BASF LH Extra I Audio Cassette (1984)

BASF were very well known for their high bias chrome formulation cassettes (see the Blank Tapes category for numerous posts relating to those), but they also made some very nice normal bias Type I tapes. A case in point was this, the LH Extra I, probably made in 1984.

The Type I Normal Bias Audio Cassette

The Type I normal bias audio cassette was the standard and most widely compatible tape format – the direct descendant of the original compact cassette. The tape preserved sound by means of a ferric-oxide coating, and first appeared on the consumer market in the mid 1960s. Heading the post you can see a fairly early Type I musicassette demonstrator, which was used to help drive the cassette format into wider use in 1970.

1993 TDK AR60 Type I Audio Cassette

The TDK AR60 was one of the better Type I audio cassettes. The sound from Type I tapes could vary enormously, going from a woolly blob of poorly defined warbling at the low end of the market, up to a frequency-rich and high fidelity experience in the more expensive echelons. Not that Type I cassettes could ever be described as expensive in themselves, but if you used a lot of them and bought in bulk, there’d be a dramatic difference in price between a batch of low end Type Is and the high end alternatives.