RTM’s Fox and NAC’s Ferromaster C456 finally released!

Well, the day has finally arrived and we the community of cassette lovers have two new cassette tapes. And when I say new I mean magnetic tape being manufactured these days, not just old stock in new shells.

Looking at the Ferromaster there are a couple of things that I notice. First of all, the lack of a case. Yes, it comes without a case. Yes, you’re seeing one here, but this case comes from Cassette Comeback, where I bought this tapes from (very recommendable, by the way)

So, yes, it doesn’t look like that impressive look that we expect for such a new cool product. It looks more like a homemade J-card, very decent by the way.

And here’s the cassette. It doesn’t impress me much to be sincere. The plastic doesn’t look like a extremely high quality and in the 3 I’ve ordered, two are scratched: one slightly, the other heavily (see below):

And this annoys me. How can the NAC, who have been inflating the hype for their new tape for almost 2 years, finally come out with a plain normal shell, no labelling at all, scratched and without a proper case and J-card?

I really cannot understand that.

Let’s move on to the Fox. This one looks MUCH better:

The case looks like a commercial case of an album, and the J-card is nicely designed. I love that ‘Legendary formula’ in the front.

The shell again, doesn’t impress me, but it looks definitely better than the NAC’s one. The screws in the corners make me feel it’s a higher quality shell and the labelling looks very nice. I’d prefer a mixed opaque-transparent shell, like those from SONY and TDK in the ’87-’88.

Ok, what really matters is the quality of the magnetic tape, but that’s something I’ll show in the next post. I can tell you that there will be surprises…