Diffence in Maxell UD types, XLI types?

[VintageSteve]

Pardon my ignorance. *confused*

During the run of XLI and UD tapes, other than box/reel/leader differences, are there any discernible changes within each line that affect recording quality, print through, desirability, etc?

for example, per Des's sticky:

"UD" line: UD, UD gold, UD white, UD gray, UD blue....?

"XL" line: UDXL(here or UD?), XLI first, XLI second, XLI third....?

[braxus]

Pardon my ignorance. *confused*

During the run of XLI and UD tapes, other than box/reel/leader differences, are there any discernible changes within each line that affect recording quality, print through, desirability, etc?

for example, per Des's sticky:

"UD" line: UD, UD gold, UD white, UD gray, UD blue....?

"XL" line: UDXL(here or UD?), XLI first, XLI second, XLI third....?

I would think the length of the tape has something to do with the color.

[VintageSteve]

In Des's sticky about these, his pictures of all these versions are for 35-180 lengths. It's the box styling and years of production that are different. Just wondering if anything else is different about the tape stock itself. *scratchchin*

[Des-Lab]

UD-B, UD-XL, and XLI series tapes are all back coated whereas the LN, UD, and XLII are not. Sonically, they are close. But I do think that the XLI records and plays back just a tad bit better than the UD. This could of course be an indirect benefit of the coating, which acts as a barrier to print through-thus allowing a hotter input when recording, as opposed to actually being a better tape.

As far as the leaders having unique identifying marks corresponding to the lengths? I don't think that they did that. I believe that the patterns were the same for all in a given series. The leader might clue you in as to the age of the tape but not necessarily the length of it. The only color coding I'm aware of that Maxell ever did as far as lengths was on the outer packaging. The standard length time had a different color which was standard across all formats.

C-46: orange
C-54: yellow
C-60 (or 50-60 for reels): red
C-90 (or 35-90 for reels): blue
C-100: dark green
C-120 (or 25-120 or 50-120 for reels): green
18-180, 35-180 for reels (I'm not aware of Maxell having ever made a C-180 cassette): purple.

Maxell discontinued this practice in or around 1988 and the times were later just printed to match the rest of the exterior color scheme.

[VintageSteve]

Thanks, Des. This confirms my limited experience with R2R tapes so far. I have been mostly sticking with the back-coated tapes and haven't really heard any noticeable sonic differences in the various vintages of tape. Of course, my ears are vintage as well.. *old*