Best Cassette Recorder? Hidden Gems?
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ruffrecords
Well-known member
Depends. I have lots of reel to reel tapes from the 60s that still play fine despite being played maybe once a year. There was a period when tape manufacturers stopped using whale oil as a lubricant in tape manufacture and that caused all the sticky shed problems we all know about but by the time these NOS cassettes were made that had been fixed.
Cheers
Ian
I was always happy with my Denon DRM 800 with a chrome or metal cassette it acheived very good quality recording. I still have it, although it doesn't see a lot of use now. I believ in the day it was known as a poor mans Nakamichi.
madswitcher
Well-known member
If you can find one, a Nakamichi (sp) deck is good quality, reliable (mine is vintage 1977 and still going strong) and can be used with most tape formulas.
I've read somewhere that tapes based in Chromium dioxide (Type II - Chrome) were not lasting as long as ferricobalt (also Type II) based tapes, I can't find that article at the moment. It said that Chrome tapes had a tendency for flaking over the year.
Anyone had this problem with Chrome tapes?
The only tape I've ever used in quantities is TDK-SA cassettes. Mainly for listening to music in my car. A car is hostile environment for tape. Heat, dust...
Yet the TDKs held up pretty well. And even cheaper tape survived. Only a few seemed to be almost erased after years of abuse. Of course, I already threw out the bad ones before I stored the remainder when going for a CD-changer.
I also had a NOS box of these metal chassis metal tape TDKs. 9 out of 10 performed almost as new when I recorded something after being in storage for over 15 years. The tenth one took no recording. Just a faint whisper was recorded. No idea why.
And digitising old reel tapes, I can't tell what still works and what will be ruined. Some brands, like Shamrock, don't do well, but even some of those survived. Maxell and TDK seem to have the best survival ratio, closely followed by Agfa, Philips and BASF. I believe these last ones were all manufactured by BASF anyways. When it comes to US brands, I never encountered enough of those to form an opinion.
Yet the TDKs held up pretty well. And even cheaper tape survived. Only a few seemed to be almost erased after years of abuse. Of course, I already threw out the bad ones before I stored the remainder when going for a CD-changer.
I also had a NOS box of these metal chassis metal tape TDKs. 9 out of 10 performed almost as new when I recorded something after being in storage for over 15 years. The tenth one took no recording. Just a faint whisper was recorded. No idea why.
And digitising old reel tapes, I can't tell what still works and what will be ruined. Some brands, like Shamrock, don't do well, but even some of those survived. Maxell and TDK seem to have the best survival ratio, closely followed by Agfa, Philips and BASF. I believe these last ones were all manufactured by BASF anyways. When it comes to US brands, I never encountered enough of those to form an opinion.
This all brings back a lot of memories from decades ago.
Reviews in "Hi-Fi World" ; setting the record level to be optimum collecting the band demo cassettes from the local duplicator ; the memory that TDK SA (Chrome Type 2) were recognised as the the closest to the Type 2 standard although SA-X and Metal formulations were superior in some respects.
And, of course, using a hex profile pencil to 'tighten' up the wind
Reviews in "Hi-Fi World" ; setting the record level to be optimum collecting the band demo cassettes from the local duplicator ; the memory that TDK SA (Chrome Type 2) were recognised as the the closest to the Type 2 standard although SA-X and Metal formulations were superior in some respects.
And, of course, using a hex profile pencil to 'tighten' up the wind
The TDK SA was a cobalt-doped ferric tape and not Chrome.
SA stands for "Super Avilyn" it was how TDK named it's own way of adding cobalt to make their own cobalt-doped ferric formulations
If you are serious about using cassette, you will have to constantly check the sound of the tapes you use.
By far the easiest way is with a very good 3-head machine- once you use one and alter the bias and controls until you get the sound you want, in ten seconds, you won't go back to 2-head.
I would find machines that are still common, and if you need 10, buy 12.
Make sure that the bits that wear out- such as pinch rollers, take-up clutches, take up idler wheels and drive belts
are all easily available from reliable suppliers.
I would avoid any machines where the heads rotate to play the other side.
This is just more to go wrong and go out of alignment.
I always liked the 3-head Nakamichi machines, but they get through idler wheels...
If you want small, go for The Sony ProWalkman WMD-6C, but make sure it's an early one.
The later ones were not as well made and had different circuitry.
If you play with the settings and alignment you can make one sing with your favourite tape.
I've repaired thousands of cassette decks, not many in the last 20 years though!
They all have their problems, but good servicing is key to good sound and reliability.
By far the easiest way is with a very good 3-head machine- once you use one and alter the bias and controls until you get the sound you want, in ten seconds, you won't go back to 2-head.
I would find machines that are still common, and if you need 10, buy 12.
Make sure that the bits that wear out- such as pinch rollers, take-up clutches, take up idler wheels and drive belts
are all easily available from reliable suppliers.
I would avoid any machines where the heads rotate to play the other side.
This is just more to go wrong and go out of alignment.
I always liked the 3-head Nakamichi machines, but they get through idler wheels...
If you want small, go for The Sony ProWalkman WMD-6C, but make sure it's an early one.
The later ones were not as well made and had different circuitry.
If you play with the settings and alignment you can make one sing with your favourite tape.
I've repaired thousands of cassette decks, not many in the last 20 years though!
They all have their problems, but good servicing is key to good sound and reliability.
I forgot- my favourite- top-loader Tandbergs. _Wonderfully_ made with excellent castings.
BUT watch out with late formulation TDK SA.
There used to ba an old boy in Yorkshire, if I remember, who was THE man for Ferrograph and Tandberg.
I had some Tandbergs in from different clients that ate tapes in the first five seconds from the start of the tape.
