1987 Maxell XLII-S 60 Audio Cassette

Okay, so I’ve been raiding my 1987 drawer for cassettes today. I used Maxell XLII-S tapes for a number of important projects in the late 1980s, and they really were a special product in their day. The casing design was clearly well ahead of its time, and the cassette instantly feels super-rugged the moment you pick it up. The resilience of the tape itself was phenomenal with the XLII-S, rendering drop-outs virtually non-existent. A bold sound, low noise, and no difficulty at all in taking high volume levels with these. And just look at the lack of gobbledygook on the cartridge. No fancy science words necessary to convince the public that these cassettes were good. You merely used them, and you could tell.

1987 Sony HF 30 Audio Cassette

In latter 1985, my normal bias tape of choice became the Sony HF – in particular the HF 30, as I normally went for as short a tape length as I could get away with. But by 1987 – the year of this HF 30 – I was almost invariably using Type 2 high bias cassettes; typically Maxells. However, amid my phase of Type 2 dedication, a local producer offered to record some tracks for a mate and I, after we’d started collaborating as a musical duo. The producer supplied our copies of the recording on these HF 30s. This tape, then, is quite an exception within my collection – particularly as the ’87 HF 30 is different from the ’85, which I have in abundance.

1987 Sony Metal-ES 60 Audio Cassette

I won’t try to hide the fact that I loved Type 4 metal tapes. This is a nice one from Sony – a 1987 Metal-ES, in a 60 minute format. I felt this was a tougher tape than Sony’s earlier Metallic, from 1983 and 1984 (I’ll photograph the ’83 Metallic for this blog in due course, but in the mean time it’s depicted in my 1980s Audio Cassettes article)… (UPDATE: I’ve now added my 1983 Sony Metallic to this blog. You can find it via THIS LINK).