My New, Old, Classic Cassette-Deck

[ak2000]

What is fundamentally flawed is the cassette itself. It’s the weak link. Slow moving, narrow tape. The hardware makes little difference when the limitations are baked into the cassette format.

I'm guessing you are also in the "wire quality makes no difference" camp as well.

 

[TheIronMonkey]

View attachment 309016
The Nakamichi Dragon. $2500 in 1982 ($8,000 in 2024 dollars). Probably one of the best cassette decks ever. I lusted for one but fortunately never got one.

A good deck is nice to have but at some point you’re wasting money when the tapes will inevitably and fairly rapidly degrade.

As I recall, a lot of cassette enthusiasts revered the Nakamichi CR-7A much more than the Dragon. The CR-7A still goes for some serious coin considering it plays a hobbled format. I have a low-end Nakamichi deck and it was great for transferring my cassettes of Ross Macdonald interviews by my late friend, Paul Nelson to my computer for digital archiving.

 

[BingBong]

What is fundamentally flawed is the cassette itself. It’s the weak link. Slow moving, narrow tape. The hardware makes little difference when the limitations are baked into the cassette format.

It's the ubiquitous recordable medium we had at the time and there is still much unique content stored on cassette. Whatever their limitations, there is still a case for keeping a machine handy.

I have Mini Disc and would have loved to have a R-DAT machine as well, but neither format achived popular and widespread usage. The music corps really really weren't keen on either because of the fine quality... then got their come-uppance when MP3 arrived.

 

[fireground_piper]

Re: cassette vs “all recordings were previously done one tape”…….:that’s not a great comparison. A cassette tape is 1/8” wide, typically has 4 tracks (stereo in 2 directions) and runs at about 1.75 ips.

A studio tape can be up to 2 inches wide for 24 tracks and runs at 15 or 30 ips. A 1/2 inch, 2 track master tape running at 30 ips has an insanely higher capacity of resolution than a cassette tape.

Cassette tapes from a resolution standpoint are not good, technically.

 

[mawnansmiff]

when the tapes will inevitably and fairly rapidly degrade.

Not to mention the belts in the cassette player itself.

So many old cassette players were binned due to deterioration of the belts in the drive system and the difficulty in replacing them.

When the belts age they go hard and literally fall apart and to replace them (assuming you are able to locate perfect replacements) is an absolute nightmare with so many other components that need removing before you can access the old belt which often as not needs great effort to remove once it has set hard on the reels and pulleys.

Jay.

 

[pappymac]

For six months in 1974 I lived in a house outside of Seattle with two other guys I was stationed with. One of them had a 2-track reel-to-reel tape deck and four speakers that were about 3-feet tall. It was great for the weekend parties because it could play for about 4 hours at a time.

The real fun was creating the tapes.

 

[Sigmund]

I think the old cassettes did their job pretty well. At least way beter than the low sample rate digital stuff our kids listen to. Thats not to say they were perfect but they served pretty well.

 

[Searock Fan]

No more lo-fi than a LP at the high end. Nakamichi decks were as audiophile as top turntables in the 80s.

In 1980 I bought Nakamichi's best recorder.... $1,500. back then. Also at that time my system had a Linn Sondek turntable with a very high end cartridge. I planned to save my lps by copying them to tape and playing them so I didn't wear out the records. After a short time I realized I had made a big mistake. The sound of the tapes completely lacked any high end and was short on detail and general realism. I finally sold it to a guy who answered an ad I posted and who wanted to use it in the gay nightclub where he was a d.j. From my previous experience with open real tape I should have known.

 

[Sigmund]

Back when I could hear the difference I couldnt afford a system that would really point out the differences. Now that I can Im nearly deaf in one ear and the other has a lot of road wear....getting old is fun.

 

[woodsroad]

I’ll admit that on a low-end system, a really cruddy turntable or maybe one of those all-in-one monstrosities, a cassette sounds every bit the same as an LP (or even the radio). It’s not until you move up just a bit that the difference becomes apparent. I made countless hours of field recordings with a Walkman Pro, and while they sounded much better than the average portable unit, they couldn’t hold a match to a Nagra. Sure, the cassette was good for what it was, but there’s a reason it died such a quick death.

 

[Sigmund]

I had better setups than all in one garbage but never high end setups. I tended to spend more on musical instruments

 

[woodsroad]

I had better setups than all in one garbage but never high end setups. I tended to spend more on musical instruments

My interest in photography eventually diverted all of my money into a different black hole.

 

[johnnyflake]

Personally, I am a big fan of cassette tapes, and I play them often, especially when sitting at the computer. I have around 150 cassette tapes. I buy them mostly at garage sales and estate sales. I have ended up with a few bad tapes and had a few go bad over time, but for the most part they last a long time. A few years back I picked up a SONY Dream Machine at an estate sale and it works like a charm. I believe they were released in the late 1990s.

 

[renfield]

This thread illustrates one of the things I really like about this forum, discussions on an incredibly wide range of topics that are usually well informed and usually remain cordial.