[HN Gopher] A Primer on Vintage Cassette Decks: How to Find a Go...
___________________________________________________________________
A Primer on Vintage Cassette Decks: How to Find a Good One
Author : lapnect
Score : 50 points
Date : 2024-10-23 08:45 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (insheepsclothinghifi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (insheepsclothinghifi.com)
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Oh! Only a few hours ago I was lamenting I never had a cassette
| deck; I was born in the 70s and went from [0] (like the top
| picture) straight to cd. So I never had anything for playing or
| making cassettes like the other kids. I made mix tapes on this
| enormous thing which no one else could play.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_recorder
| Moru wrote:
| My dad had something like that too. We got to play a bit with
| it but mostly used to record conversations with old relatives
| or musicians in the family. I think it had 4 channels that you
| could switch between separately. We got normal tape recorders
| pretty early so it was more a fun thing for us to play with.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've seen one of those at a music shop once, it seemed to be
| studio grade equipment. The book it came with had the
| electrical diagrams of the whole thing, so you could in theory
| repair / re-engineer its electrical components. That was a rare
| thing to see.
| imp0cat wrote:
| I believe including diagrams for the ease of repair was
| actually quite common back then before all production was
| heavily automated and moved overseas.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Those schematics used to be included with computers too in
| the 80s. It was normal as far as I know as we had them with
| anything electronic. At least where I was. Do not remember
| when it stopped.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Yep. I have a full set of IBM schematics of the original PC
| on a bookshelf somewhere in the basement.
| terribleperson wrote:
| It's not really relevant to the article, but I find the orange
| lighting and brushed finish of a Nakamichi Dragon beautiful.
| mjhagen wrote:
| Nakamichi is what we used in theater tech in the 80s and 90s.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Nakamichi had the best autoreverse --
|
| * Cheap decks just ran the tape backwards, and used alternate
| coils in the heads.
|
| * slightly better ones flipped the heads too. (Aiwa at least)
|
| Nakamichi had the tape in a carrier, it popped it out,
| physically flipped the cassette tape around and put it back in
| the player. Apparently it was better because the tape heads
| were always perfectly aligned and the motors only had to go one
| direction.
|
| (really cheap walkmen did something that occasionally
| misaligned the head so that autoreverse was actually play the
| front side backwards. This was really awesome in the Satanic
| Panic stuff's encoded in reverse era. My favorite at the time
| was Drugs from Fear of Music)
| rwmj wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRSDp1JI5BQ
|
| I'm pretty sure there was a 1980s movie that had the
| protagonist using one of these, but I can't remember what
| that was now.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Was it 9 1/2 Weeks (1986)?
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091635/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENV4IRtu95g
|
| https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/movies-or-tv-
| show...
| rwmj wrote:
| That's the one. If that scene was any more '80s it'd have
| to wear shoulder pads.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| You'll get a kick out of this then!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxbEE_rdazk
|
| > Nakamichi Dragon 1000P 1000MB 1000 DAT - Nothing Better
| at $20K! The Best Audio Products Ever Made!
|
| > The repair and restoration of a Nakamichi Dragon
| Cassette Tape Deck. Belts and the idler tire are
| replaced. Rare Nakamichi 1000P DAC, 1000MB CD changer
| along with the 1000 Digital Audio Tape(DAT) deck.
| Nakamichi produced some amazing digital products although
| they were best known for their cassette tape decks. At
| more then $17,000 in the late 80's these were very high
| end pieces of audio equipment.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Nakamichi made amazing machines. I had a CR2 - it was all I
| could afford at the time - and even that had a sweet, musical
| sound.
|
| The Dragon was the pinnacle of the art. I tried one out in a
| hifi store and it was night and day against the competition.
| The others reproduced sound, the Dragon reproduced the music.
| vr46 wrote:
| I still have my Technics 646 I bought new as a student, but do I
| use it? Barely. Chrome tapes seem to be a thing of the past,
| forget Type IV, and I don't think I could spare the time anymore
| for anything less! Lol.
|
| A lovely medium, but my favourite memory of them isn't a
| Nakamichi-scented one. It's a Sony Walkman-centred world that I
| miss! If only I still had that Sony DC2, I could retire.
|
| Edit: my mate tells me to STFU, he can bring me some new Type IIs
| from Greece or Turkey. Result! Back in business!
| roywashere wrote:
| The world of cassette tape is weird. You can still buy new
| Maxell UR60/90 type 1 tape but the tape you get in Europe or
| the US is made in China or Thailand or such and is packaged in
| red wrappers. The same UR60 if you buy it in Japan is in purple
| wrappers and in different shells (screws versus glued) and is
| manufactured in Indonesia and apparently much better quality
| vr46 wrote:
| I think Type I tape has a fairly low ceiling, my old TDK AR-X
| were as good as they got, and I can't imagine these Maxells
| are any good these days regardless of where they come from.
