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.

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.

1986 BASF LH-EI 60 Audio Cassette

Propping up the range of BASF audio cassettes back in 1986 was this LH-EI – a base-level Type I with an attractive look, and a significantly better sound than you might expect. It is a bit on the noisy side, but nowhere near as bad as some direct rivals, and the frequency range is impressive indeed for a tape occupying such lowly territory. This is certainly not a tarted-up ‘voice recording’ product. It’s fine for music. Quite different in tone to Sony’s HF. The BASF LH-EI is brighter (comparatively strong brightness was typical for a BASF tape).