Been missing you mate! Always glad to see any review you have on whatever you get. It’s fun to see stuff I’ve never seen. Don’t stop doing this! This is loved and fun! God Bless you Tony! Happy Valentines Day mate

The Dessauer Chroma Tapes already sounded as distorted when they were new. I remember buying one in 1992 and being quite disappointed. This was definitely no BASF tape, otherwise my deck would have made a way better recording on it :-) Dessau coated their own chrome tapes a bit into the 1990's, and the CrO2 pigment used for it is reported to come from the Orwo plant in Wolfen. I'm a bit unsure about the CrO2 pigment from Wolfen because what is always reported by professionals is that BASF and Du Pont were the only makers of the pigment, but that might be a view from a Western perspective. The shell on this Chroma Tape comes from Carl Schneider Kunststoffe GmbH in Ober-Ramstadt-Rohrbach (near Frankfurt), a company which also made reels for BASF open reel tape, as well as they were "helping out" BASF on plastic parts for their cassette shells, sometimes even with complete shells, you need a trained eye to distinguish them... and this does also explain why the hubs are looking so BASF-ish. SK was a typical cassette loading company like Magna and Permaton. They made VHS shells themselves, but their audio cassette shells were sourced from different manufacturers, as well as the tape. Earlier SK chromes often contained some variety of BASF pure or cobalt doped chromes, but if they could get a batch of pancakes from somewhere else at a good price, they would wind it in. So in this SK CX II package, you can get like five to ten different combinations of shells and tape. Most of them are decent, some actually very good, but you never know what you get before you open it. And they made lots of OEM cassettes during the 90's and 00's: Müller, Megasound, Master's, Tucan, to name only a few. The Tectro tapes were never popular, luckily. They were only sold at one regional discount store chain (Tedi or Kodi? Don't remember...) around 10 years ago, when the interest in blank tapes had reached its lowest point.

Something must be wrong with my ears today because I thought the first tape (tectro) sounded fine and the 2nd tape was distorting badly once you turned up the level. It also coloured the music a lot. But with the first tape, I could not hear any dropouts or any distortion. I thought it sounded just fine. I even went back and listened to it twice.

TecTro cassette says it was made for "Kodi Diskontläden GmbH". Yes, it is a chain of discount stores, specialized in household goods. So yeah, not much of audio quality to expect there.

I own a Dutch audio buyers guide from 1980 and one of the chapters is about cassettes,all types of cassettes were tested,all brands. tested on 8 different aspects shown in a diagram.

awesome as always! I really missed your videos. I was checking KZfaq everyday to see if you uploaded something. Thanks for this, it's always fun to watch your tape reviews :)

I perform a Lavatory Standard Mechanism

1:11 You took the words right out of my mouth. It must have been while I was recording on a TDK D type cassette. "Working horse" are the words that came to my mind these days when I was recording on these TDK D type tapes. I'm glad this time there was no dropout in hiss. Great presentation! Cheers! 🍻 📼 😃

Why not try one of those phone apps that can use on holiday, to translate menus, etc. You know, point your phone camera at it and you see the translated text? Maybe a Google Translate app exists. Update: just installed Google Translate app - it's brilliant!

Love the case with that Dessauer Cassette. Looks like some pre-recorded tape cases. I wish more good blank cassettes had come with similar cases.

I've got that book. First edition was published in 1983. WKL was and it's still on marketplace. But that book is in Poland very rare. I bought it in 1988 and it's still in use. Very good book.

Hello Tony, cool video! Thank you! I have been wondering what was happening as new videos stopped coming and I see that you have a new project. So good luck with your new channel and please do not forget us! The book you mention looks great! I which there were something like this available in English to check out MOLs and SOLs! Take care!

wow! nice one Tony, what a surprise to see the tapes on the chair. I wanted to say thank you for the channel really, youtube is fabulous because we can choose what we watch, and I am grateful for the effort you put into these videos, thank you for no adverts! I did watch the first gamer video, actually I am not into these games but I did watch to the end and will go back for another go, please god don't let me get hooked on games the way tape has taken me! z

Thanks for the videos, been enjoying them all! Love seeing all the tapes and equipment--learning a lot. I have three questions for future videos (that shouldn't cost you anything) asking the following questions: What's the best tape/type to use if you are a frequent re-recorder? What's the best way to erase an entire tape, if you'd just like to blank the whole thing? And a small tutorial on moving your tapes into Audacity, would be cool to see. Keep up the great work.

