Anyone know where I can get Fe-Cr cassettes? Even eBay doesn't seem to have 'em!

ToTo Man

ToTo Man

NEVER ENOUGH TOTO!
I've just handed my Akai GXC-570D in to my local tech get repaired and brought back upto spec and am looking forward to its return next week. I've been reading through the service manual, and the specs are quoted as:

30hz - 15khz +/- 3db with LowNoise tape
30hz - 16khz +/- 3db with CrO2 tape
30hz - 19khz +/- 3db with Fe-Cr tape
(no quote for Metal tapes as this deck was brought out before that era).

This last spec looks extremely impressive, but the trouble is I haven't got any Fe-Cr tapes nor can I find any on eBay. Does anyone know a source I can get them from, or does anyone perhaps have a spare one or two they'd be willing to flog me? :D

What is the durability of a Fe-Cr tape like compared to that of a Chrome tape like the SA90? I've got SA90s made from the early 1990s and they still sound and play perfect and don't seem to leave any residue on the pinchrollers.
 
FerriChrome cassettes were only available for about a year in the 1970's. Don't bother trying to find them - you won't.
 
Seems like our old friends at Sony were among the daddy rabbits behind FeCr...I had one or 2 of their decks that would record/play FeCr,don't remember them being all that special...Sony gave a couple of 45 minute tapes (Bless their little pea-pickin' hearts, too feckin' cheap to give at least 60 minute tapes w/ a $2-300 deck...) Seemed like they sounded kinda harsh & shrill, sounded like what a color TV looks like when you have the color cranked up all the way...<grin>
 
My old TEAC A-100 was able to use ferrichrome tapes. I never, ever, saw any tapes actually for sale, even in the 70's.

I seem to remember stories back when ferrichrome tapes came out that after a couple of years, the coatings started falling off the backings and shedding like mad. If that's the case, then any tapes that survived to today wouldn't last long at all.

Tom
 
Out of the (3) letter/legal boxes I have full of blank tapes,I've found in thrifts/flea markets/etc.,only one is a Ferricrome,a C60,so I guess I should be happy I got just one!! :yes: :no: Rob
 
Actually they were made for longer than a year; much longer in fact. I know this because I was able to buy a few brand new (not NOS) BASF FeCr tapes back in the early 80s. The trouble was that my deck did not have the correct (feCr) setting, so I could never get them to sound quite right.

But I only know of two manufacturers of FeCr tape: Sony and Basf. And this formulation never did really take off, that is for sure. And even back then these tapes were hard to find.

There was a thread recently where somebody claimed that FeCr tapes had a very short lifespan in terms of how quickly the sound degraded. I don't know if this is true or not.

However, I can state from experience that on the Sony Open reel machines that supported this formulation that the FeCr tapes had an almost tube-like warmth and sweetness to their sound. :music:
 
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I have a few (fewer than ten) Ferri-chrome tapes that I've pulled out while sorting through boxes of used tapes on flea-markets and such. At a rough estimate, I'd say one out of every 500+ used tapes here in Hong Kong is a ferri-chrome. Used, they are almost as rare as those little metal-reel ones.

As for NOS in shops, forget about it! I've been lucky (and persistent) enough to track down some of those metal-reel tapes along with SA-X and metal and chrome type tapes NOS in shops, but have not seen even ONE un-opened Ferri-chrome, anywhere.

:scratch2: Hhmmmm, never done a head-to-head listening comparison with them. They've just been sitting in boxes, because I wasn't sure if they were the kind of tapes that abrade heads. Will have to set up an experiment with a deck that has that setting, that I'm not to paranoid about protecting...
 
I had an AIWA AD-1250, top load, but with a slanted top, ca 1976. It had a setting for FeCr and came with one 30 minute FeCr tape. Like yours it's specs were best for that tape. That was the last FeCr tape I ever used and never remember seeing any for sale.
 
I picked up an old Sony Ferrichrome tape a few months back, had some religious recordings dated from 1982 on it. The sermon didn't sound too bad, but aargh, the choir. Since the other side was blank, I recorded onto it, it sounded slightly better than the Chromium dioxide tapes that litter the house. I just hate the labels most of the companies put on their cassettes at the time, any other types of mechanism just tore them up.

Well, I did have a 1981 JVC KD-A11 tape deck with the Ferrichrome setting. Of course, there was also a sticker and a setting on it touting the advent of Metal tapes.
 
my pioneer ct-f900 has a setting for it, and i used to have lots and lots of the basf fecr tapes back in the late 70's, early 80's...had a blue front to it...cassettes sounded real good in my 80 honda civic with jensen 6x9's and tiny tiny power amp...:)
 
I like DAT tape better than ANY of them.(I have used cro2, normal and metal.)

And if you use a 90 meter DDS tape in a DAT deck, on the LP mode....you can get SIX hours of music on one.

Then....I pick off the stuff I like, and slave it on to MD for my vehicle use. It sounds as good as the source(streamed fronm the net.)
 
I'm told my Sony TC177SD was calibrated for them but have never had a chance to try them.

I do have a couple of FeCr Elcaset tapes including one unused.
 
hi ToToMan and the gang;
My experience with FeChrome tape wasnt good..sooo it was brief....i was told feCR tape came out....for the same reason metal tape was released, to increase response and specs on less expensive cassette decks....
For those (like myself) with three head cassette decks..we can get VERY good specs on normal bias tapes........my Denon 740 does 30-20000 hz on typical high bias tape...my Sony TCK720E nearly arrives at 25-20000 on plain vanilla TDK D90's....you just never know what the GW will turn up.....
 
ToTo Man said:
I've just handed my Akai GXC-570D in to my local tech get repaired and brought back upto spec and am looking forward to its return next week. I've been reading through the service manual, and the specs are quoted as:

30hz - 15khz +/- 3db with LowNoise tape
30hz - 16khz +/- 3db with CrO2 tape
30hz - 19khz +/- 3db with Fe-Cr tape
(no quote for Metal tapes as this deck was brought out before that era).

This last spec looks extremely impressive, but the trouble is I haven't got any Fe-Cr tapes nor can I find any on eBay. Does anyone know a source I can get them from, or does anyone perhaps have a spare one or two they'd be willing to flog me? :D

What is the durability of a Fe-Cr tape like compared to that of a Chrome tape like the SA90? I've got SA90s made from the early 1990s and they still sound and play perfect and don't seem to leave any residue on the pinchrollers.
Click to expand...

May I ask why? I went to minidisc 10 years ago. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to use any kind of cassette system today. I used to have the Sony Pro Walkman and it took Type IV (Metal) tape. Minidisc blows that system away.

http://www.landweber.com/sold-on-ebay/images/Walkman-01.jpg
 
Michael Scarpit said:
May I ask why? I went to minidisc 10 years ago. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to use any kind of cassette system today. I used to have the Sony Pro Walkman and it took Type IV (Metal) tape. Minidisc blows that system away.
Click to expand...

Some of use are just old farts, others think analog sounds better. I ran across an interesting thing in an online article about field recording. Seems the website author is no longer maintaining the stuff about CD, Mini-Disk, and DAT recorders, but is maintaing the cassette section because many folks still prefer them. So for portable audio acquisition it seems the choice is now Flash-Memory, or Cassettes. Too bad the cassette manufacturers haven't seemed to have heard.
 
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