Elcaset, 1977
In the late 1970’s, major audio equipment manufacturers like Sony, Panasonic and TEAC recognized that the existing compact cassette format had serious technical limitations. With a tape that was only 1/8” wide, running at the incredibly slow speed of 1 7/8 IPS (inches per second), tape saturation and distortion were inevitable. Clever engineering and Dolby Noise Reduction had given this originally dictation-only low-fi medium fairly acceptable high-fidelity performance, but it was just barely “good enough” by any objective audiophile measure.
Reel-to-reel tape recorders ran at faster speeds (3 ¾, 7 ½ and 15 IPS) and exhibited far superior performance. In fact, a good open-reel tape recorder was the best playback system of the day. But they were hideously inconvenient and troublesome to use, with their manual “feeding” of the tape from one reel onto the other.
What if you could combine reel-to-reel performance with cassette convenience and ease of handling? Wouldn’t that be great? That was the thought and rationale behind the Elcaset (“El’ = ‘Large’ cassette, about the size of a VHS video tape, running at 3 ¾ IPS). It made perfect sense and the units performed exactly as intended. But they never caught on. A few Sony’s made it to retail shelves in the fall of 1977, but they came and went very quickly. Beautiful units, well-made, terrific performers. But no one wanted them. A shame, really.