Zonal 700 is real

[jpmorris]

For those who are curious about currently manufactured tapestock, I have finally succeeded in obtaining three pancakes of the True Black Meat from the fourth tape manufacturer, Zonal.

Here's the catalogue entry:
http://www.canford.co.uk/commerce/resources/catdetails/2804.pdf

Here's the actual product spec (Zonal's own site being somewhat old)
http://users.telenet.be/audiomedia/images/Zonal 700.pdf

There are the following minor disadvantages:
* It only comes on pancakes
* May only be 1/4" stock
* There doesn't seem to be any way of telling when it was made.
* Availability outside of the UK is questionable

I'd be happier still if I knew how to do a proper, accurate comparison against BASF 911 and Quantegy 456. Any ideas?

So far I have mastered each album on a different brand of tape, and I really wanted some 700 for the third one. I'm starting to run out of manufacturers now.

 

[Beck]

I found this site during the Quantegy fiasco while looking for options.

http://users.pandora.be/audiomedia/Zonal.htm

I also found an article that I can't find back right now that said Zonal used to make all widths of tape, but recently reduced the line to 1/4" only... damn! I would have liked to try 1/2".