In addition to the standard ferric in the post on THIS LINK, Woolworths also did a high bias Chrome audio cassette. I’m assuming Chrome was just the name of the product and not the actual tape formulation, as this artefact comes from 1997 – in an era afterwhich even the highly chrome-committed BASF had turned their backs on real chrome.
Like the ferric, this cassette came completely devoid of labelling and featured a nondescript transparent plastic casing. This casing, however, is quite significantly different from the ferric’s casing. The tapes were bought at different times, though, so the cartridge design could have changed across the board in the interim, or of course Woolworths could have sourced their Type 2 Chrome tapes from a completely different supplier than the one they used for their Type 1s.
Again in common with the Ferric, this Woolworths Chrome was respectable in terms of performance. Obviously not the best high bias tape ever made, but neither was it the sort onto which you’d record one track, before cutting your losses and chucking it in the bin. This Woolworths Chrome feels pretty flimsy and isn’t remarkably quiet, so I wouldn’t particularly want to advise anyone to buy up some big stock of unused remnants. It’s a cheap, ninety minute Type 2 tape which does its job but doesn’t make your brain explode with excitement.
I bought these Woolworths Chromes for home-made comedy sequences I used to do. I’d sometimes make them for workmates’ birthdays and stuff like that. That makes me think I was unable to get anything less than a C90 length in the Woolworths tapes, and that Woolworths C90s were cheaper than pretty much everyone else’s C30s or C60s. The content I’d put on these tapes would only be short in duration and I’d have known I didn’t need anything like ninety minutes of recording time. So I’m convinced the only reason I’d have bought C90s is if I couldn’t find any C30 or C60 cheaper.
You can find a branded version of the Woolworths Chrome 90 on the link below…
https://tapetardis.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/branded-woolworths-chrome-90-audio-cassette
Tape Tardis 