A tale of two cassette decks.

[terrybooth]

I have, for some time, had two cassette decks mouldering on a shelf. An Akai and a NAD.

Yesterday a friend asked if anyone had a cassette deck he could borrow because he was digitising some tapes and his deck was now playing at the wrong speed.

I thought it best to check the decks out before handing them over.

I pickup up the Akai first and thought that, if you were to take your hi-fi by the pound, this would be the one to go for. It's certainly not in the battleship class of some products but not a lightweight.

It was filthy and the case had rusted a little where it had been covered by a plastic bag.

A quick wipe and a power up. First press of the play lever and nothing. But it was just a bit stuck having not been used in more than 10 years. Second go activated it. So, plugged it all in an stuck a tape in et voila, it plays. Not the sort of range I'm used to (rather muddy), but it was playing.

So what about the NAD. If I remember, I thought it would sound a bit better. Lighter and smaller. Well first of all, it has captive phono leads, so not much good for my friends application (he has a gizmo that plugs into phono or a 3.5 in plug and into USB at the other end.) I guess that could be got round. Cleaned it up, plugged it in and powered on. A buzz (like a bad earth on a phono circuit). Oh well. What next? Press play and it was like playing a cassette a 7 1/2 ips. The thing had self destructed in storage.

So a bit of a lesson there around British 'audiophile' products vs Japanese 'consumer' products and a small quandary for me about what to do with a useless cassette deck. I think the bin is the obvious option.

If I were smart, knew anything about electronics and electromechanics, I could make it into a retro digital player by sticking a Rapsberry Pi inside it.

Any other suggestions?

[Stemcor1990]

Put the raspberry pi in the cassette player. It’s a great idea. I can see a market for this.

[CN211276]

I had a Sansui cassette deck which packed up after seven years. It was replaced by a Denon which was still working after around thirty when I sold it.

[Fretless]

I have a fairly recent Walkman-style cassette player from Ion which includes a direct USB output. Actually works rather well to copy old tapes to PC files.

Got it new for under 30 Euro.

[terrybooth]

As it turns out, both decks are dead. It just took a little longer for the Akai to do. I guess there's a pile of perished belts in them but It's not work the effort to do anything with them. Bye Bye cassette decks.

[Rick4001]

I bought a Marantz SD230 cassette deck way back in 1984, used it for many years and then it took up residence in the bottom of the wardrobe. After being in "storage" for twenty odd years I dug it out a couple of years ago, plugged it in, all lit up but no drive. Sure enough the belts had turned to a gooey mess so I thought end of story. However I found a guy in Germany who had a service kit for it so duly paid the £11 including postage and once it arrived, within a week, set about repairing the old dear. After a thorough clean up and new parts fitted it works very well, in fact sounds much better than I thought it would. It's not likely to see much use but very pleasing to know it has been saved from the great hifi scrap heap.

[slinger]

I had a Kenwood KX-660 HX that served me well. I remember thinking how cool it was because it had "soft" eject, not to mention both Dolby B and C, and it said HX PRO, and "Computer Control System" on the case..

It also featured DPSS which, if I remember correctly, meant that however many times you hit the FF (or REW) button that was how many tracks on the cassette it would skip forward or back.

[Fretless]

There's a Nakamichi BX2 up in the attic somewhere. Doubt it'll work either.

[Vinyl-ant]

I had a sharp rt 1155, it actually sounded really nice but it was very picky about tapes
Iirc it preferred maxell chromes, tdks sounded crap, and anything cheap just sounded murky. Dunno why. it was satisfyingly clunky to use, all the controls took some force to use, all very mechanical. It got very little use for the last couple of years before it packed up, but I scrounged loads of decent bits out of it (mains TX, pots, motor ect) that were used on other things.
The heads were unobtanium when I looked at fixing it. I used to use it to make tapes for listening to on the commute to work, used a cheap Sony Walkman (at that time me and the wife were dirt poor, no mp3 player for me...... Not even a portable cd player ) and some huge old 70s sony cans. Looked a right twat on the bus.....
I used to get in from work about 9.30 ish then me and swmbo used to have some snap and listen to music while about midnight on the lp12, a rotel ra211 (that was a lovely amp) and my metronome speakers. I just used to stick a tape in and hit record.
Really good times
Still have those tapes in the loft

[slinger]

There's a Nakamichi BX2 up in the attic somewhere. Doubt it'll work either.

That sounds like it ought to be an early Genesis lyric.