After the introduction of CrO cassettes, Japanese companies began developing a royalty-free alternative to DuPonts patent, based on an already established cobalt doping process. A controlled increase in cobalt content causes an almost linear increase in coercivity, thus a Type II "pseudochrome" tape can be made by simply adding around 3% cobalt to a Type I ferricobalt tape. By 1974 the technology was ready for mass production, and TDK and Maxell introduced their classic "pseudochromes" (TDK SA and Maxell UD-XL), while killing their true chrome lines (TDK KR and Maxell CR). By 1976, ferricobalt formulations took over the video tape market, and eventually they became the dominant high-performance tape for audio cassette. Chromium dioxide disappeared from the Japanese domestic market, although chrome remained the tape of choice for high fidelity cassette duplication among the music labels. In consumer markets, chrome coexisted as a distant second with "pseudochromes" until the very end of the cassette era. Ferricobalt technology developed continuously: in the 1980s Japanese companies introduced premium' double-layered ferricobalts with exceptionally high MOL and SOL; in the middle of the 1990s TDK launched the first and only triple-coated ferricobalt, the SA-XS.
The electromagnetic properties of Type II ferricobalts are very close to those of their Type I cousins. Owing to the use of  replay equalization, the hiss level is lower, but so is the treble saturation level. The dynamic range of Type II ferricobalts, according to the 1990 tests, lies between 60 and 65dB. The coercivity of 580700Oe and remanence of 13001550G are close to the CrO reference tape, but the difference is big enough to cause compatibility problems. TDK SA was the informal reference in Japan. TDK advertisements boasted that "more decks are aligned to SA than any other tape", but there is very little first-hand information on which tapes were actually used at the factories. Japanese manufacturers provided lists of recommended tapes but did not disclose their reference tapes. There is, however, enough indirect information converging on TDK SA. For example, in 1982, when Japanese-owned Harman Kardon sent samples for Dolby certification, they were aligned to the IEC CrO reference. However, production copies of the same models were aligned to TDK SA. Since the Japanese already dominated both the cassette and hi-fi equipment markets, incompatibility further undermined the market share of European-made cassette decks and CrO cassettes. In 1987, the IEC resolved the compatibility issue by appointing a new Type II reference tape U 564 W, a BASF ferricobalt with properties that were very close to contemporary TDK tapes. With the short-lived 1988 Reference Super, even BASF started the manufacture and sale of Type II ferricobalt tapes.