1995 Sony FXI 90 Audio Cassette

As promised in yesterday’s post depicting the 1996 Sony FXI, this is my other 1990s FXI, from 1995. This version was not pre-labelled at the factory, and came out of its packaging with a bare plastic face.

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.

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.