1983 Memorex HBII 60 High Bias Audio Cassette

I must say I got a serious buzz of excitement when I finally unearthed this. I knew I had at least one old 1983 Memorex HBII (High Bias II) audio cassette kicking around somewhere, but my huge hoard of old possessions is in such disarray that searches have long since fallen into needle-in-haystack territory.

The Type IV Metal Audio Cassette

The metal-formulated audio cassette hit the scene near the end of the 1970s, as the answer to a number of problems with previous tape formulations. The standard ferric-oxide (Type I) tape had typically rendered poor high frequency definition, with pervasive noise, meaning a woolly sound without much presence or zing… except where you didn’t want it – in the hiss.

1970 ITT Polydor Musicassette Demonstrator

Since I began raiding the ‘junk boxes’ for old audio cassettes to photograph for this blog, I’ve been desperately hoping to find something from the 1960s. I came within a cat’s whisker today, with the discovery of this ITT Polydor Demonstration Musicassette, from 1970. I don’t know how this truly vintage artefact got into my family, but I suspect it had something to do with my Mother’s job in music education. The material pre-recorded onto the tape comes from a variety of 1960s acts, but it’s all ‘easy listening’ – a genre in which my Mom never showed any particular interest. I’m assuming, therefore, she received the cassette as some sort of free giveaway.