I really like the last one you recorded on,I’d like 5 or more of them,guess I have to go to 🇵🇱.

I was in Munich last year on vacation with my family and visiting the record shops. One had this small area in the shelf with a few sealed early 00's TDK D and late 90's BASF/Emtec Sound I's for sale. But there was this SK one (the same in the video actually) but unfortunately I decided not to take it in the end in case it was a type 0. I do regret my decision now, feels like I've missed out on an interesting opportunity to explore this cassette myself. The owner also said he had some sealed TDK and Maxell type II's but they were in his house and unless I was planning to buy lots of them I would have to wait till another day and come. Problem was the next day was Christmas eve and we were due to leave for Rome on Christmas Morning, and that a teenager is certainly not going to be able to convince his parents to fork out 30+ euros for ten cassettes...

Congratulations, gorgeous Polish book! Actually I would like to have a book like this, I read and speak Polish, even though it is not my native language, my native is Russian. But I learned Polish and even had been in Poland as a tourist about 19 years ago. So definitely I would be able to understand this book.

I could definitely see the Chinese manage to make a decent tape stock. If it can be done in the US and Europe, China can easily do it. It's just a question of whether some factory owner will want to cater to the tape duplicators in the West with a good stock they can get affordably to put in album releases. Whether they'd make blanks available too or not, depends on whether they think it would be worth the investment, but I could still see a company like Tapeline load up some C-0s with it to sell as blanks.

Is another one bible of magnetic tapes in Polish: Barbara Libura - "Taśmy Magnetofonowe". You can read for example how is built magnetic tape, about active layer, electroacoustic properties of magnetic tapes. Part III discusses how to measure tapes and what is reference tapes. The book is from 1976 and there are not many pictures (B&W), but there are a lot of technical drawings. Your book is later and very good, I have my own copy too.

Great video!

Dessauer were an East German manufacturer who survived some years into the 1990s. The other two are also from post German reunification thus 1990s (or later, but I doubt it), you can tell from the fact that they have a 5-digit post code in the addresses. I've never come across any of these, but then I was buying only TDK during that era.

i am from germany and from dessau. its kinda insae that tapes where made here long time ago

A very nice video. Thanks. Any possibility to you share a pdf version of this amazing book? PLEASE, I want to try translates to English.

I used to have this book :)

4:32 Man. "Dessauer" sounds so much like Spanish "desagüe" (drainage). I know it's infantile, but---

thank you for videos!!!!i was looking far that info for years =) could you say anything about konica cassettes? it was always interesting for me - why it has black tape but TYPE1 normal position. Could you explain that?

Funny how the TecTro kind of admits the quality is ready for the toilet in the description. / Interesting, educational and entertaining as well. / I know some Polish people that also speak Russian, maybe because they are older and it was part of their curriculum.

I don't know the language--despite my screen name--but from what light learning I've had, I can tell you that page showing tape wrapped around a cylinder was explaining two different methods of guiding a tape around a video machine head.

I think SK tape distorded the sound badly at +2dB. I also think the tape itself in TecTro is quite good, the problem lays upon the shell, which has been manufactured poorly.

I wonder - Cobalt vs. Chrome. Could they do such "substitutions" when the Cobalt tape has characteristics (120 us 3180us) and required BIAS the same as Fe cassettes (Type I, IEC I)? The recording would be done with too high BIAS (low frequency advantage, destruction of high frequencies in the recording) and wrong EQ (70us 3180uS) which would further enhance this effect.

Thank you for another great video! But I have a question (bear with me if I'm just being ein bisschen doof): How the hell is "SOCIMAG" pronounced? SoCee-Mag, Socky-Mag, SoShee-Mag?

