1984 was a year of transition for Sony’s range of blank audio cassettes. The retailers’ shelves saw stock of the early(ish) 1980s design of Sony UCX, with its brushed metallic effect and attractive purple and silver livery. But before the year was out, these heavily updated replacements were ousting them, for a tenure lasting through the mid 1980s and into what we can effectively call the late ‘eighties.
This is the Sony UCX 60 high bias cassette, which I’ve titled as “1985” to differentiate it from the early 1984 variant. But in truth the tape you see was bought in 1984, and has a late 1984 recording on it.
It’s almost identical in design to the ES 60 Metal of the same period. The only differences I can see are the wording, the tape type auto-detect notches along the top of the case, and the fact that the UCX has light grey wheels whereas the ES Metal has white.
The actual tape media is different, obviously. And the tape media in this UCX is also different from that in the ’84 UCX. They evidently changed the formulation, because the tape in this UCX is lighter brown than the tape in the previous one. And it doesn’t sound the same. This later UCX is a little less bright, but more stable and resistant to drop-outs.
It’s not a bad cassette, but I’d equate it more with a high end Type I than a Type II. It does not have the glass-like dazzle of a BASF Chrome from this period. But it has to be seen as an improvement on the previous Sony UCX model, simply because of its noticeably increased stability.
Tape Tardis 