Cassette Decks

[pwd72s]

THE cassette player back in the day was the Nakamichi Dragon...

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

THE cassette player back in the day was the Nakamichi Dragon...

To finish a quote from the great Leonard Bruce: "My Dad had a stereo system where the weakest link in the stereo was the human ear..."

[KFC911]

I had the Pioneer Supertuner 8-track with Jensen Triaxials stuffed in the trunk of a '70 Cougar ... low fi

Alpine cassette in the college car ... yep !

Naks were always "the best" home decks ... and Deadheads wore all of 'em out trading shows ... good luck

Any home decks shown would work... I tossed everything tape ... including DATs tho....

[jyl]

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

If I were setting up a manual non-intensive system for a cafe, I'd be looking at finding a good reel to reel system.

A mix tape on a ten inch reel could offer hours of uninterrupted music.

I’ve never messed with reel to reel, but think there is one in my dad’s storage unit. Innnnnnteresting.

[Baz]

My 914 came with one in the dash, which I left and still works!

[Por_sha911]

Most name brand decks from pre 2000 have decent quality. I prefer Teac and Denon (still have both running from the 80's. I prefer older decks that don't have stuff like auto-reverse - more stuff to break.

As someone using Cassette since 1974, I strongly recommend a regular cleaning the heads and semi-regular demagnetizing the heads. Also, the quality of your sound depends on quality tapes. I preferred Maxell CrO2 or TDK Chrome tapes if Maxell not available (can you even buy blank cassette tapes anymore?).

I also recorded them through an EQ to get the balance of bass and treble that sounded best on the system they were setup for with Dolby enabled.

[HobieMarty]

Originally Posted by rwest

If I was going to get a home deck, I would get the Nakamichi RX 202 which physically turns the tape around to play the other side!

I knew a dude who was in the AF at Eglin who had one of those tape decks. I had never seen one before and it was really cool to see the tape actually flip around and the other side start playing.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[greglepore]

I had an RT707 rtr. Cool piece with great sound.
To answer the original question, Nakamichi was pretty much the pinnacle. Dragon was the absolute top. Any of the 3 head Akai's were excellent, had one of those. Three head decks have separate record and playback heads so that you can hear the actual recording as its made and adjust bias etc. Otherwise you're just listening to pass thru signal.

They're mechanical devices and unless its recently been cleaned and serviced, you'll likely need to budget for that.

[einreb]

This is an answer to a different question but it may be of interest...

https://www.mp3tapelessdeck.pl/

https://www.mp3tapelessdeck.pl/shop.html

[cstreit]

Mixtapes?

You can make them but the ladies on Tinder can’t play them.

[Pazuzu]

https://blog.audiogon.com/2020/02/24/retro-tech-spotlight-panasonic-rs-296us/
20 take carousel...

[Monkey Wrench]

speakers are not digital,
anything you can play through speakers you can record on your tape deck, its just audio. despite all the "digital electronics" speakers are and always were analog


I have a tape deck from 1952, made in burmingham england. 12" reels, tape heads are about an inch tall inch in diameter. its the same size as a regular sized stove. 1/4" tape, the ones I got with it are acetate tape.

well the research got really interesting indeed, the company that made my deck. ( bradmatic in birmingham) it helped with the design and manufacture of the mellotron

the mellotron was not a synthesizer, it preceeded them and out of that came a lot of music that you will be familiar with hearing. strawberry fields, moddy blues a lot of bands used them and because digital and syntesizers took off well music was never quite the same..

it can be hard to recognise the sound of a mellotron because they keys are recordings, so it can sound a lot like any instrument you base the tapes upon.

in essence each key on the keyboard of a mellotron has its very own tape reel.

so what i have here is a giant deck which is actually a piece of music history.

if you are interested hers a page that explains more about this important history this can really send you down a rabbit hole of interesting facts and reading.. the resulting influence it had upon the music industry was huge.

https://everything.explained.today/Mellotron/#google_vignette

next question, what the heck should I do with this thing? ;-)

[jhynesrockmtn]

I was given this Pioneer equipment. The amp was dead and I had it restored. The tech who worked on it doesn't like tape decks much. I asked him about going through this one. He said "what for"? I said, I have a few old cars with cassette players and could make some tapes from my vinyl. He kind of rolled his eyes at me. One of the problems with these vintage decks is the rubber bits degrade over time.

I have an old Sanyo from probably the late 70s in my 1970 914. I do have some old jazz mix tapes that were my Dad's. They are probably 30 years old or more. They still sound ok.

[Scott Douglas]

I bought my Pioneer stuff new back in the late '70's. In hind sight I should have listened to it more than I did.

It's anchoring my stereo cabinet to the floor now.

[JavaBrewer]

I remember 8 track tapes and cassettes. They filled their roll back in the day of no other options. Dolby B and C and Dbx. That also a time when I would record a tape from my home stereo and put a song on the track multiple times cause fast rewind was hard on the medium. Thank CDs arrived in what the late 70’ early 80’s and tape hiss became a distant memory pretty quick.

I love the look of retro stereo gear as it was cool in my days growing up. I believe there are retro looking audio equipment that also support digital/streaming. That is the direction I would go to keep the original nostalgic look. Unless you like tape hiss and fiddling with old school media, which is fine as well.

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by JavaBrewer

Thank (Think) CDs arrived in what the late 70’ early 80’s and tape hiss became a distant memory pretty quick.

83/84-ish in the US and players were spendy. 82 in Japan.

Mainstream in 85-86 in US?

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

THE cassette player back in the day was the Nakamichi Dragon...

Spot on my trousers. Yep.

$3,900 Ebay

[stevej37]

If you still have an 8 track player in your car...all is not lost.

[KFC911]

An 8-track player will be easier to find than the book of matches required.

No fan of analog tapes at all .... hiss ... boo ... or boo hiss.

But DAT had it's "day in the sun" .... for us "show tapers" and digital > CD converts ...

[pwd72s]

A can of worms...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvwQUj0QgOg&t=16s