02.06.2024, 15:49
The red one without rollers is a cheaper version of the 1970's Permaton shell, and can frequently be found with a lot of Permaton cassettes (both with their own branding and OEM). The black one is a slightly newer version; besides of the rollers there are some other modifications around the tape guides and capstan holes.
Permaton and Agfa were collaborating a lot, so it's not unlikely that the inside architecture of the shells is partly the same. Even the slip sheets are made of the same brown and white waxy papers which Agfa used at that time, but while Agfa cut theirs in a quite special shape, the Permaton sheets received a more traditional cutting.
Those hubs are also typical for 1970's Permaton. I think they didn't make them by theirselves, but bought cheap hubs wherever they could find some. In old Billboard editions you can find on Google Books, you can sometimes see advertisements for cassette parts such as hubs, slip sheets and pressure pads; everything that was standardised and would fit into almost any shell. Those were aimed at cassette shell makers who didn't make all of these parts themselves.
Magna was affiliated with Zonal Magnetics for some time, at least early to mid-1980's. Some of the German cassette tests in Hifi magazines claimed that Magna received their tapes from Great Britain, some others mentioned that Magna was making their own tapes in Berlin. Both may be true - but I am also quite sure that Magna sometimes would buy tape on pancakes from other companies than Zonal, loaded them into C-0 cassettes in Berlin, or only attached stickers onto complete cassettes, and proudly wrote "Made in Western Germany" on them - no matter if the tape and/or shell came from Polimer, Orwo, Zonal, BASF, Certron,, ICM or themselves. Magna is a real mess, but collecting them means there will always be new surprises :-)
Regards
Martin
Permaton and Agfa were collaborating a lot, so it's not unlikely that the inside architecture of the shells is partly the same. Even the slip sheets are made of the same brown and white waxy papers which Agfa used at that time, but while Agfa cut theirs in a quite special shape, the Permaton sheets received a more traditional cutting.
Those hubs are also typical for 1970's Permaton. I think they didn't make them by theirselves, but bought cheap hubs wherever they could find some. In old Billboard editions you can find on Google Books, you can sometimes see advertisements for cassette parts such as hubs, slip sheets and pressure pads; everything that was standardised and would fit into almost any shell. Those were aimed at cassette shell makers who didn't make all of these parts themselves.
Magna was affiliated with Zonal Magnetics for some time, at least early to mid-1980's. Some of the German cassette tests in Hifi magazines claimed that Magna received their tapes from Great Britain, some others mentioned that Magna was making their own tapes in Berlin. Both may be true - but I am also quite sure that Magna sometimes would buy tape on pancakes from other companies than Zonal, loaded them into C-0 cassettes in Berlin, or only attached stickers onto complete cassettes, and proudly wrote "Made in Western Germany" on them - no matter if the tape and/or shell came from Polimer, Orwo, Zonal, BASF, Certron,, ICM or themselves. Magna is a real mess, but collecting them means there will always be new surprises :-)
Regards
Martin