TDK HCL-11 Head Cleaner Cassette

One of the more recent head cleaning cassettes. This TDK HCL-11 is from the late 1990s, and features TDK’s RC-II Rigid Construction Mechanism. All sorts of recommendations would be made by purveyors of recording devices in relation to cleaning, demagnetising or whatever, but running one of these every so often would, in my experience, keep a basic tape deck or tape recorder working without hitch. Home multi-trackers, however, needed more care, and with those, I found head cleaning tapes to have little impact when sound quality was starting to suffer.

1990s Sony FXII 60 Audio Cassette

If you wanted to find weasel words in the mid 1990s, I doubt the first place you’d look would be on the outer packaging of an audio cassette case. However, the term ‘reference quality’, used in relation to what was really quite a low-end Type 2 tape, would surely make a PR officer smile. Sounds impressive; doesn’t really mean anything – the Holy Grail for anyone in the business of selling decidedly unremarkable goods.

1993 PMD Magnetics Professional Audiocassette C15

Here’s a cracker from the 1990s – a PMD Magnetics Professional Audiocassette, which I think would probably have been manufactured in 1993 – the year I bought it. The ‘Professional’ designation hints at something fairly magnificent, so you’d expect at least a high bias Type 2 tape – if not a Type 4 metal job. However, this is in fact a normal bias Type 1, with a ferric formulation.