Spain used to have very strict import restrictions that were slowly phased out after they joined the EEC which would have made production of tapes like this viable. It was common in this period for Spanish companies to make joint venture or technology transfer deals with foreign companies, so it's certainly possible that the Tudor cassettes used tape either made by BASF or derived from BASF formulas and were made with tooling acquired from BASF.
Yes, me too. The Socimag remembered to me Agfa when you shoed (cheapest Agfa)I'm leaving in Spain and i was a cassette fun addict in the 80-90s and i've never saw this products ;) Always TDK, Sony, Memorex, Agfa, Basf, "normal cassettes". Sometimes i bought this kind of product knowing the sound will be rubbish, but... The first time i saw these companies was in ebay, years a go ;) Thanks for the analysis
interesting how your nakamichi DR-10 does not mess up the high end or otherwise impact the sound drastically as soon as dolby is enabled while your aiwa deck seems to alter the sound big time as soon as dolby kicks in - and my sony deck does this as well.
Could be the implementation. I'm not 100% but I remember reading that some decks have separate encode and decode chips, others have then combined...yet Dolby S sounds good on the Aiwa whilst monitoring...
that whole dolby NR thing seems to have always been very quirky - and more often than not enabling it seems to mess up the high end - but even that seems to be very hit & miss - many cassette players do impact the sound and others not so much i remember that i had a prerecorded album on type II tape with dolby and got an amazing telefunken "studio center" stereo that had dolby on it (too bad it broke down, no other device in our house ever had dolby until i got that sony deck in 2017) so with this album being a prerecorded, i think it is save to assume that at least this one had everything done to it to allow "proper" dolby playback but i never played that album with dolby on because it sounded dull - so i think the blame is on the stereo but it gets even weirder: if i whip out a mid 90's XL II and record on it in my sony deck with dolby enabled, it sounds lacking on the high end when played in that deck but when i take that cassette to my brothers car (wich has a decent stock stereo that plays cassettes (metal tapes even) and still has dolby (even tho the car is from 2007 or something) - it sounds allright. that car got me back to recording cassettes in the first place ... and the fact that, by coincidence, i got my hands on that sony deck and found a stack of my old XL II cassettes (these ones: www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/183688871460_/3x-MAXELL-XL-II-90-Cassette-Tape.jpg) that somehow survived even tho we threw away almost all of out cassettes a decade ago
Did I just get a bad batch of Socimag or do they actually perform different? Every recording iv'e done using a Socimag sounds muffled and hissy. Tudor on the other hand sounds fantastic and very musical.
No apologies needed for your prices. I checked out your inventory and you're offering some really nice and rare tapes for what I consider a fair price. It doesn't make sense to price them lower than market price and I wouldn't expect you to. Maybe if you have a surplus of a certain brand and want to offer a sale, but otherwise you're running a business.
Thanks. When I get in large quantities at a good price, I do so special offers. I had 1989 BASF Chrome Maxima for £4.99 each at one point. The other thing is, it IS run as a business...so I pay all the taxes.
This case of the SOCIMAG is also very similar to the AGFA LNS series from SPAIN (in Spain there also was a tiny AGFA-GEAVERT production plant, mainly producing OEM stuff from ORWO and AGFA Material): forum2.magnetofon.de/board13-verst%C3%A4rker-phono-decks/board61-cassetten-decks/13453-cassetten-sch%C3%A4tze-teil-7/index42.html
Hi, i'm from spain and i used this model of cassette many times, socimag is the acronym of "sociedad magnética" s.a, a way to obtain a commercial name from the legal name of society. I have many tapes of this brand and supports very good the years. I don't know if the socimag tapes are magnetic emulsion from other companies.
Nice, just ordered 10 Tudor CR which should match well with my 1975 Pioneer CT-7171. I've set this up internally for BASF Chrome and it makes great recordings without NR with levels to 0db and the very occasional peak up to +3.
