RTM Industries: C60 & C90 Type One Cassette Tapes

I reviewed the RTM (Recording The Masters) 1/4-inch SM900 tape back in Tape Op #161, was very pleased with it, and have since used it for a few more mixing sessions. Then, at the 2024 NYC AES show, I bumped into Matt and Tim from RTM, and they gave me a few of their C60 and C90 Type One cassette tapes. These are normal bias tapes based on the SM900 formula. I’ve long since sold or given away all my cassette machines, but my pal Kyle Field, who records as Little Wings, has been doing all his work lately on a TASCAM Portastudio 488 8-track cassette machine. Actually, because one track isn’t working, I guess it’s a 7-track. Anyway, I figured Kyle would be a better person than I to put the RTM cassettes to the test, so I mailed them down to him in his Southern California canyon hideaway. A few weeks later, he texted me: “Good Morning John. I just started using that cassette tape you sent me. I really love it. I think it is the highest quality perhaps that I have experienced. I would love to get more of it if possible. I think it’s really, really great.” I told him that he’d have to write a good review of the tape, and then I could ask the RTM folks about getting him some more cassettes, so the following is Kyle’s review. -JB

It hit the slick aspect of the surface at a surprising clip, plunging my earbuds (those things that taste sound) deep into the backseat of my brain car, where the hearing squealed and roared – really doing its own new thing. Was it just me? I mean, I did get two free samples to test out, and being a scavenging upcycler from way back when, was I experiencing some Gen X version of Stockholm Syndrome, falling in love with my sponsor and ready to sell out at any given moment? Perhaps. But what I could define as uncanny representation was also actually happening. A new 3D printer of sound living humbly and unassuming in the deep wooden back room of our quaint mountain cottage. Yes, it was a reproduction of sound so startlingly real that it sent me down a manic rabbit hole that found me harnessing a whole new bout of insomnia saddled with joy and creation, tumbling in waves of ideas that flood and know no ceasing to the point of overfilling the brain pot. Once the sun rises, I can redirect the current towards outdoor activities, but for now – it’s keyboards ahoy while my wife is gently sawing logs in our shared bed will never know.

I tuck my wool-adorned size 13 feet into a pair of wooden Scandinavian clogs (Blau called them the best worst studio shoes ever – thanks, Karl!) and wobble like a Grand Canyon mule toward my music harbor a mere 18 steps away, sliding the door gently closed. Before you judge, I am repairing a torn meniscus in my right knee and swear these things positively affect my posture indoors, providing a proverbial sounding board to let my knee know literally exactly where it’s at. The tape machine (a TASCAM Portastudio 488) whirs on with the true and satisfying hum of a 1987 Toyota 22RE engine, and the Pavlovian responses are triggered in the saliva glands of your humble narrator. I am excited. I am dealing with neurons of my own, and wielding a high-grade ribbon in the form of these RTM Type One cassettes. The 3:05 a.m. morning becomes absolutely alive. The high end is an ephemeral ceiling. Like oil paint waiting to dry, it gives me time to regard it and think it over, and I get in a smooth flow weaving new representation, while the low end aspect acts like clay all amelt and foundational like terra firma. I play in pale yellows and light blues, adding flute and cello patterns onto a fresh guitar bed that is still lyric-less. Will I use some of the new vocabulary I have gleaned from last Saturday’s college football meditation, or go rootsy and try again to describe the local flora albeit with a sense of hands-on humor?

My spouse is having some sort of dream, and her sleepwalking voice leaks in through the earcuffs of my headset. Alas, am I in my alchemy, changing the energy current inside the house; have I invaded her dreams? If so, I feel the high-flying glider to blame may very well be these cassettes. This storm has just begun! I have the entire Southern California winter ahead of me, and all these blank pages to fill. Peace and quiet at last; the summer crowds are now a distant memory, and I settle into a long winter’s nap by about 5:15 a.m. But in the meantime, I’ve added overdubs, and scribbled out this tape review in my notebook, and I feel happy to be alive. It’s my four-year anniversary of sobriety today – phew! That was a close one. Thanks for the tape samples Tape Op and RTM. I’m off to the races again!