Making a tape or too returned

We kind of mentioned this machine way back in October 2019 after writing a bit about the week before in connection with making some new tapes on the Technics cassette deck, it had died.

The Panasonic RQ-JA63 is a personal cassette player from around 1985/6 that has an all metal single direction tape transport mechanism with switching for playing type I and type II+IV tapes and a switchable dolby B circuit for playing tapes made with it.

The problem with it was the main drive belt had gone soft and broke and it took a while to find the correct length, width and finish belt to replace it with. 

After lubricating the mechanism and fitting a new belt, it sounded as good as it did new. 

I haven't mentioned pre-recorded tapes much either but this edition of The Principal of Moments by Robert Plant better know as the lead singer of Led Zeppelin is one I've had from release in 1983.

Technically it is a very high quality tape using lower noise and much better sounding genuine chromedioxide tape made by BASF and played on the tape player it sounded superb

I first bought a cassette of Foreigner 4, their 1981 hit album home to Juke Box Hero, Urgent and Waiting For a Girl Like You in early March of 1982 while at school and until cassette editions were discontinued it had been reissued in different forms.

The first significantly different one was in late 1982 when like the Robert Plant tape it was duplicated on Chromedioxide tape rather than regular brown ferric oxide tape.

I came by recent a edition from the late 80's which while using ferric tape but a very good sort used the Dolby Hx Pro system to maximize the high frequency performance on more demanding parts of the music.

The Best of Rainbow originated from a Japan only release which was later issued in the UK and Europe in late 1981 adding single versions and the otherwise unavailable on album Jealous Lover.

This was a discounted Double play tape of around 86 minutes which was useful as I bought the lp version at the time making my own tape but recently bought a used but in nice condition copy of the official UK duplicated version with the red paper labels 

These tapes do sound pretty good showing before cds and Mp3 players entered the scene just how good a compact music source the cassette could be.