| Any other tips?
| tmountain wrote:
| I buy NOS chrome tapes on eBay. They sound pretty darn
| good.
| junga wrote:
| I recently started using RTM C90 type I cassettes for
| recording mix tapes for my kids on my Denon deck. Quite like
| them. No need for Dolby C and +5 dB are easily possible. All
| the NOS tapes I have used sounded awful. I guess this is due
| to chemical degradation over time (IANAC)
| atoav wrote:
| I work in an art university and a surprising amount of new
| (underground/experimental) musicians release their music on
| casettes.
|
| If you wanna sell music on concerts vinyl is too expensive/you
| would have to upfront too much money, CDs are dead, casettes
| however had some sort of revival. Vinyl is still king in those
| circles, but it requres you to be able to realistically finance
| and sell a run of 250 pieces to be economical.
|
| I saw people buy casettes (with a download code) while not
| having a player -- it is a neat physical artifact for some.
| badgersnake wrote:
| CDRs just make more sense here in every way. Higher quality,
| cheaper to produce and les degradation. Fucking hipsters.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Most of the artists I'm familiar with that release on
| cassette tapes are vaporwave or adjacent and sell their
| work as DRM-free lossless FLAC files on Bandcamp as well,
| so there's really no downside for the artist or the
| audience.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| i love vaporwave on cassettes, because the medium lends
| itself to the art
|
| you never know if that flutter / wow effect was
| originally in the song or coming from the deck
| badgersnake wrote:
| Art has to be deliberate surely? What you're describing
| is just noise I would say.
|
| But we're getting philosophocal.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Art has to be deliberate?! Don't tell Duchamp!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_object
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readymades_of_Marcel_Ducham
| p
|
| > Types of readymades
|
| > Readymades - un-altered objects
|
| > Assisted readymades - putting several readymades
| together taking away their use
|
| > Rectified readymades - an altered or marked readymade
|
| > Corrected readymades
|
| > Reciprocal readymades - a unique art work presented as
| a mass-produced utilitarian object
| exitb wrote:
| Choosing a medium that carries particular characteristic
| can be a deliberate choice.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| Like film grain or contrast. Still love the look of
| pushed kodak tri-x.
| vr46 wrote:
| Only if you assume people are after the music and not a
| cool artifact, memento or souvenir.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| How is a CD-R not also an artifact, memento, or souvenir?
| vr46 wrote:
| It misses the "cool" bit
| aspenmayer wrote:
| To follow-on:
|
| Niche physical releases are cool because they're
| intentionally obscure and for fans, by fans, and
| explicitly for certain subcultures or even collectors
| within those subcultures. I've seen floppy disk and
| Nintendo DS cartridge releases.
|
| There are even more formats out there you can (re)release
| on:
|
| https://www.dookiedemastered.com/
|
| Previously on HN (788 points 16 days ago 205 comments):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41790295
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Niche physical releases are cool
|
| Um, CDs are also "niche physical releases" these days.
| They're not quite as old-fashioned as cassettes or vinyl,
| but they're still generally considered "obsolete" now
| with streaming music services.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Not nearly niche enough for some hypebeasts, but nothing
| wrong with CDs in and of themselves. I think finding ways
| to recontextualize the experience of owning and listening
| are worthwhile.
| badgersnake wrote:
| Killing the most ubiquitous format for free lossless
| digital audio and replacing it with analogue sources that
| degrade with each play or DRM and subscriptions purely
| because it's not cool enough seems like a terrible idea.
| Apparently that's where we are.
| atoav wrote:
| You missed the part where I mentioned download codes,
| right?
| cbolton wrote:
| Cassettes are more expensive and worse quality, but
| significantly more robust in typical use until you put it
| in a bad device (or hands) that gets the tape out.
|
| I've given cassettes to a 3 year old, and they all still
| play fine except for that one where the tape got out (cheap
| player). I don't think CDRs (or commercial CDs for that
| matter) would sound as nice after the rough treatment they
| got.
| charlimangy wrote:
| CDR degradation can be total and I don't know of any tools
| to recover them.
|
| I have a box full of unreadable CDRs from 20 years ago and
| a box full of perfectly playable cassettes from 40 years
| ago.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The cassettes sounded awful on day one, and rest assured
| they didn't get better with age. (Neither did the capstan
| in your cassette deck, which I'd suggest checking to make
| sure it isn't turning into goop that will literally ruin
| your tapes for good.)
|
| Meanwhile, my CD-Rs are still fine, but then I didn't buy
| the cheapest ones I could find.
