1985 Sony HF 60 Audio Cassette

The first  Sony HF cassettes of the 1980s took up a position which I felt would have sat somewhere between the former CHF and BHF in the range. This is how they looked. This is a 1985 HF 60, carefully looked after and in very nice condition in its 27th year.

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).

1987 Maxell UD II 46 Audio Cassette

After buying my first proper home multi-tracking system in 1987 (a Tascam Porta One), I asked around for recommendations as to the best value high bias CrO2 tapes. The Maxell UDII was mentioned, and I gave it a try. I wasn’t disappointed. These were really nice products, with great high frequency reproduction and what I felt at the time was superb resilience. Now 25 years old, my first batch of Maxell UDIIs haven’t noticeably degraded with age, and have preserved my initial experiments with 4-track recording extremely well. The content of the recordings, however, is another matter.