1997 BASF CMII Chrome Maxima Audio Cassette

I wonder how many of the people buying BASF CMII Chrome Maxima cassettes in the late 1990s realised that they weren’t buying chrome tapes?

1985 Sony HF 60 Audio Cassette

The first  Sony HF cassettes of the 1980s took up a position which I felt would have sat somewhere between the former CHF and BHF in the range. This is how they looked. This is a 1985 HF 60, carefully looked after and in very nice condition in its 27th year.

1992 BASF Chrome Extra II 60 Audio Cassette

BASF maintained their commitment to chrome as a Type 2 formulation into the 1990s, and this was how things were looking in 1992. The BASF Chrome Extra II was the ‘entry level’ chrome tape in the range. It had a very typical BASF sound – quite glassy, with so much weight at the extremes of the frequency range, it was almost as if some of the midrange had been scooped a little. If you liked that sound, this was a great value tape, proving itself a lot more resistant to drop-outs than early ’80s BASFs in my experience.