I could NOT work it out. Eventually I hit the phone to the man, and he'd also been stumped with similar problems until he realised that the common factor was the newly-changed SA tape. The machines were fine....
BUT watch out with late formulation TDK SA.
There used to ba an old boy in Yorkshire, if I remember, who was THE man for Ferrograph and Tandberg.
I had some Tandbergs in from different clients that ate tapes in the first five seconds from the start of the tape.
I could NOT work it out. Eventually I hit the phone to the man, and he'd also been stumped with similar problems until he realised that the common factor was the newly-changed SA tape. The machines were fine....
Yeah - it's just the way we generally referred to tapes as "Ferric" (or assumed by default) , "Chrome" or "Metal" at the time.
This thread reminded me I had to give my decks some exercise as none of them has been used in over a year. So, today I ran every RTR tape I have (about 20) through the Revox A77. All tapes still sounded OK. The Revox needs service, though. Rewinding is starting to be slow and powerless. The counter no longer works. It needs new belts. Tomorrow I'll be doing the same with the Philips Pro 12 and the TEAC cassette deck.
I also discovered I had two reels of NOS Ampex on the shelf. Didn't even remember I had those...
It was nice playing with mechanical stuff instead of digital, even if it is time consuming.
I also discovered I had two reels of NOS Ampex on the shelf. Didn't even remember I had those...
It was nice playing with mechanical stuff instead of digital, even if it is time consuming.
You need to check (and probably replace) the motor-run capacitor. While you're at it, replace both.
As far as I remember, it's a rather easy job.
Google gives this source
https://nagravox.com/en-us/collecti...citors-set-for-revox-a77-revox-b77-revox-pr99Not terribly expensive.
Thanks, Abbey, but I can get these locally.
There's a guy in Holland who does a complete overhaul for 235€, incl. correct caps. Heard he does a good job. I just my tech a mail to ask if he does tape recorders. Don't know if he has calibration tapes etc. He just did a couple of RME interfaces for me, a megger and some amps.
There's a guy in Holland who does a complete overhaul for 235€, incl. correct caps. Heard he does a good job. I just my tech a mail to ask if he does tape recorders. Don't know if he has calibration tapes etc. He just did a couple of RME interfaces for me, a megger and some amps.
It's interesting that this topic came in as I recently accepted a job of digitizing 180 cassettes from a 80s and 90s radio show. The show was originally recorded in 1/4 inch tape but the backups were made to cassette.
To prepare for the process of digitizing so many cassettes I asked around to all my friends that still had a cassette tape deck to lend me their unit, so I could test all and decide which sounded better so i would use that one for the work.
So I had 6 different decks to try out, I was amazed how different the sound was to one another, they sounded completely different for the same tape and some of them were much more awful than the others. Also all of them, the 6 of them had a different pitch/speed from one another, there were not even 2 of them that were similar.
I found out that by 2022 all the cassette tape decks are so old at this point, and without any service whatsoever for at least 25 years that the mechanics and adjustments/calibrations are just way off.
3 of the decks needed new Belts, which I installed, then I learned how complex the mechanical aspects of cassette decks are.
I tried to learn a bit the calibration and adjustments and have to tell you that it's expensive, you need a good Full Track calibration cassette, something that will cost 100€ or more, and also you need something that is called an M-300 Gauge to physically adjust the cassette mechanism, something that is hard to find and will cost at least $300 plus shipping.
Also all the work of dismantling and fixing a cassette tape deck transport is quite time consuming and demanding.
After all this learning experience I was pragmatic and just choose the Deck that sounded the better to me for this specific recordings.
Strange thing was that the most praised deck of the six of them, the Nakamichi 480Z was the one that sounded the worst of the 6. Even though it's suppose to be a great deck I guess after 40 years it needs a lot of experienced service.
No more cassettes for me after this work is done.
To prepare for the process of digitizing so many cassettes I asked around to all my friends that still had a cassette tape deck to lend me their unit, so I could test all and decide which sounded better so i would use that one for the work.
So I had 6 different decks to try out, I was amazed how different the sound was to one another, they sounded completely different for the same tape and some of them were much more awful than the others. Also all of them, the 6 of them had a different pitch/speed from one another, there were not even 2 of them that were similar.
I found out that by 2022 all the cassette tape decks are so old at this point, and without any service whatsoever for at least 25 years that the mechanics and adjustments/calibrations are just way off.
3 of the decks needed new Belts, which I installed, then I learned how complex the mechanical aspects of cassette decks are.
I tried to learn a bit the calibration and adjustments and have to tell you that it's expensive, you need a good Full Track calibration cassette, something that will cost 100€ or more, and also you need something that is called an M-300 Gauge to physically adjust the cassette mechanism, something that is hard to find and will cost at least $300 plus shipping.
Also all the work of dismantling and fixing a cassette tape deck transport is quite time consuming and demanding.
After all this learning experience I was pragmatic and just choose the Deck that sounded the better to me for this specific recordings.
Strange thing was that the most praised deck of the six of them, the Nakamichi 480Z was the one that sounded the worst of the 6. Even though it's suppose to be a great deck I guess after 40 years it needs a lot of experienced service.
No more cassettes for me after this work is done.
ruffrecords
Well-known member
I hope you demagnetised the entire tape path and gave the heads a good clean before using a test tape in any of them.
Cheers
Ian
Cheers
Ian
Hi Ian,
yes I have a nice Han-D-Mag unit for demagnetizing and I also cleaned the tape path in all of them very well before using.
Besides that I replaced the belts in the most troublesome units.
Now I finally understand why my music teacher back at school had always kept saying I constantly play out of tune
