Elcaset Cassette Tapes

The Elcaset was an analogue tape format developed in the late seventies to provide a higher quality audio tape with similar quality to reel to reel systems, but with the ease of use of a cassette tape. The Elcaset is a larger tape similar to a VHS tape in size and it dwarfs a standard cassette tape. The tape reel itself is twice the width and runs at twice the speed of a normal cassette tape, allowing much greater bandwidth and therefore quality to be achieved. The format was developed by Sony, Teac and Panasonic and launched in 1976, but the cost and size of the tapes, plus limited availablity of pre-recorded material meant that the format only survived a few years. They are therefore very rare tapes and machines, but the quality of the audio really is a step above a normal cassette tape and they can therefore make good masters where a customer is after a pure analogue sound or process.

Incredibly rare and only getting more so, but the sound quality is the best that a convenient tape can offer.