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From: man@bocar.UUCP (M Nevar)
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Re: Cassette Tape Durability
Message-ID: <110@bocar.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Apr-85 12:31:20 EST
Article-I.D.: bocar.110
Posted: Mon Apr  8 12:31:20 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Apr-85 02:32:40 EST
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This is in response to the tape durability questions raised recently.
I presently own approximately 250 cassettes recorded on both a Technics
3-head deck and a Tanberg 3-head deck.  200 of these are Maxell UDXLII's.
The other fifty or so are TDK SA, Dennon, and some imported Technics tapes.
Let me first say that the Technics are the best I have used, but they
are hard to get and rumor has it that they are not the same anymore.  These
are about 8 years old.  The others range from a few weeks to 8 years.
I have only had one problem with my Maxell's, that being a broken tape.
The TDK's however have gone down considerably in the last 4 or 5 years.
The 8 year old TDK's have been fine, and I still can enjoy them without
any noticable loss of quality, but the newer ones have been a problem.
I am currently re-recording these onto Maxell's.  Dropouts are a problem
with these as are totally un-recordable portions of tape.  I used to have
about 50 or 60 of them, but I have been replacing them gradually (as they
became a problem).  My car stereo also has had a few of these for lunch,
I usually buy a box at a time, and I was always getting at least one
TDK in the bunch that wasn't good for some reason.  After awhile of this 
I got disgusted and switched allegiance to Maxell, with very satisfying
results.  As I recall, just after these tapes started getting bad, TDK
introduced an upgrade to the SA line called SA-X.  Now, these may just
be the old-style SA's, but I don't know for sure.  Maxell upgraded the
XLII to the XLII-S, but I haven't noticed any difference.  Anyone
notice anything like this ?

I have nothing to report on the Denon's yet, as I have just
started to test them.

One note on recording records on the 'virgin' play.  This is not always
good.  On the first play, your stylus will pick up all the junk that
the cutting stylus has left behind.  When I get a new record, I treat it
with a record cleaner (LAST record cleaner), then play it through once.
Then I clean it again to get all the vinyl that the stylus has dragged out.
Then I clean the stylus with STYLAST and use LAST record preservative
on the record.  Now I record the album.  I have gotten fantastic results
using this method.  I first read about it in The Absolute Sound and it was
recently recommended in Stereophile.

                                                Happy Recording,
                                                Mark Nevar