A capable standard High Position cassette in dazzling metallic red-purple.
High Position. Since 1982.
First Generation, 1982
46 minutes - ¥600 / 60 minutes - ¥750 / 90 minutes - ¥1050.
The packaging used metallized film in vivid red-purple. Its dazzling combination with brilliant silver lettering made quite a shocking impression. The shell incorporated the DP mechanism. A cleaning leader tape, replaceable labels and other features were adopted.
Second Generation, 1984
46 minutes - ¥570 / 60 minutes - ¥780 / 90 minutes - ¥1100.
The packaging received a new design with more restrained use of purple. The shell had an extra-wide window and was molded as one piece from two types of resin. A denser coating of magnetic material increased high-frequency MOL by 1 dB, but the product continued to aim for a flat frequency response.
Explanatory Note
UCX was released in 1982 as the successor to JHF. Its name clearly identified it as a lower grade than UCX-S, introduced the previous year. It was positioned as Sony’s new standard High Position cassette.
Despite being called standard, it offered high performance. Uniform dispersion and dense packing of newly developed ultrafine magnetic particles gave the tape performance approaching that of UCX-S. Residual magnetic flux density was 1750 gauss, and coercivity was 600 oersteds, compared with 650 oersteds for UCX-S, putting it among the top High Position tapes of the time. Sensitivity improved by 1 dB across the entire frequency range compared with JHF, and the dynamic range was extended.
While UCX-S pursued the highest High Position performance and was characterized by its sharp high frequencies, this model aimed specifically for faithful reproduction of the original sound through a flat frequency response. Its theme was original-sound realism.
The performance difference from UCX-S was small, and specifications other than the tape itself were almost identical.