Could you please explain how can you calibrate a tape deck that only has a bias control and no auto calibration, what test tones are needed and what to look for? Thanks :)
I get them off eBay from a company called Kenable. Cheap, thin cables aren't good, but I think mega expensive cables are snake oil especially when being used with a format which is inherently imperfect. "People use their equipment to listen to music. Audiophiles use music to listen to their equipment"
Many Socimag and Tudors were made from AGFA GEVAERTs subsidary in Mortsel Belgium (Not Leverkusen) from FE or Chrome AGFA or ORWO tape material. I knew a retired AGFA salesman who told me that. You will find ORWO / later called Dessauer material and Agfa (mostly similar except ME tapes) in many many department store brands. You will laugh, VEB ORWO works (former communist east germany) sold more tape material to AGFA, BASF and foreign brands than to users in the former eastern bloc or GDR itself)
Great. I thought the Socimag were Agfa, but the Tudor were BASF. The hubs on the Tudor seem to be BASF, as do the shell and the tape seems to be different from the Tudor. But who knows, at least they were made by good European manufacturers.
@@CassetteComeback Well the frontiers between AGFA, BASF AND ORWO / DESSAUER are fluent :-) When the tapes were made after 1990 they all were filled with DESSAUER tape material (very similar to ORWO Chrome Extra) and some years later Dessauer was sold to BEKO / RAKS and I can tell you, you can find RAKS tapes with ORWO / DESSAUER tape materials (if they are not Maxell)
Hi< Tony! I could get from one of my favorite Russian resellers on Meshok.net this Tudor CR and SOCIMAG DC-II for very reasonable price (about 250 roubles a piece, well, SONY HF costs more sometimes in Russia. US$1 is approx 65 roubles today.) and had a chance trying them on my Soviet-made RAPRI-102 Stereo two-header custom-tuned and repaired by another my friend - see Артём restorer youtube channel - and found these to be really good chrome tapes, I am definitely getting good recordings on it, and for my ears I don't even want to bother with bias adjustment, even though the deck has this feature. These tapes handle level pretty good and are very close to source as for my ears. For unknown brand it is just perfect result!
Damn, looks like I should have got a Socimag or two on the last order! Maybe next time! Is it too late to modify my order? I'll send a PM thru email. Thanks again Tony, I can't try these tapes without you as the prices on eBay are ridicules!
Well, Tony, thanks for that attitude towards Spain. I wonde why you, Eglish, come so often here to get drunk, spoil hotels and annoy people that just want to have a rest in summer. And I am sure that we are not the only country that would thank you for going anywhere else for holidays. I'll cancel my subscription to your channel so I don't disturb you for being... Spanish. Bye.
Bye, you triggered Snowflake wanker. I love Spain and said nothing remotely derogatory. If you'd bothered watching to the end of the video you know that I really rate these cassettes.
@@CassetteComeback I am half Spanish, and not all of us Spaniards are Snowflakes. Most of us aren´t that way. I like the video!!! Also a massive Spanish Rugby League fan that has nothing to do with this topic. God Bless...
+bento barreirinhas if you, in your first comment says.. well, says. Me too --> Thomas Cronwell en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cromwell Oliver Crownwell en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell Tudor en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Tudor
Spain used to have very strict import restrictions that were slowly phased out after they joined the EEC which would have made production of tapes like this viable. It was common in this period for Spanish companies to make joint venture or technology transfer deals with foreign companies, so it's certainly possible that the Tudor cassettes used tape either made by BASF or derived from BASF formulas and were made with tooling acquired from BASF.
I've come to the conclusion now that the Socimag are Agfa.
Yes, me too. The Socimag remembered to me Agfa when you shoed (cheapest Agfa)I'm leaving in Spain and i was a cassette fun addict in the 80-90s and i've never saw this products ;) Always TDK, Sony, Memorex, Agfa, Basf, "normal cassettes".
Sometimes i bought this kind of product knowing the sound will be rubbish, but... The first time i saw these companies was in ebay, years a go ;) Thanks for the analysis
No surprise it sounds good when there is AGFA and BASF tape inside, those two brands never disappoint!
interesting how your nakamichi DR-10 does not mess up the high end or otherwise impact the sound drastically as soon as dolby is enabled while your aiwa deck seems to alter the sound big time as soon as dolby kicks in - and my sony deck does this as well.
