New old stock chrome tapes have become a piss take. Yes, nobody makes chromium dioxide pigment anymore, for consumer applications anyway, but I'm not going to pay close to £20 for a sealed 90-minute Maxell XL II S. Not even for the coveted early 90s series, which was the sweet spot of chrome tape evolution (see pic related). From the mid-90s, cost cutting increasingly meant a step back in quality.

They were never more than three quid a piece back then, and £20 seems a bit much even with a limited remaining supply. With the cassette revival, and at the current kind of market price, it should be feasible to start making chrome tapes again. Even if most newly produced cassette players will not benefit from their sound quality.

I inherited a Rotel RX200a from the 70s. My servicing only amounted to opening it up for a bit of dedusting and spraying some electrical contact cleaner on the Volume and EQ knobs so they didn't crackle.

>>3311

>Rotel RX200a

Just looked it up, and I'm sure it looks stunning on a shelf. There is something to be said for silver-finish hi-fi components from the 70s. It's as old school as you can get.

I've got a Pioneer F55 tuner that says something like May of 1986 on the PCB board inside. It still works, and has never needed any servicing, but it is starting to forget its settings when it's had no mains connection for two to three days. The manual says the supercap inside it should let the receiver remember the presets for at least six days. So I guess the supercap is starting to fail.