Whilst we’re talking about Ye Olde Hie-Fie, I’m currently winding down with some London Grammar through a pair of 1950s Quad II monos, lovingly restored by my amp builder friend at Tron-Electric. When I say restored, they’ve been tweaked, same basic design but precision resistors, big caps on the power supply and beeswax/silver caps on the signal side. Sound lovely into my little Audio Notes, which take next to no driving to sound lively, despite looking desperately unfashionable with the ‘wider than they are deep’ look.
Those “That’s” cassettes really are a blast from the past. I used to do a lot of home taping (It’s killing music, anyone?!) on a fairly expensive Teac which let you tweak bias and level separately, per channel, by recording a test tone which you evened out with the aid of the VU meters (sadly not the analogue ones, I’m talking end 80s early 90s. I think it was called a V-5000. Used to use those That’s cassettes, but not the most expensive ones. Probably the chrome dioxide ones or metal. I still have a lot of my old tapes, but they obviously sound crap now, magnetism being ephemeral. Some of those tapes remind me of darker days than even now is serving up, so I don’t really want to play some of them anyhow. Can’t bin them though, memories are memories even if locked away.
Edit:
http://www.hifi-classic.net/review/teac-v-5000-78.html