Could be the implementation. I'm not 100% but I remember reading that some decks have separate encode and decode chips, others have then combined...yet Dolby S sounds good on the Aiwa whilst monitoring...
that whole dolby NR thing seems to have always been very quirky - and more often than not enabling it seems to mess up the high end - but even that seems to be very hit & miss - many cassette players do impact the sound and others not so much
i remember that i had a prerecorded album on type II tape with dolby and got an amazing telefunken "studio center" stereo that had dolby on it (too bad it broke down, no other device in our house ever had dolby until i got that sony deck in 2017)
so with this album being a prerecorded, i think it is save to assume that at least this one had everything done to it to allow "proper" dolby playback but i never played that album with dolby on because it sounded dull - so i think the blame is on the stereo
but it gets even weirder: if i whip out a mid 90's XL II and record on it in my sony deck with dolby enabled, it sounds lacking on the high end when played in that deck but when i take that cassette to my brothers car (wich has a decent stock stereo that plays cassettes (metal tapes even) and still has dolby (even tho the car is from 2007 or something) - it sounds allright.
that car got me back to recording cassettes in the first place ... and the fact that, by coincidence, i got my hands on that sony deck and found a stack of my old XL II cassettes (these ones: www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/183688871460_/3x-MAXELL-XL-II-90-Cassette-Tape.jpg) that somehow survived even tho we threw away almost all of out cassettes a decade ago
Great review! I've got some on the way myself, cant wait to try them !
Treat them like a pure chrome and you'll find they make super recordings.
Did I just get a bad batch of Socimag or do they actually perform different? Every recording iv'e done using a Socimag sounds muffled and hissy. Tudor on the other hand sounds fantastic and very musical.
No apologies needed for your prices. I checked out your inventory and you're offering some really nice and rare tapes for what I consider a fair price. It doesn't make sense to price them lower than market price and I wouldn't expect you to. Maybe if you have a surplus of a certain brand and want to offer a sale, but otherwise you're running a business.
Thanks. When I get in large quantities at a good price, I do so special offers. I had 1989 BASF Chrome Maxima for £4.99 each at one point. The other thing is, it IS run as a business...so I pay all the taxes.
I have some Thomsun prerecorded cassettes and they sound pretty good to me.
I don't know who makes them. Anyone know where they are made?
Thank you
This case of the SOCIMAG is also very similar to the AGFA LNS series from SPAIN (in Spain there also was a tiny AGFA-GEAVERT production plant, mainly producing OEM stuff from ORWO and AGFA Material): forum2.magnetofon.de/board13-verst%C3%A4rker-phono-decks/board61-cassetten-decks/13453-cassetten-sch%C3%A4tze-teil-7/index42.html
Great, so I deduced right on these... eventually, in the video about "House Brand" cassettes, not in this one where I think they're BASF.
Hi, i'm from spain and i used this model of cassette many times, socimag is the acronym of "sociedad magnética" s.a, a way to obtain a commercial name from the legal name of society. I have many tapes of this brand and supports very good the years. I don't know if the socimag tapes are magnetic emulsion from other companies.
Socimag DCII @ +4dB no NR gets the thumbs up from me - even after having to re-glue the complete label onto the cassette! Retro niceness indeed!
You’re not wrong there, the first one really does look like the retro early 80’s TDK SA tapes!
If you're going to copy the look of someone, might as well be the market leader.
Nice, just ordered 10 Tudor CR which should match well with my 1975 Pioneer CT-7171. I've set this up internally for BASF Chrome and it makes great recordings without NR with levels to 0db and the very occasional peak up to +3.
They'll do a good job for you 👍
Hi...What's the title of this track? Can you give me the link? Thanks!!
tudor is a well-known brand of car batteries and normal batteries
Could you please explain how can you calibrate a tape deck that only has a bias control and no auto calibration, what test tones are needed and what to look for? Thanks :)
Use your ears and a song you know well and just compare. We didn't have tone generators and oscilloscope for doing this "back in the day" 😉
Do you use standard audio cables for your decks or do you use the more pricey OFC type?
I get them off eBay from a company called Kenable. Cheap, thin cables aren't good, but I think mega expensive cables are snake oil especially when being used with a format which is inherently imperfect. "People use their equipment to listen to music. Audiophiles use music to listen to their equipment"
Most Tudor and many Socimag tapes were made in Belgium some in Spain from Agfa/Orwo/Dessauer materials ;-)
How do you know this?
