10.07.2024, 22:34
Hi! 50 and 51 were sometimes used for cassettes which look completely German to me, and they are even marked Made in Germany on the inlay. I suppose Willstätt ran out of codes a few years after they had moved numbers 10-19 or 11-20 to Obenheim/France, so they started a new row at 50 when they installed more assembling lines. But these are only my thoughts and speculations. The only person on the forum who could possibly find out more exactly has so far only got hold of the original 1978 code list from BASF's archives.
Your C-60 with big window is intriguing. I have never had a non-coded LH-M I yet, neither one without any Made in... text on the inlay. Both phenomenons were usually limited to LH-E I and CR-E II out of that line-up; all the other models always had codes and said Made in Germany... until now :-)
Indonesia was also my first thought, but the third language of the descriptions on the inlay is Portuguese (instead of French), which is usually an indicator for Brazilian market cassettes. Now that doesn't automatically mean it was also made in Brazil...
What you could do is look out for any codes in the cassette shell, on the inside right besides the capstan holes. If there are three or four numbers and no letters, it's a German or a French cassette. If there also are combinations of letters, BB stands for Brazil, ES for Spain, BSD for USA, BV for Venezuela and IM or BIM for Indonesia. The difficulty is that in the mid-80's, they abandoned these letter combinations, and even Brazilian and Indonesian cassettes received four numbers instead... but you could give it a try.
Regards
Martin
Your C-60 with big window is intriguing. I have never had a non-coded LH-M I yet, neither one without any Made in... text on the inlay. Both phenomenons were usually limited to LH-E I and CR-E II out of that line-up; all the other models always had codes and said Made in Germany... until now :-)
Indonesia was also my first thought, but the third language of the descriptions on the inlay is Portuguese (instead of French), which is usually an indicator for Brazilian market cassettes. Now that doesn't automatically mean it was also made in Brazil...
What you could do is look out for any codes in the cassette shell, on the inside right besides the capstan holes. If there are three or four numbers and no letters, it's a German or a French cassette. If there also are combinations of letters, BB stands for Brazil, ES for Spain, BSD for USA, BV for Venezuela and IM or BIM for Indonesia. The difficulty is that in the mid-80's, they abandoned these letter combinations, and even Brazilian and Indonesian cassettes received four numbers instead... but you could give it a try.
Regards
Martin