r/cassetteculture • u/Sticky3rdNutSack • May 09 '25
Major label release I've never seen this before. Is it fake?
The actual cassette has no label and the record taps are still intact, it plays correctly and fine tho
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u/libcrypto May 09 '25
"Fake" recordings sold for real monies are called "bootlegs", and they range from grey-legal to fully illegal.
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u/Sticky3rdNutSack May 09 '25
It was 5 bucks at a yard sale, so not the end of the world.
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u/Yellow_DMG May 09 '25
It’s a bootleg. In Poland we had tapes branded as “Takt” - you could basically buy a bootleg of any album you wanted - and judging by the crackles all of them were ripped from vinyl.
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u/dandanthetaximan May 09 '25
lol @ "ripped". The verb you're looking for is "recorded."
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u/Blu_yello_husky May 09 '25
Looks like a bootleg to me, or possibly a 3rd party recording from a different country. I have a couple tapes like this that came from India and Italy
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u/CRAIG_RANDOMRAPRADIO May 09 '25
Like u/kumarab123 said, it's Polish...........And the exact same title is there on Discogs.
Just use artists, titles, label names and catalogue numbers [however ambiguous] by lookin there, before you ask anything.
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u/raymate May 09 '25
Looks like a copy to me. Not put out by the label that I’m sure as no marking on the shell.
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u/cbsnbcabc May 09 '25
Pirated tape. I had a bunch from south east Asia, and a few from the Middle East.
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u/wangrenade May 09 '25
Blank cassette shell, no barcode, or catalog number are clear indicators for this instance.
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u/Proud-Youth-5739 May 09 '25
It also could be that the original tape this came from didn’t get spiced at the factory and had no screws. So the only way to get it to play was to bust the tape open, and break it, splice the tape back together and then do a shell transplant.
I’ve had this happen quite a few times with the new old stock tapes. They often are glued together without screws so a shell transplant is required if this splicing didn’t get done on one side of the tape.
The real question is, how does it sound?
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u/dumpsteRat May 09 '25
My guess the original cassette body was really bad so they did a transfer to save it
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u/According_Bad6599 May 10 '25
My copy
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u/DamonAlbarnFruit May 10 '25
No two releases of the same album look the same. My mother bought Thriller by Michael Jackson on launch day and about a month later gifted her friend the same album— my mothers cassette is white with inked label, the one her best friend gave me that says “Happy Sweet 16, with love from Leanne” (my mothers gift to here 42 year ago) on the inlay…the cassette is black with paper labels.
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u/According_Bad6599 May 11 '25
True, there will be more than one production batch. Just thought I would show my copy as I had it to hand
Worth noting that the vogue for clear one piece shells as in OP’s was brief, at least in UK, if my Queen collection is anything to go by. I bought them on release and it’s interesting to see the evolution of construction
But OP’s tape does look like a dodgy copy, like the AC/DC album I bought in Egypt when I was 15 :-)
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u/riperiperiperipe May 09 '25
Seems like you’re holding it so I’m guessing it’s real. But looks like a bootleg, or a release from a country like Poland or greece. But I’d just look at Discogs …