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.

1985 Rich Bitch Studios Audio Cassette Case

This is going to be pretty localised in its interest, but it may perhaps conjure memories of similar practices used by various commercial recording studios in the 1980s.

1997 Konica KX-HR 90 Audio Cassette

Given the distaste I had for Konica’s photographic film, I wasn’t expecting much from their audio tapes, and indeed stayed clear of them until 1997, when I needed some high bias tapes in quantity, and was swayed by the saving on bulk packs of Konicas, as opposed to more highly respected brands. I was amazed at how good these tapes were, and even though I’d bought quite a number of them, I did buy more. They were actually my last audio tape fad before I switched to entirely digital recording means.