Could you do a video about some of the "open reel" cassettes, like the Teac Sound 52. I don't have one but I think they are beautiful. I understand several manufacturers made similar designs?

The first cassette tested sounded perfectly fine to me apart from a little less bass than the source. But of course I am further down the line of the sound than you are.

Well that was about time...

Hi Tony, if I may ask... are you ever gonna make a video on TEAC cassettes? They seem to have made plenty of variation of the Sound52, with different colors and letters and whatever not, but I never quite understood what they're about. My dad's collection (pretty much my only source of tapes) features the perfect amount of Sound52's: one. I don't know what possessed him to buy it, but I'm so glad he did, because I'm not alone in considering it the prettiest cassette by a fairly long shot, and I'd never get one if I had to pay what these seem to go for nowadays.

Is Dessauer the company that made ORWO cassettes back in them DDR days?

I need that book, if you need translations, i'm here. Labatory, or lavatory standard?

Z... that was Zorro most likely. Maybe Alain Delon likes Cassettes?

Time for you to pick up the on the fly point and shoot book text translation app version of Google Translate and read you that book properly.

THAT GRAPH IS PROBABLY NOISE

Labatory is correct. Because they can't copy. It has to be misspelled so that don't get sued

Ve haf vays off making you listen!

Im sure they ment lavatory standard=)

...Dessauer is sooner the Agfa clone. The producer's address given on the inlay coincides with the former ORWO.

Have I misheard it, You said "who you is"? at about 4:14

Bet the person who bought those Splicit Captures was some wally from Salisbury!

SK stands for "Sauerland Kunststoffe".

Naaaaaw, that 'Labatory' tape wasn't so bad, just a tad off on the left channel, that's it really!

Hello, Tony! Hello, everybody! If somebody is interesting in the top-of-the-line Soviet made cassette decks of 1980s and can understand Russian, here is the review of the top class three-headed close loop Mayak-010S cattette deck. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fN6Ri7Zou5qbh3U.html . Actually from another videos I know the deck was designed in Kiev institute (there is another one hour video interview with the designer of this deck) based on imported tape transport, also very interesting interview, but all in Russian kzfaq.info/get/bejne/atlhhKxl0JOano0.html. In the interview Nikolai Sukhov, the inventor of the Adaptive Dynamic Bias System, asks questions to the actual designer of the Mayak-010 deck, discussing all the details of tape transport, heads and schemotechic design of this deck. This engineer in the interview also told us that the head in this deck was not sandwitch-type, but special kind of separate record and playback heads located very close to each other to avoid extra tape rounding, which takes place in sandwitch heads. The deck also had automatic tape calibrator, I guess this is the only Soviet-made deck equipped with this feature. Vilma-102 had manual calibration, my RAPRI-102 has manual bias adjustment.The price of this deck was very high, more then affordable for average Soviet people, and also I don't remember seeing it in stock in Moscow, where I lived in Sovei times. Also all these decks were manually assembled in the Kiev electronic design institute, since it was too complex the Mayak factory conveyer production. Sorry, may be this post is a bit off-topic, but I hope it could be interesting to Tony or some of the audience of this channel.

Start taking those Polish reading lessons now..lol

When I saw the "Z" my mind went straight to Ziltoid...

Eisenoxid is Ferro oxide 😉

Cobalt(oxide) is not Chrome(oxide). It's a different metal/element. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt What a beauty the SK one is, when you remove the very ugly wrapping (why would you hide it behind so much uglyness???). It's a shame that yo didin't show the case with the J-card.

"Labatory" LMAO

Your CXII cassette looks like Made in China, shell and hubs. My pieces of CXII are Made in Germany, Dessau, the former Orwo, so as already written, a large number of combinations.

So is it all moot now, merely an issue for collectors and retro-tech fans? Or is there any comeback ahead? Seems like nothing but junky mechanisms are made now with meager electronics and low-end media. Is the story very much different for reel-to-reel?

What has happened to your microphone quality? It used to be much better. It's unfortunately been about a month since I've watched a video of yours so maybe I've missed something.

SONY only 👍👍👍

Sorry, they are not identical.