Looking at 20 Vintage Cassette Decks

welcome back to another awesome video if you're shopping for a vintage tape deck how do you know when you're ready to buy it or not I don't know today you can benefit from our Electronics hoarding problem wait what cuz we're going to look at 20 cassette decks from our collection and give you an opinion on each one we're going to keep every tape deck segment down to 30 seconds no more just keep in mind so we're going to end up on that hoarder show no okay keep in mind these are our opinions based on the samples we have let's get started with one we haven't done a video on the sharp RT 3388 a how old do you think this thing is old as the alien movie yeah close it's from 1978 it's the computer control cassette deck looks like they just sort of jammed a pocket calculator in there and that's pretty much the selling point there is that you can use it to as a timer to turn uh your radio off and on record programs and it has music search these decks typically have easily fixed mechanical problems but the computer in this one is dead and that's almost impossible to fix so for that reason I do not recommend this deck one star refresh next time you got the gim I didn't know the chks had a radio station wine cooler give some this is a morance now morance equipment is generally higher priced the so-called morance Tac so if you buy this one keep in mind other than the speed control there's no really really fancy features it's a very basic deck and if you want to hear the sound quality look at our other video where we compared the high and low speeds we did direct feed on that it's a very good quality cassette deck easy to swap out the belts easy to repair uh it's a good one during the last six years at Capital Credit Union we' there's an exciting tape for you it's and we've done two videos of this and one in which I transplanted the entire T tape mechanism spectr Peak indicator is cool it's got some nice lights over here but the uh tape mechanism is probably more trouble than it's worth if I was going to build an audio component and have a Raspberry Pi and maybe replace this with a screen it would be cool to keep that intact nice looking but hard maintenance so I would have to say don't recommend buying this to people okay rock and roll hits of the 70s star 98 FM and queen yeah another one B this this is a t r55 555 555 I was not a big fan of the user interface initially it's kind of sluggish and music search is artificially restricted however it's really grown on me I feel like it's easy to repair the belt uh the sound quality is pretty solid and we were able to remove the restriction on the music search I would recommend it if the electronics are in good condition go for it if not stay away go reject I think our initial video was demonetized cuz we used some copyrighted music to test it but this is just rare I mean I never saw anything like this growing up during the cassette era can't keep up with uh more modern decks as far as Fidelity or or sound quality but uh I would say buy this if you have the opportunity it's just such a rare collector's item go watch our other video about it yes and subscribe this is the mitsub bishy DT 1556 tape changer of our tape Changers this is probably the slowest tape changer we own but there's an old saying slow and steady wins the race this one did not need any repair you know if you look at the video there's some things I don't like about the way it works and the speed uh I like the uh I like I keep changing tapes uh I think if you can get it for maybe $50 that's probably a good deal but it's just not that exciting but I'd say it's a maybe if you like it you know go for it good night bless this is the techniques 222 m222 it does a lot of stuff however there's some things I don't like about the usern interface for example all the buttons look identical and then you got music search on one side but not on the other if you buy this you're signing up for a very complex three belt change it's got these mechanical soft touch controls so but it sounds good and if the price is right I i' give this one a strong M hey The Price is Right like the TV show yeah if the price is right I I'd say go for it but this is a pretty much a Maybe from the pioneer ctwm M 62r six tapes over here one over there it's my favorite tape changer it the randomizes fast everything about it is fast it has all the features you need from cassette Dolby HX Pro everything despite the fact that it's black plastic still a sounds good I like this I like this deck sounds good yeah six tapes in this cool changer mechanism we did a video on this I don't know what else to say about it I like it not far though this is the JVC kd3 this is probably the most reliable JVC I have it sounds good it looks great with these Vu meters this is probably one of my top 10 tape decks got the manual mechanical controls I've not had to do a thing with it it's been well cared for it's 1979 model uh not much to say about this I recommend it I say this one's a buy because of the Vu meters and the reliability yeah the G the Vu meters are very bright yeah so this one has pitch control which lets you vary the speed uh it is a Sony got the construction of a tin can and plastic what this lacks in style it makes up for in features ton of features the reason I keep this around is it's a good Workhorse if I need to digitize a bunch of tapes this would be the deck I'd use cuz it's just simply no use on this thing other than that not much spectacular here I wouldn't go out of my way to spend a lot of money on this but it is a full featured cassette deck this is the JVC tww TDW 801 this was my personal cassette deck throughout much of the 1990s it is a good