1996 Sony FXI 90 Audio Cassette

I thought this was an attractive looking tape for its era. This is the Sony FXI, from 1996 – a normal bias Type I cassette which, despite its rather eyecatching appearance, fell very firmly into the cheap and cheerful category.

1995 TDK D 60 Audio Cassette

One of many incarnations of the famous TDK D normal bias Type I audio cassette – in this case a 1995 version. This lightbox view of the tape takes advantage of the transparent casing to show both sides of the product, but more importantly, the innards. You get a good sense from this image of how simple compact cassettes really were/are. Other than the two reels and the length of tape travelling from one to the other, it’s just a set of guides, and a soft pad (bottom centre) which gently pushes the tape against the record and play heads in the tape machine.

If you look between the ‘spokes’ in the reels, you can even see where the ends of the magnetic tape have been pinched into the plastic to hold them in place. Quite a primitive system, but it’s remained essentially unchanged throughout the historical lifespan of the compact audio cassette. A tribute to a brilliant design which was pretty much right first time as a basic concept.

1994 Maxell UR90 Audio Cassette

Even though the Vintage Cassettes site categorises this cassette as remaining in production until 1993, I’ve logged this one as 1994. It could feasibly have been made in 1993, but it wasn’t bought until very late in ’94 at the earliest – possibly the beginning of 1995. Because of the type of blog this is, it suits me better to work on when the tapes were bought (rather than purely reference information) as a guide to their year. It helps give some insight into what was on sale in the UK shops, and when, as well as hinting that the tapes often took a considerable time to work their way through the system into the hands of the eventual consumer.