I had someone tell me the serial number on Maxell Cassettes contained manufacture information, like date of manufacture, but I can't seem to find that information anywhere. Does anyone here know if that's true, or if there is info anywhere on this? I'm curious, because looking at the quality of tape formula by time period. Appreciate your knowledge on this... mike in SC
Good luck, sometimes there's no standard numbers, sometimes they all make sense. I would think with tape there would be a decodeable sequence so they could look up if any issues happed in production.
I would think that code had date, tape lot, location... someone on a site that shows all the different cassettes (but I can't remember which one) told me there was a way to decode, but at the time I must not have looked into his story... I buy mostly Maxell XL-II and TDK SA and have been trying to see best mfg era for these tapes. So far I've been fortunate, what I've bought has cleaned up and re-recorded very nicely!
I have to believe they were pretty precise on the tolerances of the tape, I've never heard of "hot" tapes being brought up but it is an interesting subject. One of these days I'll do a cassette tape thread with 1000's of tape articles, there might be some interesting info.
Did you see this thread? https://www.tapeheads.net/threads/maxell-hitachi-batch-codes-date-of-production.96246/
Wow exactly what I was looking for! that thread references the excellent slovakia forum, but I always have a hard time navigating their site... https://ez647.sk/ Funny I guess I just didn't use right search terms on TH... seems like search function on TH has gotten worse since they upgraded... Looks like Maxell became wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi in 2010... took over other businesses like projectors for a while... did data discs for a long time... https://www2.maxell.co.jp/corporate/history.html not sure if they are still the same company...