|
| Out of all the 80s artifacts that hipsters could
| resurrect... wow, just wow. Cassettes. They could have
| brought back designer jeans, off-the-shoulder blouses,
| normally-aspirated V12 Ferraris, and cheap cocaine... but
| no, they decided to rehabilitate _cassette tapes_. This
| truly is the worst timeline.
| vr46 wrote:
| I can understand the attraction of a set of needlessly
| complicated physical contraptions that outweighs the appeal
| of the actual outcome - and not talking about making coffee
| here - so cassettes make a lot of sense, they're unusual,
| uncommon, and look better on a shelf :)
| ttepasse wrote:
| Frustrating that MiniDisc was always a niche thing - those
| were cool looking physical artifacts and even practical.
|
| Of course real hipsters do FLAC on Iomega ZIP drives.
| 0xEF wrote:
| You can still find some artists on Bandcamp that release on
| mini disc. Whenever I see them, I buy one to try and help
| encourage more artists to do this.
|
| And of course, many artists release on cassette. I have an
| album from Dirty Art Club on it's way to add to my cassette
| collection as we speak. My collection has grown
| considerably in the two-ish years I've been using Bandcamp,
| despite the sad controversy.
| wkjagt wrote:
| I still have my minidisc player. It can even record. It's
| an awesome little machine.
| jonhohle wrote:
| NetMD or Hi-MD deviceces even let you "record" over USB
| (Hi-MD even can expose a block device).
|
| Not that long ago I would use scripts to dump CDs to MD
| using linux-minidisc. Much more convenient to Cary around
| than CDs, geat audio quality.
|
| The only downside, imho, is when I'm on vacation I like
| looking at second hand places and if I find a some CDs I
| can't play them until I get home. I really miss the CD
| deck in cars.
| sfmz wrote:
| I was wondering if NFC tech could bring back physical media.
| I think NFC can transmit unlimited data and you could embed
| it in a collectible card.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| NFC isn't unlimited, and the bitrate is very low. For a
| storage medium, it's not really very suitable for files. It
| would probably make more sense to embed a URL, with the
| actual data hosted online.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-field_communication
|
| > NFC tags are passive data stores which can be read, and
| under some circumstances written to, by an NFC device. They
| typically contain data (as of 2015 between 96 and 8,192
| bytes) and are read-only in normal use, but may be
| rewritable.
|
| > 424 kbit/s
| exitb wrote:
| > make more sense to embed a URL
|
| ...which will promptly disappear once the company decides
| to end their incredible journey.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| You're right, of course. It should obviously be a magnet
| link or NZB file. :P
| quora wrote:
| Some kpop groups have released "NFC cd" albums that use nfc
| and an app to "play the album". They are essentially
| keychains.
|
| But in the kpop world buying albums is less about listening
| to the CD and more for the merch/supporting specific
| artists.
| jrajav wrote:
| It's more than just a neat physical artifact - cassettes add
| a pleasing saturation and natural compression (of the musical
| kind, not the file kind) to the sound, which most would
| describe as a bit more 'warmth' and 'energy'. This is why
| people sometimes say that music just sounds better on
| cassette or vinyl. In some ways, it literally does! Perfect
| reproduction of sound is not the only dimension of musical
| quality or enjoyment.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Site is having Cloudflare SSL handshake errors (Error code 525)
| for me. Struck out on archive.org and .is, so here's Yandex:
|
| https://yandexwebcache.net/yandbtm?fmode=inject&tm=172984247...
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Well, that didn't work. This will have to do.
|
| https://pastebin.com/iLFdzStE
| nottorp wrote:
| Link says 'account has been suspended' now. HN kiss of death.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| And that's why I always archive _before_ submit links to
| HN!
| rwmj wrote:
| I have a Sony similar to the one mentioned at the end of the
| article (Edit: TC FX 420R https://www.cassettedeck.org/sony/tc-
| fx420r). It's been a bit of a journey, replacing the power supply
| so it can run at 230V, replacing belts, and fixing the
| autoreverse. It is fairly user serviceable but you need to have a
| degree of knowledge, a steady hand, and a soldering iron and
| other tools. Also you'll want to check you can download the
| schematics and service manual before you buy. That was a huge
| help for this Sony.
|
| Looks really cool when it's running, but not massively practical
| unless you have lots of tapes that you took good care of.
|
| Edit: And it's going to need recapping one day.
|
| Good quality 1970s/80s cassette decks in working order on eBay
| are not cheap these days.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I remember back in the 1980s that if you had a cheap
| microcomputer (I had a Dragon32) you actually needed a cheap,
| low-quality cassette deck to save/load your code/data
| successfully - the higher-fi ones would simply not work well, for
| reasons I never understood but can definitely attest to from
| experience.
