1998 TDK SA 90 Audio Cassette

It’s hard now to imagine how life would be without fast PCs and intuitive operating systems. Even though it was made in the Internet era, this tape predates the release of Windows 98 (imagine that). So we’re back in the territory of Windows 95, and a climate in which most consumers were only just learning what USB was. The computers on many people’s desktops still didn’t feature CD burners, and so there was still a big market for blank audio cassettes.

1990s Mitsubishi C60 Audio Cassette

One of the brands less synonymous with the manufacture of audio cassettes was Mitsubishi. This Mitsubishi C60 tape was given to me by someone I was teaching to play keyboards, near the end of 1999. So there’s a lot of stuff I can’t be sure of about. What I can say is that this is a Type I normal bias cassette, and hiss levels are not at all intrusive. Beyond that, there are some problems, but how much blame the cassette should take for that isn’t clear.

1995 TDK SF 90 Audio Cassette

The TDK SF 90 of 1995 was TDK’s basic Type II tape. I thought these were very good value and used them a lot. They were pretty much interchangeable with the That’s VX60, offering similar characteristics and reliability at the same sort of price. The tinted casing gave the TDK SF 90 a little visual personality.