Many Socimag and Tudors were made from AGFA GEVAERTs subsidary in Mortsel Belgium (Not Leverkusen) from FE or Chrome AGFA or ORWO tape material. I knew a retired AGFA salesman who told me that. You will find ORWO / later called Dessauer material and Agfa (mostly similar except ME tapes) in many many department store brands. You will laugh, VEB ORWO works (former communist east germany) sold more tape material to AGFA, BASF and foreign brands than to users in the former eastern bloc or GDR itself)
Great. I thought the Socimag were Agfa, but the Tudor were BASF. The hubs on the Tudor seem to be BASF, as do the shell and the tape seems to be different from the Tudor. But who knows, at least they were made by good European manufacturers.
@@CassetteComeback Well the frontiers between AGFA, BASF AND ORWO / DESSAUER are fluent :-) When the tapes were made after 1990 they all were filled with DESSAUER tape material (very similar to ORWO Chrome Extra) and some years later Dessauer was sold to BEKO / RAKS and I can tell you, you can find RAKS tapes with ORWO / DESSAUER tape materials (if they are not Maxell)
I got a blank cassette it's make called saloni I never heard of that make?
Hi< Tony! I could get from one of my favorite Russian resellers on Meshok.net this Tudor CR and SOCIMAG DC-II for very reasonable price (about 250 roubles a piece, well, SONY HF costs more sometimes in Russia. US$1 is approx 65 roubles today.) and had a chance trying them on my Soviet-made RAPRI-102 Stereo two-header custom-tuned and repaired by another my friend - see Артём restorer youtube channel - and found these to be really good chrome tapes, I am definitely getting good recordings on it, and for my ears I don't even want to bother with bias adjustment, even though the deck has this feature. These tapes handle level pretty good and are very close to source as for my ears. For unknown brand it is just perfect result!
Forget the brand, it's the German tape inside that makes the difference.
@@CassetteComeback Very true
R they still making them senor
No. The socimag looks like it's from the 80s, the Tudor, 90s.
Tudor made canny crisps!
Damn, looks like I should have got a Socimag or two on the last order! Maybe next time!
Is it too late to modify my order? I'll send a PM thru email. Thanks again Tony, I can't try these tapes without you as the prices on eBay are ridicules!
Replied to your mail. Nothing we can't sort 😉
When i Iived in Germany I had some Marantz cassettes. Rather rare I think.
Very! Cassettes made by deck manufacturers (except for Sony) usually command high prices.
That Socimag is the color of a Fuji DR-II, blue....
I am from madrid and i'd never heard about them
841 in barcode appoints to Spain or Andorra
Interesting. Thanks.
Ok, I’m going to give these a go...
Well, Tony, thanks for that attitude towards Spain. I wonde why you, Eglish, come so often here to get drunk, spoil hotels and annoy people that just want to have a rest in summer. And I am sure that we are not the only country that would thank you for going anywhere else for holidays.
I'll cancel my subscription to your channel so I don't disturb you for being... Spanish.
Bye.
Bye, you triggered Snowflake wanker. I love Spain and said nothing remotely derogatory. If you'd bothered watching to the end of the video you know that I really rate these cassettes.
@@CassetteComeback I am half Spanish, and not all of us Spaniards are Snowflakes. Most of us aren´t that way.
I like the video!!! Also a massive Spanish Rugby League fan that has nothing to do with this topic. God Bless...
Chromdioxid is the german word for Chromedioxide ^^
tudor is better than tdk, tudor is of the best quality
Really???....This is a Joke? jajajajaj
basf copied tudor, because tudor was so good
Tudor tapes = Very poor, trash!!!
@@THEKRASH2023 tudor is superior quality
+Bento barreirinhas Tudor loves Thomas Cronwell. Oliver Cromwell just hates the kings
@@adrianredodo never heard of the cassette brand cronwell, probably some imitation from england not endorsed by the kings?
+bento barreirinhas if you, in your first comment says.. well, says.
Me too
-->
Thomas Cronwell en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cromwell
Oliver Crownwell en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell
Tudor en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Tudor