Sony LC-90 FeCr
Ninety minutes of Type-II tape in a shell the size of a paperback — the blank that outlived its own format.
Overview
The Sony LC-90 FeCr is not a deck, a tuner, or a piece of electronics at all — it is blank tape. Specifically, it is a 90-minute Type-II Elcaset cassette, the chromium-iron formulation Sony sold for its own Elcaset recorders. Collectors hunting one today are usually hunting a sealed one, because the tape itself is the artifact: a 263-meter ribbon of dual-layer FeCr stock wound into the oversized Elcaset shell, good for an hour and a half of recording at the format's standard speed.
The "FeCr" in the name is the whole story of the tape's chemistry. Iron-chromium formulations — which the French-language listings describe as "double couche," a dual layer — were Sony's answer to the tradeoff between the low-frequency output of ferric tape and the high-frequency headroom of chrome. Type-II grading confirms the position: this is high-bias tape, meant to be recorded with the deck's chrome/Type-II setting engaged. Elcaset as a format never escaped its niche, and the blanks have accordingly become scarce. The German retailer springair.de lists the LC-90 FeCr plainly as "Rare," and marks it "No longer available" — two words that tell a collector most of what they need to know.
Key Features
90 Minutes on 263 Meters of Tape
Ninety minutes is the headline number, and it is confirmed both by the model designation and by the two retailers who bothered to list playing time — springair.de and classicaudio.fi agree. The 263-meter tape length that produces those 90 minutes comes from springair.de alone, so treat the figure as reported rather than gospel. What matters practically is that the LC-90 was the long-play option in Sony's FeCr Elcaset line: enough time for a full LP per side with room to spare, which is exactly what the format's users were after.
Type-II FeCr, Dual-Layer Formulation
The tape is graded Type-II across every source that mentions it — eBay, springair.de, Tradera, and classicaudio.fi all concur — and the FeCr chemistry is universal across the listings. The dual-layer construction ("double couche") is attested by a single Belgian eBay listing, so hedge accordingly. The practical consequence of the Type-II rating is unambiguous, though: these tapes want a deck's high-bias position, and an Elcaset machine set to normal-bias will not get the best from them. The formulation is the reason the LC-90 exists as a distinct product from Sony's ferric and SLH Elcaset blanks.
The Elcaset Shell Itself
Elcaset — spelled "Elcassette" by springair.de, a minor inconsistency rather than a real dispute — is the format the LC-90 was built for, and the tape is sized accordingly. The shell is substantially larger than a compact cassette, which is the entire point of the format: more tape area, higher linear speed, better performance. Buyers today should note that these tapes are useless without an Elcaset deck, and the fact sheet records no statement of which machines Sony recommended beyond the generic eBay phrase about being suitable for "ELCASET Recorder Deck's Maschinen." No frequency response, MOL, bias, or SNR figures survive in the sources — the performance data simply is not there.
Collectibility & Value
The pricing history here is unusually clean for a blank tape. Audio (September 1986, p.71) carried the LC90-FeCr in a mail-order retail listing at $11 — a period price from a named print source, not an auction guess. Adjusted for the decades since, that number is almost quaint: a sealed single tape now carries a $60 asking price from a Belgian eBay seller, and a full box of twelve is listed at a $600 regular price. Used, once-recorded examples from classicaudio.fi run 7 euros apiece, which is the realistic entry point for anyone who actually wants to record on the stuff rather than shelve it.
Condition language in the listings is worth knowing. Sealed stock shows up described as "Unused. original sealed from stock" and "SEALED NOS" / "Old New Stock Comes in original box," while the used tapes from classicaudio.fi are characterized as clean, once-recorded cassettes — "kertaalleen nauhoitettuja." One German-language eBay listing describes a tape in very good condition with only very slight signs of use, tape and case unlabeled. Sellers move these as single sealed tapes, as full boxes of twelve, and in lots of five. The fact sheet records no common failure modes, no binder-breakdown reports, and no maintenance guidance for the LC-90 — so a buyer's diligence on condition is entirely on the buyer. What can be said without hedging is that availability has dried up at retail and the tape is described as rare; the market is what remains.
eBay Listings
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