, come back to my room....Cassette Archaeology!

Oh yes, well made - and i already knew the reason for the large number of different playtime lengths, because i have friends, they make audition tapes. I have here ( except the endless tapes 20 seconds - 12 minutes ) 8 , 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 46, 50, 54, 60, 64, 70, 74, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120, 150 and 180 - minutes-tapes. And there`s a SR 22, i`m waiting for. ah, and Sony has produced a 94-minutes-tape .

 

I think, the Bands, they had to make "Demos" (a short for demonstration, or audition cassettes) still had no money, still no producers - they had to look at every penny. But at the beginning of cassettes there weren`t such curious tape lengths like 10 minutes - i think these even came in the late 80-ies.

 

Despite of being able to buy special lengths in this time ?

 

What is a normal length cassette tape? I always thought it was 60 or 90 minutes as a standard. I bought TDK pro cassette tapes which are rated 10 and 20 minutes long and a few 30 minutes long and they either come in normal or Chrome tapes and I believe those are used in radio studios for playing commercials.
Here's a few out of their boxes. They're still brand new sealed
The ones that you do not see a cassette outside of its box means that it's still sealed or has 10 inside and the box hasn't been opened yet and the ones that are outside the box there are now nine inside each one plus the one outside the box meaning there's 10 of each

 

I thought i had written about tape lengths in my "Collection"-Thread, but it seems, that not ( or i haven`t found it ) - i have here tape lengths of 20,30, 60 and 90 seconds ( for answering machines ), 1,3,6 and 12 minutes ( the same), 8, 10, 15, 20 and 30 minutes ( for ads , jingles, band demos ), one special 12-minutes-tape for recording a single CD ( the little one ), the main types with 46 (1 LP standard length), 60 ( 2 short LP ), 90 ( two standard LP ) and 74 ( a standard CD ) . Then special lengths of 22, 42, 45, 50, 54, 64, 70, 80 ( CD overlength ) 100, 110, 120, 150, 180 minutes. Sony had made a 92 - minutes tape, and there were cassettes with added minutes for advertisment ( + 5 -minutes every side, for example ).
I only remember main lengths in the offer of the stores, but i never had a closer view, i only bought 60- and 90-minutes, filled rest with single songs. By my meaning, all these special stuff was only a promotion thing to fulfill wishes of the individual requierements of consumers. Who needs a 22-minutes-tape ? Or 45 ?

 

I read that my Aiwa AD-F990 recommends not to use a 90 minute tape(in the operating manual) what was the main reason for that?

Cheers Kiwinut

 

Basically the longer the tapes, the thinner, the mylar the tapes are kept on.
And so with thinner mylar it's possible for the thinner and thin thinier mylar plastic. Whatever you want to call it. The tape rides on is more prone to being caught up in your not so well maintained machine, whereas the shoulder tapes are thicker and therefore stronger and less prone to being caught up they can still be caught up. Anything can be caught up and you're badly maintained machine. Basically your take-up reel not working as correctly as it should. Where is the pinch roller and capstan pull the shape through at a constant speed until that breaks? I mean it's just all kinds of considerations. Basically just the shorter tapes are stronger than thinner longer tapes

 

Thats curious regarding this deck. But additional to Cassette2go`s post the builder of AIWA could gave a warning because the tape speed in fast forward or rewind is very fast ( and the deck have no speed limiter at the end of reeling ), - so the thinner tapes could be tear, when it stopped instantly.

 

A long time ago I had and I may still have because I don't use it anymore. A JVC home deck and I'll just leave it like that because when I did use it and it did work for when I went to rewind with any tape. Yes any tape you take any tape and put it in there and rewind it and it will rewind to the beginning and with such Force that it will rip the leader out of the end of the cassette reel. Okay, after that was I thought it was like okay. No problem. It's just a issue with that tape but no I put another tape in and I around it and I ripped it out. I put a third tape in it. Ripped it out. It's like okay. No more of this. No more using this deck LOL

 

:JVC Home Deck: - But the tearing is not due to the thickness of the tape, right ? If the tape tears with every tape length in JVC, so it`s another reason. But, i just think - The amount of pressure with which the tape is clamped in the spool must be higher for thicker tapes. May be, that`s why AIWA gave a warning.

 

And then you have some cassettes that have leader tapes and then some tapes do not have leader tape so the ones with no leader tape are more prone to breakage than the ones with a leader tape. It's been my experience