vintage cassette tapes?

heyyou570

New member
So I Am a storage shed maintenance man and the boss lets me keep alot of what is abandoned or lost due to rent recently i acquired 4 cassette tapes brand new in the plastic there is a DTK MA-R90 and 3 DTK D120 s i noticed on eBay they sell for a good amount
My question is How rare are they and are they worth money?
 
DTK??? - I presume you mean TDK.

The D120 is a basic 2-hour tape, very thin tape and prone to stretching and print-through. I never used these as they are too fragile. It also depends on how old these are as the packaging of the standard D series changed over the years.

The MA-R90 is a different matter - this is a metal formulation of better quality in a solid metal shell.

This was the best tape that TDK did and what I used to use in the day for the best recordings.

MA-R901.jpg


They are worth what someone is prepared to pay for them.

But even the very best cassettes on the most expensive Nakamichi recorders is vastly inferior to even a cheap digital recording.
 
Type II/High Bias tapes are going to be most sought after by home recordists as most of the cassette based recorders only used that formulation. What you've got is a few low grade tapes and one very high quality (Type IV/Metal) tape that isn't compatible with the hardware most people use. I'd have killed for a couple of those back in the day, but it's a different world.
 
When someone says, "Vintage Cassette Tapes" it makes me feel really old LOL.

I would have over 3000 used cassette tapes stored away, probably never to be played again, some dating back to 1970.

Alan.
 
I prefer OLDER CASSETTES if I can get them because they started using DIGITAL BINS and the music doeant sound as good at all!!

I had a 1975 re-issue of WOODSTOCK 69 and it sounded thin and disgusting.... I then got the orginal 1970 ampex releases and they sound goregous!!

I Am a true analogue purist :)
 
Last edited:
Gee... a 1975 reissue is sounding thin and disgusting and you are blaming it on digital recording? Digital really didn't go commercial until the Soundstream recorder was released in '77, and digital was almost exclusively used for classical recordings from folks like Telarc and Denon. These were used for making LPs until the CD was released in 82.

As someone who has 1) original 3 disc album Woodstock release, 2) cassette version 3) VHS movie 4) CD release 5) 2 DVD releases, I can honestly say that the cassette version is the absolute lowest quality sound of them all. Its far from "gorgeous". I only bought a few original cassettes because they always sounded so much worse that the albums. It was better to buy a good cassette recorder and some hi bias cassettes and dub them down. Commercial cassette releases were one notch above the 8-track releases, although a good 8 track potentially could best the cassette on the top end due to running at double the tape speed. They were best relegated to the dashboard of your GTO or Camaro where quality didn't really matter.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top