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BASF Professional II, Chrome cassettes

Scroller

Scroller

Super Member
DSCN4698.jpg


I picked up two sealed bundles of these for next to nothing at a local thrift. Unfortunately only 60 min., but does anyone know if these are well regarded? I couldn't find much info after searching around on the net for a bit. I will probably keep one of the packs and record some records on them and see how they turn out, but not sure if it's worth the trouble of trying to sell the other pack for a few extra bucks more than what I paid. They do look nice, anyway... :D
 
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I think BASF is the company that invented CrO2 in the first place.
 
I don't think we ever saw much of the proffessional series tapes here in Scandinavia - soundwise i would think it's a rather plain vanilla ChromeII tape.

Plain Vanilla because BASF's chrome tapes was close to being "The Tape" here

sounded just fine, and did actually suit allmost each and every chome capable deck very fine.

All my BASF chrome tapes are still in absolutely fine working condition - not ever one single problem with them.
 
I have many of these tapes (500), brought as a job lot from a closing shop. I just love them! Mine are also 60 min. tapes and I find that they are ideal for one LP a tape. I was told that the "professional" refers to the tape housing, indeed I find the housings give no problems. I have over 50 tapes recorded now and all are fine. From past experiences with BASF cassettes I don't expect any! I have them dating back to the 70s when BASF Chrome was the only Chrome on the market and they are all still working fine with very little age related dropout. I can't say that for some of the Jap Chromes of that age that I own!

Your tapes would be hard to find now and are as good as Cr0 gets, keep them and use them!

Edited: I forgot to say how quiet these tapes are, On my Naks without using Dolby the SN ratio is so good that I can't hear any background hiss. This gives the best recording and shows a quality tape, it also makes for the best compatibility between decks?
 
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I don't know where people are getting this from. BASF tapes were second-fiddle to Maxell and TDK back in the day; and a sad second best at that. I tried them again and again, hoping they would improve; they never did. I would not touch them, myself; but YMMV.
 
I don't know, BASF was the inventor of magnetic recording tape and I'm pretty sure they have it down pretty well. BASF tape has always been highly regarded in my experience and from what I've heard from listening to tapes recorded on BASF tape, they are definitely high quality.
 
Alex Hayes said:
I don't know, BASF was the inventor of magnetic recording tape and I'm pretty sure they have it down pretty well. BASF tape has always been highly regarded in my experience and from what I've heard from listening to tapes recorded on BASF tape, they are definitely high quality.
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I don't know what your experiences have been, and if it's what you prefer, by all means go for it. I merely offer my experience as an oldster who was quite active using cassette tape back in the day (1977 - 1988 or so).

In my time, the 'tape wars' were all about TDK versus Maxell, like Ford versus Chevy. And I tried 'em all; I could not tell the difference between the best TDK and the best Maxell. So I used both. Chrome, metal, whatever. I always bought whatever the latest formulation was that came on the market. I also bought everything from BASF to Radio Shack in a constant quest to find the overlooked gem that was lower in price than TDK/Maxell; but I never found it. Not only was BASF second-tier, it was nearly unlistenable for me. And it shed coating like crazy, too. I was constantly cleaning my tape heads with that stuff, and the drop-outs were craptastic.

TDK and Maxell were the big sellers; and there was a good reason for it; they were lots better.

http://books.google.com/books?id=qS...DUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=tdk maxell basf&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=ou...EMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=tdk maxell basf&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=ou...Q6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=tdk maxell basf&f=false

I have nothing against BASF, tape or anything else they make or made. I wish I could say they were better, but this is not my experience and my opinion. I was there for the tape wars; I recall the final score, which was backed by my own experience.
 
BASF tapes made in the US had huge quality problems for a time. Wilhelm can define the exact dates and tapes, but tapes made in yurrup and in the US after that time were excellent. I have some EU made Revox versions of this tape and they are excellent as well.
 
I don't doubt your experience, you obviously have more experience than me, I guess I'm just really surprised to hear this. I haven't really heard much negative about BASF until now and the ones I have heard have been very good. It is also possible that I have just been lucky with the ones I have experience with. You learn something every day. I must have missed out on the crap days and experienced their golden age. Wilhelm always has interesting tidbits of information.
 
Alex Hayes said:
I don't doubt your experience, you obviously have more experience than me, I guess I'm just really surprised to hear this. I haven't really heard much negative about BASF until now and the ones I have heard have been very good. It is also possible that I have just been lucky with the ones I have experience with. You learn something every day. I must have missed out on the crap days and experienced their golden age. Wilhelm always has interesting tidbits of information.
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I'm no expert in chemical coatings or formulations or what-have-you. But I grew up when 8-track was giving way to cassettes, and tape quality was very important if you didn't have reel-to-reel; there was no CD or DVD then, of course. Everyone was into the 'tape wars' and it was amazing to listen to friends go on about TDK or Maxell tapes. I never could choose a side, I just could not hear a difference between their best stuff. But BASF I could, sadly.

As noted, perhaps things got better after I got out of cassette tapes. It's quite possible; I stopped paying attention after about 1988 or so.

Hey, I had to live through the disco era too, so it's not all golden memories...
 
And consider the fact that many a Japanese deck was biased for their Cobalt doped Chrome equivalent tapes. Which were excellent but not real CRO2. Which as designed would have meant that all CR02 would have been compatible without rebiasing. But some Japanese makers weren't willing to license them.
 
The BASF tapes prior to the wide window shells were complete and total POS. But the tapes after that were really quite good. I think it was about 1982 when the BASF tapes went from being crappy to being excellent.

