Used to make good coin fixing hi-fi equipment at "The Hi-Fi Workshop" in Dee Why, Australia. Cassettes were the big moneymaker, mostly because people were too lazy/ignorant to keep the decks clean! I have a large collection of music on premium cassettes and even have a few brand new ones sitting unopened in their packages. (Interested?) Never used metal tapes because of their abrasiveness. All my music was dbx encoded, because it was so much better than Dolby. Always used TEAC, right from the first 360S model, bought at "A&B Sound" in Vancouver, way back... Cleaning out my closet; trying to unload all of my old automotive audio gear...
Well, colourful language aside: 1) All tapes abrade the heads. I know, I have replaced many heads on many decks, cassettes and open-reel. 2) Chrome & Metal tapes abrade faster. Why do you find this difficult to believe? This was well-known throughout the industry. A few manufacturers recommended against using them on a routine basis. At first, they gave you a couple of db more headroom, but as iron oxide tapes kept improving their technologythe advantage was pretty much lost. But' don't believe me, I'm just a guy on the internet. Find out for yourself. Or not.
I don’t need to find out i know, i use pretty much exclusively metals mainly TDK MA-XG’s. The colourful language is more to do with the fact that you started off with “people were too lazy/ignorant to keep the decks clean!” No need to call people names.
Welcome Hugh! I'm with you, high-end guys usually took good care of their decks but most of the young people I knew never cleaned any of their equipment. Some of the equipment I pick up today has never been touched inside, there wasn't as much of a cleaning culture, just like not a lot of people cleaned their albums. Sure some guys had the velvet D4 cleaning brush and some even had the Zerostat, but not many that I remember. Plus that stuff was pretty expensive back then. As far as the age-old wear debate, I'll take the word of a guy that worked on them for a living. My experience from doing wear tests for a tape cleaning manufacturer included setting up equipment to run cleaning tape over tape heads. These tests were based on industry standard testing. Even with fabric cleaning tape, we experienced wear but since it was within the tolerance in the specs we could sell our tapes. I have to believe tape formulations had to also meet certain specs to keep wear at a minimum but the combination of a more abrasive media and a dirty machine would lead to faster wear. Feel free to post your tapes for sale below, even the non-buyers love looking at NOS audio equipment and accessories. I'd love to see more of your tape set up, I've got a dbx 228 and a Technics Deck with it but never had time to play with them. I've also got a dbx DX 5 CD Player, yes they also made CD Players, very similar in looks to Nakamichi's CD Players. A lot of guys on here love vintage car audio, now they're put in a box and used inside, some of the 70's and 80's equipment is stunning but also super-rare.
