Joe Satriani – Surfing With The Alien (1987)

Joe Satriani’s Surfing With The Alien was an instrumental rock guitar album showing off some truly stunning fretboard pyrotechnics. I was just starting to pursue the electric guitar at a more advanced level when this album was released, and after seeing the unmitigated praise it was getting in the guitar magazines, I bought it.

1987 Maxell MX 46 Metal Audio Cassette

Looking and feeling very much like the high-end Type II XLII-S of the same year, this 1987 Maxell MX 46 audio cassette was the range-topping Metal position offering. If you could afford them, these were great cassettes. A strong, frequency-rich sound, and a formulation which was able to take some pretty extensive re-recording before the signs of wear would start to manifest themselves in the sound. It’s fairly evident from the photo that this one’s been well used.

1987 TDK D 46 Audio Cassette

I felt that the TDK D audio tape of the mid to late 1980s was very similar to the Sony HF. A basic and cheap Type I with quite a warm sound, relatively low fidelity, and a very similar appearance too by 1987, when the tape in this photo was made. Check the HF link above for a visual comparison.