What was the last cassette tape you bought?

Tony2011 posted:

 I would have thought your Dragon deserved something a little more "premium", Kev?

You can't get the premium tapes any more, except for silly money Tony.

£85 for a sealed TDK MA-XG C90 anyone?

Kevin-W posted:

Tony2011 posted:

 I would have thought your Dragon deserved something a little more "premium", Kev?

You can't get the premium tapes any more, except for silly money Tony.

£85 for a sealed TDK MA-XG C90 anyone?

If i think to all those i trashed.......

The last was probably a TDK SA-90 in the mid-80's. Most of the ones I still had worked perfectly well 30+ years later. I never bought a pre-recorded one, as I started buying my own vinyl as soon as I had exhausted everyone else's! 

Kevin-W posted:

Tony2011 posted:

 I would have thought your Dragon deserved something a little more "premium", Kev?

You can't get the premium tapes any more, except for silly money Tony.

£85 for a sealed TDK MA-XG C90 anyone?

Point taken, Kev. I love the sound of those tapes but  that's obscene and R2R  prices. I see there are people trying to sell a single, 'standard" MA for  £65.00 other for £15.00. I'm sure  some are counterfeits. Absolutely mental! 

Drikus posted:

That looks familiar.  I bought one very similar from John Menzies in Dundee many years ago. I think I still have the folded inlay card.  The cassette, or at least fragments of the cassette, are probably still buried in the verge somewhere along the A917 just outside of Kingsbarns. 

You didn't like it and threw it out the window?

No, I loved it.  But my room mate at Uni evidently did too and he borrowed it along with a bunch of other cassettes of mine. He rolled his car one night near Kingsbarns. When I went to go and see the wreck, the first things I found were bits of cassette and spools pf tape all over the road and verge.  So I started to pick up the pieces and was delighted to find that they were of music I liked.  Then the penny dropped.  They were my cassettes.

Coincidentally, I recently bought the vinyl reissue of this, which thoughtfully also came with a DVD with the album and 12" B side on a DVD in 24bit 96kHz.

I bought four boxes of ten TDK SA-90s from Richer Sounds when it seemed the writing was on the wall for the format. I think they were priced at 79p each.

I was also given some pre-recorded  musicassettes recently by a friend who was throwing them out, but haven't bought any since the advent of CD I guess. 

Richard Dane posted:

No, I loved it.  But my room mate at Uni evidently did too and he borrowed it along with a bunch of other cassettes of mine. He rolled his car one night near Kingsbarns. When I went to go and see the wreck, the first things I found were bits of cassette and spools pf tape all over the road and verge.  So I started to pick up the pieces and was delighted to find that they were of music I liked.  Then the penny dropped.  They were my cassettes.

Coincidentally, I recently bought the vinyl reissue of this, which thoughtfully also came with a DVD with the album and 12" B side on a DVD in 24bit 96kHz.

Ow bad luck. Hope your mate was ok. Is that the 2012 EMI 180 grams vinyl you talking about? Is it any good? Because it seems like a bargain at £15.99 with that extra DVD-A.

It's a lovely pressing by look of it, but haven't played it yet.  I also picked up Spirit of Eden at the same time (also with hi-res DVD on board) and have played that - superb pressing, which is very much needed with this LP as any noise in the vinyl can easily be distracting. I'm a little reticent about getting the Back to Black issue of Laughing Stock as I have read that the pressing can be rather noisy.

Clive B posted:

I bought four boxes of ten TDK SA-90s from Richer Sounds when it seemed the writing was on the wall for the format. I think they were priced at 79p each.

 

A couple packs of 10 blank tapes, probably also TDK-90s, but in my case that was probably late 1980s or very early 1990s.

The only prerecorded cassettes I ever bought were a handful sold direct by bands without record deals, that being commonplace before the days of writeable CDs. Apart from that as the only way to have the music, I found cassette pointless for home use, vinyl sounding distinctly better. Ditto CD subsequently.

My only real use of cassette was for music in the car, for which I made copies of a good few of my records, and carried a dozen or so at a time in the car until I had changed to a car with a CD player. But the durability of cassette was awful, requiring quite frequent replacement.

The few irreplaceable things I had on cassette I originally duplicated on casette, suffering the reduced quality for certain longevit, now long since transferred to CD, and later ripped them.