The big problem for most people using BASF tape after that time was that they didn't have the same sensitivity and bias requirements as did the TDK SA and maxell XLII tapes. And this caused the Dolby to mistrack badly on machines which didn't allow the user to compensate for both fine bias and sensitivity. On machines that you could adjust appropriately, the BASF chromes sounded excellent.
 
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persil said:
I have many of these tapes (500), brought as a job lot from a closing shop. I just love them! Mine are also 60 min. tapes and I find that they are ideal for one LP a tape. I was told that the "professional" refers to the tape housing, indeed I find the housings give no problems. I have over 50 tapes recorded now and all are fine. From past experiences with BASF cassettes I don't expect any! I have them dating back to the 70s when BASF Chrome was the only Chrome on the market and they are all still working fine with very little age related dropout. I can't say that for some of the Jap Chromes of that age that I own!

Your tapes would be hard to find now and are as good as Cr0 gets, keep them and use them!

Edited: I forgot to say how quiet these tapes are, On my Naks without using Dolby the SN ratio is so good that I can't hear any background hiss. This gives the best recording and shows a quality tape, it also makes for the best compatibility between decks?
Click to expand...

500?? Nice! Never heard/used one,Im guessing they would be pretty well matched to my Revox B710,as Revox used BASF for their own branded tapes.
Any spare I could buy to try ?:naughty:
 
Wigwam Jones said:
I don't know what your experiences have been, and if it's what you prefer, by all means go for it. I merely offer my experience as an oldster who was quite active using cassette tape back in the day (1977 - 1988 or so).

In my time, the 'tape wars' were all about TDK versus Maxell, like Ford versus Chevy. And I tried 'em all; I could not tell the difference between the best TDK and the best Maxell. So I used both. Chrome, metal, whatever. I always bought whatever the latest formulation was that came on the market. I also bought everything from BASF to Radio Shack in a constant quest to find the overlooked gem that was lower in price than TDK/Maxell; but I never found it. Not only was BASF second-tier, it was nearly unlistenable for me. And it shed coating like crazy, too. I was constantly cleaning my tape heads with that stuff, and the drop-outs were craptastic.

TDK and Maxell were the big sellers; and there was a good reason for it; they were lots better.

http://books.google.com/books?id=qS...DUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=tdk maxell basf&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=ou...EMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=tdk maxell basf&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=ou...Q6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=tdk maxell basf&f=false

I have nothing against BASF, tape or anything else they make or made. I wish I could say they were better, but this is not my experience and my opinion. I was there for the tape wars; I recall the final score, which was backed by my own experience.
Click to expand...

Not to dump on Scroller's find, but my experience was EXACTLY as you described, and during the same time period.

Quality tape ran about $3 each in those days...a lot of dough considering I was recording LPs that were less than $6. I tried whatever was on sale, but always came back to TDK SA. I bought a six pack of Maxell UD-XLII, and the leaders broke where they joined the tape on 4 of them in just six months... (bad batch???)

I bought ten of the BASF Performance Series. Upon 10 minutes of play time my heads were brown and the highs were gone. My brother bought some of the Chrome tapes in the picture, but they squeaked with every turn of the hub.

I still have 95% of the ~400 tapes I made 25-30 years ago. The Maxell, and BASF are long gone. Granted, they made up a very small percentage of the tapes I bought.
 
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Scroller said:
DSCN4698.jpg


I picked up two sealed bundles of these for next to nothing at a local thrift. Unfortunately only 60 min., but does anyone know if these are well regarded? I couldn't find much info after searching around on the net for a bit. I will probably keep one of the packs and record some records on them and see how they turn out, but not sure if it's worth the trouble of trying to sell the other pack for a few extra bucks more than what I paid. They do look nice, anyway... :D
Click to expand...

Those look they are from the era (early to mid-eighties) when BASF was selling strong - at least here in California. The packaging looks to be of the same style & configuration as the Professional III's (FeCr) that I used in abundance back then. I think these tapes are good and you should use them & report back. You should be able to fetch a good price on any unused ones too.
 
My experience in the late 70's was that BASF tapes were not as high a quality as Maxell or TDK. If I recall correctly they suffered from dropouts.
 
BlazeES said:
Those look they are from the era (early to mid-eighties) when BASF was selling strong - at least here in California. The packaging looks to be of the same style & configuration as the Professional III's (FeCr) that I used in abundance back then. I think these tapes are good and you should use them & report back. You should be able to fetch a good price on any unused ones too.
Click to expand...
These tapes were made just after the transition from the old crappy shells to new very-respectable wide-window shells. These are great tapes, just so long as you can adjust your bias and record sensitivity to the optimum levels for these tapes. These tapes do not shed at all. The shedding comments must be about the Type-I BASFs, which I do seem to recall did shed a little more than average.
 
BASF tapes were picky on some decks. They worked fine on all my 3 head decks that had Bias adjustment, but so-so on cheaper decks. Never had a problem with shedding tapes. However, I still like TDK and Maxell tapes a lot better.
 
The early BASF Chrome tapes had super shells, they were labelled "SM", all screwed with tape guide tusks that worked well, Most of my original ones were c120s, well loaded with tape, and never have suffered with stretch or dropout, possibly the EU ones from Germany were built better than the US built ones? Indeed I am amazed that they still work at all! as I used them on early Akai cassette decks and in the car and they were not treated with much respect at all! One thing that sticks in my mind is that they were VERY expensive! When I sent my old Jaguar to the scrap yard last year I found some of these tapes in the bottom of the glovebox, must have been there for 20 years as I changed out the cassette for a cd back in 1991! Those tapes still play, and very well!
 
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