Longer cassette tapes - Are they really THAT bad?

Someone should've told me to not use 120 minute Metal tapes recording radio stations... although they sounded fantastic, they were the worst to handle when something got jammed.

Guy born in the 70's: The pencil tape rewind trick was something we as kids used to do with a bingo-pencil, golf pencil, library pencil or a dmv pencil, because they were shorter and thicker than a school pencil. The type 2 school pencils were too thin for the trick. The clear 'squarebody' crystal pens were also used, but not nearly as much. Maybe 1 boomer teacher in our middle school would've used a crystal clear, squarebody pen. The most popular walkman users liked the library pencils, since they were easy to get, and they were free. I 'd say maybe the black and blue bingo pencils were second best, as for the tape-rewind trick. Most of us walkman-era kids didn't care. Really. If we had to rewind our tapes, on the go; then we'd just flip the tape. Or use auto-reverse; if we had that kind of walkman. I remember the pain of rewinding cassette tapes with bingo pencils though. Also opening brand new tapes. What a pain that was. I used a few long-running 120 min recording time tapes a few times for my mix-tapes. I can't exactly remember what brand they were, but I never had a problem playing them back in my walkman, in my car or at home. Maybe there was a super cheap 120 min recording time tape that really sucked. But if it got tangled up or chewed up in the player, then I threw it away and bought a better one. The long-play, recording tapes weren't all that expensive. A few bucks at the record store, that's all.

they were right about the pencils.. that brand pencil you showed was no way common if it even existed back in the era of cassettes. virtually every school pencil i used during the late 80s and 90s were shaped exactly as that bic brand of pen you showed.

The pencils are working in europe and afaik also in Japan, because they have nearly the same dimenstions like the Bic-pen. Greetings!

Have you ever tried using 150 or 180 minute tapes?

In my own experience, C120 tapes are not ideal for searches of songs that require fast forwards and rewinds in short durations because the tape from both reels eventually met and jammed. They are ideal for long continuous playback.

I've been using 120 min cassettes for years and never had any problems.

Where did you get that First Missouri State Bank song?

The longest cassette is from TDK: D-180

i think that "pLaY iT lOud" logo on a tape is funny. do they have another line that says "play it at a reasonable volume, you dick"

90 minutes was able to record 2 full album with a couple of minutes of extra tape on each side. I guess if you liked mix tapes longer tapes would be more music, but I was using tape to record my albums so I didn't have to wear them out playing them and 90 the right length for that.

Yes some Type IV tapes garnish a quite high price on Ebay, over $100.

The clear Sony tape is probably from about the mid 1980's not the late 1980's as they changed the label color on subsequent generations of tape.

I use to use 120 minute cassettes the time and never had a problem other than a bottom of the line 120 minute tape from the 1990's bought at Radio Shack. It got stretched out and snapped.

I worked as an audio/video repair tech in the 80's and 90's (basically the heyday of the cassette) and I saw more tape jams with 120-minute cassettes than I could count. They were.... kinda safe in high end cassette decks, but even then I advised people to avoid them. But in cheaper machinery you were taking bigger chances. Scrupulously maintaining your cassette deck helped reduce the chances of a jam, but I can also attest to the fact that there were very few people who were that devoted to regular maintenance.

I purchased 110 minute
cassette tapes.

Japanese pencils are thicker and work *perfectly*.

I found it very silly that something as seemingly mundane as "The Eye Institute of Southern Arizona" has a pop ad jingle like that. Sad news about Mix 107.3, the station shut down in 2009 after 42 years on the air and was one of the most popular top 40 stations on the central east coast with easily one of the best station jingles ever. It's now just a boring Christian radio station that no one cares about.

I just come back to this video for the First Missouri State Bank song.

this guy sounds like ding dong

Apparently only Japanese pencils work

I'm wondering why so many of the cassettes are marketed as having something to do with CDs?

Yes they are. For mix tapes only

have a cassette tape c-180 tdk

They are not wrong about the pencil, you just have to use a Japanese pencil.

