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.