Given that the Sony UX was the most basic Type II audio tape in the manufacturer’s 1990 range, it was a really nice job. I found these very reliable for home multi-tracking, if rather uninspiring to look at and a little ‘wallflower’ in terms of tonal character. This Sony UX 60 feels reassuring when you pick it up, and is very uniform and smooth in its sound reproduction. The tape has an extra uniaxial formulation, but I’m not sure that this in itself was any cause for high expectations. The later Sony FXII 60 also boasted the extra uniaxial coating, but to me sounded thinner than the UX 60 and didn’t in my experience perform as reliably.

I think perhaps the most disturbing thing about this cassette is that it’s now nearly twenty-two years since I bought it. I remember buying these, recording onto them, and even writing labels for some of them, very clearly indeed. The thought that getting on for a quarter of a century has elapsed since all that took place is mildly shocking.