Cassettes still rock!

I was a big fan of TDK MA and SA tapes, have some Maxwell as well. Yes, some have froze, but very few. That just seemed to be an issue with the medium, even ‘back then’. My larger issue is those damn felt pads falling off a few vs freezing of the rollers ;-)

I really thought I may purchase some old record label releases on cassette again, as you can find them pretty cheap, but not sure I will, as if the vinyl album is available, that’s what my preference would be. Especially not knowing the quality of the mastering/tape. That could change if there were more ratings by users of tape releases on places like Discogs, but those are few and far between. From the tapes I already had/have, it is a crap shoot at best knowing which ones will sound good, and which ones won’t.

I would agree on pre recorded tapes quality.
A while back I bought up some " old stock" tapes from a dealer, about 400 I think.
Of that 400 I threw maybe 100 away as even though still sealed the rollers had frozen or tapes deteriorated.
Of the 300 left, probably 200 were just ok in quality.
Of the 100 left maybe 75 were very good with about 25 being spectacular.

So yes not very good odds really.. lol.

I have a restored Nakamichi BX-300 and a few tapes, some of them recorded from LP's in the late 80's and well preserved. When the recording was done well on quality tape, cassette playback sounds very good on the BX-300. However, I think cassette sound quality is not really audiophile compared to vinyl and digital. 

bkeske,

"Got around purchasing a used simple Nakamichi CR-1A..."

I ran into one at the Goodwill store in the U.S.A. for, I think, $20. I bought it just so I can say I owned a Nakamichi at some point in my life, also not forseeing using it more than an hour or two. It is, in fact, sweet little player. I rarely use it, but it always makes me smile.

Cassettes didn’t sound that great 30 years ago either. At the time, I had a teac reel 2 reel tape deck and the teac blew away my akai glass head cassette deck, which I liked better than the nakamichi deck at the time.
i also have to say that r2r tape decks don’t sound that good at 7.5 ips either. I’ve had a couple of r2r decks with 15ips capability and they sounded much better at the higher speeds.