Congratulation on your silver award from U know who 🙂 thank U

Is it weird to admit that I now have an earworm of "First Missouri State Bank"?

An old "Bic" pen works better than ANY pencil! I have owned a few "120" tapes, and they worked fine!

If print through was a problem on PROFESSIONAL media (The first Italian dub of Dragon Ball has some print through that can be heard with the volume all the way up) I can imagine that it wasn't implausible for it to be a problem on these tapes.

seriously... what is the connection betwixt your screen name and the band "westlife"?

I have been around magnetic tape most of my life . I started with open reel . But as for cassette tapes I have many Maxell C-100 ,and TDK Chrome C-110 and hundreds of C-90 . I've never had any problems with any of the C-100 or C- 110's . But I have a few Maxell C-120 that I bought out of curiousity and they are so flimsy , so thin they are scary . While I did record on one of them , I don't trust them to be routinaly used .But again I have no problem with brand name C-100 or C-110's ....Thank you ......DGR

It would be interesting to test these tapes, along with the shorter length ones, to see how high a signal they can handle, without saturating.

It used to be, that for the best reel-to-reel recording, you used 1.5 mil acetate tape, and avoided 1.0 mil mylar. The former resisted stretching, and I think, had thicker oxide, for fewer drop-outs.

awesome random songs there

😂😂love the promos you find...such a joy

The pencil thing works with Japanese standard pencil widths. That's why they say use a pencil to take up slack. Their pencils were (are?) thicker than ours.

Also, I never had a problem with longer running cassettes on my Fisher Price tape player, which is "kid tested, mom approved"

Just found this video & watching you calibrating the cassette using the external calibration tone is unprofessional. The deck has its own calibration tone that already match the record & play head settings & that's why your blue Sony cassette doesn't calibrate successfully. The deck has it's own computer to show you the level that must be reach before you start your recording. I have my Nakamichi Dragon & it's always doing well with it own calibration using the deck's calibration tone but always fail when calibrating using the external tone. The results is way more different. Using the deck's calibration system is better than using the external one. My deceased father told me always use the deck's calibration system for the best recording result.

It was well known amongst those wot nosed..
Never more than 90.

Your mic is clipping here

I have like six of the same type of 120 tape. All of them need to be recorded to at a significantly higher level to get the same volume at the end; one was literally defective from the get go, resulting in really quiet recordings, one channel worse than on the other.
And all three of them I've bothered to record so far have noticeable wow/flutter, and I say that as a person who usually has trouble noticing that. The deck also has trouble rewinding them.
Though I never knew if this was just my particular type of 1980s tape, I know they're not worn out or damaged, because all but one were never used before I got them.

Cassettes celebrate their 60th birthday this year, August 1st to be precise.

i love the collection of state Jingles its awesome 🎶👏

Back at Sony service in the 80s, I'd get customers coming in with chewed up 120min tapes from time to time, then they'd bring in their cassette decks / Walkman's and I'd have to point out that, from time to time, you had to clean the pinch rollers / capstans etc. so that it didn't happen. They were always annoyed to have to bother with all the effort. A couple of minutes work with a cotton bud was all it took, but that was considered the final straw. Odd really. Sort of like never changing the oil in your car and expecting it to last forever. People are strange sometimes.

The only real "long tape" that might be thought of as bad to some people is the famous TDK "D" 180 series. I don't know how anyone could possibly use of those in a standard deck and not have some risk of tape breakage.

have sozens of maxell C120 UD.UDXL.ETC, 40 Y.O, never had a peoblem. Maxell seems smoothest -running, Ma<ell/Sony/TDK seem safe bets, love your fm radio station breaks and ads, did you find source, I can get? raping streamws music, seems ro warm sound, imo.....ideal. great video. my input - buy a decent deck with goos calibration feature,then praxtically any casette, ttype/emgth can be ,made to sound fine.experiment!

Welp there goes that old wives tale of tapes degrading to ash after 30 years. That 40 year old tape sounded amazing!

Maxell Cassette Tapes Were The Best Sounding Tape