Here are my best acquisitions that recently came home. These are some but not all, just the most remarkable: First of all, very old tapes: these Realistic are, as far as I know, the brand of Radio Shack, a well known stores in USA: This is probably the oldest tape in my entire collection. According to Vintagecassettes, this is one is a true 2nd generation from 1966: I have no idea which one is this, but looks cool: I think this is the only AMPEX I have: This is the OST by John Williams from the 2nd (or 6th if you wish) part of STAR WARS. I was curious to see what quality does it offer, and it's quite good indeed: The J-card is surprising, it continues, goes outside the case and covers it from the back. something I've never seen before. This is the entire contain of the cassette: it also contains a folded papel with lots of information: And this is the unfolded information sheet: I also got the Thriller, also to know about the quality of japanese copies. At first sight doesn't seem anything special, but it may be an issue related to azimuth, I have to re-check: To my surprise, it came with two J-cards, one over the other! I've never seen that before. And it also came with a folded information sheet: Now the sealed ones. Here's an excellent '85 SONY HF-ES: And here's the next year version: This one is a '89 japanese version of the excellent HF-ES: You thought there were no more than HF, HF-S and HF-ES? In Japan there was the rare HF-X: And even more rare HF-Pro. Impressive, huh? And now the black pearl: the ultra-rare TDK SA-XG, the biggest brother of the SA, sharing the same shell as the mythical MA-XG: Here, beside the other black pearl: the SONY UX-Master, another true rarity: And, to finish: a good lot of UX-Pro:
Those early tapes are really hard to find, I think my Partridge Family Tape is my oldest from around 1972. I started paying more attention to the shell construction since you mentioned it before, that's another interesting topic that manufactures seem to push in the late 70's.
If you mean audio engineers and pros like that, I bet they use reel and I think they always use type I. Bear in mind that at 19cm/s those reels have an impressive low hiss, high output, excellent response and quality.
A pyramid of UX-Pro, my favorites!!! WOW!!! never seen UX-Master, but the pain of choosing what to record into Metal Masters ceramic shells had always been too much for me, so I am not going to drool over those... at least not for too long
Oh speaking of type 1 tapes have any of you herd of the "Fuji FrSuper" supposedly it is one of the best type 1 tapes ever made and (according Audio Magizen 1987) it surpass all the type 1 And type 2 tapes thet they tested for that year.
You are correct: Realistic was a Radio Shack brand. And judging by the label of the second one, it was made in the 80s to early-90s.
wow I didn't know the Supertapes were from 1966!? I have a couple that my Dad gave me, I had no idea they were that old.
The tape from '66 is the Philips, not the Supertape (I guess you misread my post ;-) ). Those supertapes are from '78...
@walkman archive: Hugo those mark II tapes are very good for their price. Those German tapes were pretty common in France. My dad sure made alot of mixtapes using these tapes, pretty good for early 80's tape. What's pretty cool about these is that you can tell it was recorded in a late 70's/early 80's deck, just by seeing that for the side number to have been readable, it must have gone in a piano key style deck. Also the Ampex 472 tape must be high quality considering the 472 made its way over to dat. Congratulations on your acquisition.
I concur iPhone X? My best photos are made with Leica optics (Zeiss/Mamiya are out of my means) but my kids keep saying that number of pixels is the King!
