1993 TDK AR60 Type I Audio Cassette

The TDK AR60 was one of the better Type I audio cassettes. The sound from Type I tapes could vary enormously, going from a woolly blob of poorly defined warbling at the low end of the market, up to a frequency-rich and high fidelity experience in the more expensive echelons. Not that Type I cassettes could ever be described as expensive in themselves, but if you used a lot of them and bought in bulk, there’d be a dramatic difference in price between a batch of low end Type Is and the high end alternatives.

1993 TDK SA-X 60 Super Avilyn Audio Cassette

The early to mid 1990s TDK SA-X 60 audio tape was the upmarket high bias product in the range. TDK had notably used their own Super Avilyn tape coating for high bias Type II cassettes right through the era when chrome was the most popular Type II formulation. But by the time this cassette was manufactured in the early 1990s, most rivals had dropped chrome and followed the TDK path, adopting a cobalt-ferric mix of some sort.

1987 BASF Chromdioxid Extra II 60 Audio Cassette

The BASF CR-E II audio cassette (or Chromdioxid Extra II, as it was identified on the outer packaging), filled the space in the range previously occupied by the Chromdioxid II. Despite the ‘Extra’, this tape was still BASF’s standard CrO2 offering, and I couldn’t really tell any difference between this and the previous Chromdioxid II. The CR-E II arrived in 1985, even sporting the same basic colour scheme as its predecessor, although the grey label on this cassette had a sort of metallic effect which changed the shade of grey as the shell was moved in the light.