Subj : Mixtapes
To   : Nick Andre
From : Zip
Date : Sat Jul 22 2023 17:38:20

Hello Nick!

On 21 Jul 2023, Nick Andre said the following...

 NA> "Dad... you're insane... I just go on Spotify".

:-D

Tape recording is a fine art indeed!

Have been collecting some separates here for a future "rig", among those some 2-head decks. Actually opted for 2-head decks after working on replacing belts and idlers in an old 3-head Pioneer deck -- oh, what an insanely complicated (and seemingly totally overworked) mechanism they had for detecting the position of all the mech stuff! Will be relying on auto-cal in the 2-headers instead and hoping that it will yield at least some advantage over the factory settings (which I've read are often calibrated for TDK SA or similar).

Picking good cassettes is also an art of its own, with lots of pitfalls, as many (especially BASF and TDK it looks like) went downhill quite fast in the late 90s... Some of the nicer ones I've managed to find are 1988-1989 Sony UX-Pro and Metal ES, some 1990 TDK SA-X, but also some early 90s TDK SA-XS, BASF TP II Reference Maxima and some very late Sony UX-S, which according to some tests showed very strong similarities with UX-ES/UX-Pro (maybe they used up old stocks of tape and put the same formula in all tapes at the end of the tape era).

Of course, it's all in the ear of the beholder. (I'm not a "snob" when it comes to sound -- I'm rather looking for decent sound and good price/performance.)

Sorry for ranting, I'm off my tape soapbox now. :)

Best regards
Zip

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