A Master with a ceramic shell.
Metal Position. Released in 1986.
46 minutes - ¥1400 / 60 minutes - ¥1600 / 90 minutes - ¥1900.
Prices were changed later.
The package had a large transparent area, making the cassette inside part of the design; a silver band marked Metal Master gave it a stylish appearance. The ceramic cassette had an extremely narrow window and used plugs instead of write-protection tabs. Inside was the familiar DP-II mechanism, which together with the heavy shell kept tape-travel noise quiet.
Explanatory Note
True to the Master name, this product aimed to be the ultimate cassette.
The beauty of the entirely off-white cassette immediately catches the eye. Ceramic composite, used for the tape-guide sections of HF-PRO and UX-PRO, was used for the whole shell. A ceramic composite guide block from the PRO series was also employed to further reduce modulation noise by suppressing vibration. The ceramic shell weighed about twice as much as a conventional one; it felt substantially heavy and cool to the touch.
Apparently the ceramic shell was so close to the size limit of the cassette standard that adding a label would have exceeded it. Instant transfer lettering was therefore supplied to put text directly on the shell instead.
The tape used the newly developed New Extralloy magnetic material. Dual coating achieved residual magnetic flux density of 3600 gauss and coercivity of 1150 oersteds. It was Sony’s most powerful cassette at the time.