Bad news. Got the deck from the attic yesterday, took it out of the box and placed it in the rack only to find out that the door won't open. It's been in the attic like six years so I guess it need to be serviced. Decided not to spend money on that and got another deck instead, a Revox B215 in showroom condition.

Work done on it recently: dismantled, checked and blown out with high pressure and dedusted. Drive removed, completely disassembled and cleaned. Mechanics cleaned, regreased and oiled. New optocoupler. Power supply overhauled. Heads and all tape-guiding elements cleaned and demagnetized. Measured, controlled and all levels are perfect. No need to worry about belts anymore because it's a direct-drive.

Pic of the actual deck;

Very nice Drikus. 

Whats the deck with the stuck door? 

Yes, that’s a lovely deck and,needless to say,  I have a soft spot for Revox gear. 

Did you get if from that well known auction site?

Richard Dane posted:

Very nice Drikus. 

Whats the deck with the stuck door? 

A Sony TC-KA6ES. Here it is;

Tony2011 posted:

Yes, that’s a lovely deck and,needless to say,  I have a soft spot for Revox gear. 

Did you get if from that well known auction site?

Yes and from a first owner even . Didn't know it wasn't allowed to mention that well known auction site by name...

Is that a B77 in your avatar? He also has one of those for sale, an MK II, completely restored and aligned.

Drikus posted:

Tony2011 posted:

Yes, that’s a lovely deck and,needless to say,  I have a soft spot for Revox gear. 

Did you get if from that well known auction site?

Yes and from a first owner even . Didn't know it wasn't allowed to mention that well known auction site by name...

Is that a B77 in your avatar? He also has one of those for sale, an MK II, completely restored and aligned.

I think you’re allowed to mention the site as long as there are no direct links or implied “invitations” for sale on the post. Don’t worry as Richard never misses a thing!

Yes, it’s a mk2, 7 1/2-15ips, fully serviced that I bought a couple of years ago after guidance from a few forum members. I also had a B225 CD player which I sold due to a damaged loading tray. Unfortunately, I was not very keen on the sound even preferring an old Marantz CD63 KI to it. But that’s another story. 

Enjoy it!

Love my B77. Restored by one of the few people who really know what they’re doing. New heads, capstan and caps throughout. Sounds fabulous and good eye candy when dormant

Tony2011 posted:

Yes, it’s a mk2, 7 1/2-15ips, fully serviced that I bought a couple of years ago after guidance from a few forum members.

Nice! Do you buy tapes like from The Tape Project or so?

Drikus posted:

Tony2011 posted:

Yes, it’s a mk2, 7 1/2-15ips, fully serviced that I bought a couple of years ago after guidance from a few forum members.

Nice! Do you buy tapes like from The Tape Project or so?

No! I would rather have the original  material on vinyl. I would never pay those prices for a repro tape. 

Tony2011 posted:

Drikus posted:

Tony2011 posted:

Yes, it’s a mk2, 7 1/2-15ips, fully serviced that I bought a couple of years ago after guidance from a few forum members.

Nice! Do you buy tapes like from The Tape Project or so?

No! I would rather have the original  material on vinyl. I would never pay those prices for a repro tape. 

Bet you have a B790 .

On a well-known auction site, a geezer is selling a sealed, blister-packed TDK SA-XG C90 tape for $219! Even more bizarrely, he has a TEAC head cleaning cassette up for $199!

This was the last cassette tape I bought:

I bought it the weekend before I moved to Germany as all I could take with me to listen to music was my walkman and portable tape / radio player and I wanted something new to listen to.

I've still got a few that I hung on to together with some bootlegs (some Minidiscs also lurking in the box!). Interested to learn how much shrink wrapped original TDKs are now going for. I'd better hang on to my SA90, might pay more than my pension if I hang on to it for long enough :-)

Plenty of sealed SA90's still available at very reasonable prices. Saw 2 sealed packs of 5 offered for just £14.49 the other day.

Drikus posted:

Plenty of sealed SA90's still available at very reasonable prices. Saw 2 sealed packs of 5 offered for just £14.49 the other day.

 Maybe it wont be replacing my pension then [@mention:73370968263941422] ....