Maxell XLII-S - 1982~1986 - US/EU
Widely accepted as the most beautiful line of the Maxell brand.
A unique Gold foil label that is unequalled by any standards with Maxell's own typical well built shell. Those days... mid 80's, all top cassette companies competed to produce the best possible quality. Their aim was to beat their competition by achieving the best quality in everything... the tape, the shell, the label design, the wrapper, even the box had to be pretty... then a dark cloud came, covered with flying disks (CDs) and it all went to... well, you know where!
These are difficult tapes to adjust and calibrate. Apparently you need to put positive bias on these cassettes to get the best out of them, but that also means you get the bass.
If there is a cassette considered a true classic... this is one of them.
Improved MOL by 1 dB over all frequencies compared to the XLII tape.
Note 1: 90 Mins: 1982-1: US/EU: No stock
Note 2: 90 Mins: 1982-2: US/EU: Only 1 available
Note 3: 90 Mins: 1983-1: CA: Gold foil seal. No stock
Note 4: 90 Mins: 1983-2: US: Very few available
Note 5: 90 Mins: 1984-1: US/EU: Only 1 available
Note 6: 90 Mins: 1984-2: US/CA: Red letters "Not For Sale". No stock. SOLD.
Note 7: 90 Mins: 1985-1: CA: Gold foil seal. SOLD.
Note 8: 90 Mins: 1985-2: US/EU: No pictures. Out of Stock.
Note 9: 90 Mins: 1986: CA: These have the "Bonus Buck" Blue seal. Only 1 available.
Sidenotes: There are a great number of varieties and versions of this cassette. There are those made for the North American market, then for the US market separately from the Canadian market(*), also for the European market and/or with the rest of the world, and finally, the Japanese domestic market.
Not only that, these were introduced in 1982 and stopped distributed sometime in 1986. The varieties shown here (so far) follow a mix of patterns based on other cassette releases from Maxell. These should be considered "educated guesses", but all in all, the assigned dates will not be that far off. Your input will also be very valuable to tweak this list into their right chronology of release dates.
(*) In 1982, The Canadian government began requiring that all imported goods have both the English and French languages in all packaging.
About Maxell:
Maxell Holdings, Ltd. (日立マクセル株式会社 Hitachi Makuseru Kabushiki-gaisha), commonly known as Maxell, is a Japanese company that manufactures consumer electronics.
Maxell was formed in 1960, when a dry cell manufacturing plant was created at the company's headquarters in Ibaraki, Osaka. In 1961, Maxell Electric Industrial Company, Limited was created out of the dry battery and magnetic tape divisions of Nitto Electric Industrial Company, Limited (now Nitto Denko Corporation).
On March 18, 2014 the company was listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.[7]
The company's notable products are batteries—the company's name is a contraction of "maximum capacity dry cell"—wireless charging solutions, storage devices, computer tapes, professional broadcast tapes and functional materials.[4][5] In the past, the company manufactured recording media, including audio cassettes and blank VHS tapes, and recordable optical discs including CD-R/RW and DVD±RW.
On March 4, 2008, Maxell announced that they would outsource the manufacturing of their optical media.[6]
During the height of the Compact Audio Cassette's popularity, Maxell's audio cassettes were held in high regard, producing some of the finest examples of the standard available. The performance of the XLII-S (CrO2) and MX (pure metal particles) cassettes was regarded by many audiophiles to be the ultimate achievement in the pre digital domestic recording medium.
In the 1980s, Maxell became an icon of pop culture when it produced advertisements popularly known as "Blown Away Guy" for its line of audio cassettes. The original campaign conceived by Art Director Lars Anderson began as a two-page spread in Rolling Stone Magazine ad in 1980, and was made into television spots in 1981 which ran throughout the 1980s.[10]
Maxell audio cassettes are available in 46, 60, 90, 100, 120 and 150 minute lengths.
Maxell XLII-S - 1982~1986 - US