Sony CHF90 Audio Cassette (1980)

The Sony CHF60 has already been added to this blog, and you can find the full text for the tape in the post: 1981 Sony CHF60 Audio Cassette.

I did, however, think it was also worth adding this post for the 90 minute version, if only for the photo. What a great encapsulation of the technology of 1980 this image is.

The Tascam 424 Portastudio

I thought I’d do something a bit different today and take a concise look at an archetypal piece of tape recording equipment. This is a Tascam 424 Portastudio – a multitracking device which gave home recording enthusiasts (often musicians, but sometimes amateur producers) their own small recording studio, in the days before hard disk digital multitracking became available to the masses.

The (English) Beat Live at Bradford 1982 Audio Cassette

This is a real nostalgic treat. It’s a bootleg tape of The (English) Beat, playing a blistering live set in Bradford on 9th October 1982. Recording quality is poor, but the performance easily makes up for that, and it would have been a crime to let the less-than-professional recording prevent that fantastic performance from being preserved. I bought the tape – dubbed onto a Sony CHF-90 (how typical of the time) – from one of the record fairs held in Birmingham and the West Midlands either in late 1982 or early 1983. The inlay is in most ways typical of those on early ‘80s bootlegs – typed and photocopied onto matt-finish paper in an eyecatching solid colour. However, in this case the paper is thick and stiff enough to be described as card, which was quite a luxury at the time.