sounding JBC deck the key feature is it records on both sides so you can record the same CD or relay record one than the other unfortunately it's got plastic clutches which wear out I had to end up replacing those uh good sounding but I don't recommend it due to the just sort of the plastic nature of the 1990s $299 $229 originally it's a blow Punk yes it's a blow Punk the blow Punk micronic mc60 this originally came out as part of a system this is definitely a style purchase it doesn't have a lot of extra features and it's hard to work on so I'd say you know if you get one eh might be fun to play with has that cool open face loading system like the that movie Yes mcgruber made fun of blow plun it's probably me from the upcoming Lethal Weapon 3 and it's a world premiere here our sting along with the realistic scp2 from an investment point of view this doesn't make sense probably either in the 80s when it came out or now uh the belt is hard to find but it it just doesn't have a lot of features it's uh seems like a neat little thing but better in theory than in practice I'd say stay away from this one due to the mechanical complexity and the motor runs all the time bord 6000 yeah the boord 6000 it sounds great we did a video on it which was kind of tongue and- cheek and we also tried to compare banging old to Apple it I mean it sounds awesome it just takes up so much space it takes up so much horizontal space you can't stack anything on top of it uh this one was easy to work on but not all bang and Olson decks are some of them are complicated but it's just almost like a work of art instead of a cassette deck how do you play it you press that button okay this is a very unusual tape deck it's a Pioneer it is a CTF 2121 sort of that premid 7s so the mechanism and the electronics are probably not an older style I probably wouldn't recommend it for like pure sound quality but it's very unique these buttons let you go between any mode like normally I would do be rewinding and then stopping and then fast forwarding this lets you go directly between rewind and fast forward which feels like you're going down the highway and you ship the car into reverse which doesn't feel natural this is the T 2 10 stereo cassette deck tape decks from the early '70s late 60s I don't recommend these because the sound quality W it was great for the eror it was in looks kind of cool but it's got the older piano key style older mechanism the motor just runs all the time so as long as this thing is on the motor is running uh just old too old technology for me so wouldn't really recommend [Music] this we just did a video on this Sony so not going to say a lot about this really want to talk more about this category of cassette decks these cassette decks are ones that have been liberated from a system and maybe don't have standard hookups you can get these really uh at a discounted rate like I think we had a Yamaha also that had a proprietary connector and a lot of times you can just sort of add on regular connectors and get these working again I would recommend something like this maybe for more of an advanced sort of electronics person but it can be a good deal press re this is the Sano Rd s45 this is a value cassette deck you know to be honest it's got all the features it's got metal Dolby noise reduction music search the only drawback is the mechanical controls looks interesting sort of what I would say punching above its weight but if you can find one of these in good conditions at the good price this is actually a really good value so uh sounds okay um anyway that's that that's [Music] that hi and welcome to the this is the Yamaha k960 if you want to hear how good it sounds with dbx go watch our video with opens with an audio sample this is we're down to the top two so we saved the best for last it's hard to choose between them this probably could be number one very easily but this is one of my favorite cassette decks I would definitely suggest buying it but I'm not going to sell you this one it has got a lot of features it's very responsive wait people have said that before what they comment on the video saying they want to buy this yeah not this one but other ones yeah very responsive the controls have a great great feel to them very stylish got the hidden door got all sorts of features doesn't have music search but does have a wired remote as that count begins only [Music] directed at music we're starting CTF 650 this is my favorite cassette deck ergonomically at least of all my cassette decks everything from the spacing of the buttons to the feel of the controls this line of Piner tape decks is highly sought after usually very expensive used uh it's called the Blue Line it's called the floor scan line because of the blue Vu meters but everything about it is really good the only drawback it's my favorite one if it was new it would I would use it all the time the problem is this is kind of worn out and pretty much all these you could find are worn out yet they still command a very high price someday I hope to do a full restoration on this right now it's just sort of sitting here then get a lot of use it just is a very very cool machine and this this is my number one favorite recommended cassette deck if you can get one of these this one only costs like 20 bucks which is a great deal I think these are going for extreme prices if to try to get this line of cassette decks nowadays but anyway that's about it for our review of 20 tap tape decks so we'll see you next time see you next time for another awesome video

Channel: ACBMemphis

Views: 56,268

Keywords: tape deck, cassette player, cassette recorder

Id: BqfB8wS2gD8

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 25 2024