| rwmj wrote:
| The received wisdom of the time was that a hi-fi was simply too
| powerful and would blow up the computer (or at least damage the
| mic/ear circuits). Also quite inconvenient dragging your Speccy
| next to the family hi-fi, compared to attaching a cheapo
| portable cassette deck.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Perhaps the HiFi ones used some additional processing like
| Dolby Noise Reduction, which interfered with whatever signal
| modulation method was used by your computer to save digital
| data on cassettes.
| d--b wrote:
| I am all for nostalgia and stuff, but one item I don't miss is
| the cassette.
|
| These things failed all the time, the tape would get stuck in
| annoying places, and then you'd end up with 10 meters of tape to
| try and rewind without tying a knot, and the tape was screwed
| anyways. Ugh.
| rwmj wrote:
| You must have had very bad luck because I used cassettes non-
| stop for decades and have never had this happen.
| exitb wrote:
| Like with all analog media, what you get out of cassettes
| depends heavily on the actual media you use, as well as the
| equipment. Tape getting stuck or unwound doesn't really happen
| with quality decks, and the fun part is those are much more
| affordable nowadays.
|
| And as far as the quality goes - well, audio quality was a
| solved problem a few decades ago. Since then, it's only getting
| worse. Cassette cannot be better than a well mastered vintage
| vinyl or CD. It is better though than a YouTube video listened
| over Bluetooth on crappy headphones, which seems to make most
| people happy these days. It can, importantly, also sound better
| than a lot of modern vinyl.
| wazoox wrote:
| It's mostly dependent upon tape quality and deck quality. With
| a good deck and good tapes, it was extremely reliable. Cheap
| tapes and cheap decks OTOH were a nightmare.
| focusedone wrote:
| Same! My dad laughed at me for getting into vinyl - he
| remembered it as scratchy and irritating. Cassettes are
| nostalgic, for sure. I used to sit for hours waiting for
| whatever song to come on the radio so I could record it for
| future enjoyment. That was pretty cool.
|
| I expect at some point CDs will see a renaissance like vinyl
| and cassettes. I'm here for that one. CDs were really the high-
| water mark of enjoying music to me.
| dave333 wrote:
| Cassettes in the 1970s were great for recording music off FM
| radio and also for making copies of LPs you owned (or borrowed)
| that you could play in the car. I bought very few if any
| prerecorded cassettes as the sound quality didn't seem as good as
| LPs. Dolby and other forms of noise reduction were big for
| getting rid of "tape hiss." Sometimes the cassette deck would
| mangle the tape "bandsalad" I have heard it called. Cassettes
| with screws were preferred so you could fix a mangled tape. C-90
| length tapes were the optimum since they could easily hold an LP
| and seemed a bit more robust than the C-120s. John Peel was the
| DJ I listened to and recorded from the most off the Beeb back in
| the UK.
| HansardExpert wrote:
| Apropo of nothing in particular if you miss those Old Peel
| Session days (like I do) YouTube is very much your friend now -
| https://www.youtube.com/@FruitierThanThou/videos
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I loved cassettes in the 80's and 90's. Never could afford
| anything "hi-if" back then but got to use some stuff as a college
| radio dj.
|
| The best cassette deck ever was the Revox B215, direct drive, all
| about performance, no nonsense, flawless for what it was designed
| to do.
| jpl56 wrote:
| Bought a Technics M12 at a garage sale. When I plugged it in, it
| had an horrible hiss when playing, even with no tape in it.
|
| Solution was simple : put a blank tape then record, play, record,
| play short chunks of tape in order to clean the record/play
| connections in the mechanism. Problem solved.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Oftentimes it's just a dirty head, careful cleaning with
| isopropyl alcohol fixes it.
| christkv wrote:
| DCC is where it's at. My parents still have the deck. Probably
| the most useless technology ever.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| anyone else seeing the article replaced with a "This account has
| been suspended" page? hugged to death I guess
| chasil wrote:
| I have two Ultrix/Sanyo decks in my closet that do Dolby B/C and
| dbx.
|
| I haven't listened to a cassette in at least a decade.
|
| I wonder what I should do with them when I retire and sell my
| house in two years.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I miss the rituals of listening to music in the 80's. It was not
| a casual experience, but a deliberate one - you decided you'd
| listen to some music and you did a series of steps before you
| could relax in your carefully positioned armchair.
|
| Good speakers would also give you the pleasure of the chest-
| thumping harmonics of a good drum set (or Japanese drums).
| tartoran wrote:
| All that ramp up prepared you for an experience that you'd take
| in with minimal interruptions. We completely lost that way of
| enjoying things..
| tartoran wrote:
| When I was a kid in the late 80s and had a walkman I remember I'd
| rewind tapes by sticking the gears on a pencil and shaking that
| back and forth. That would not only save the motor but the
| batteries were lasting for a few hours tops and rewinding seemed
| like a lot of power waste. I miss and I don't miss those days at
| the same time. Tapes had a charm and the experience wasn't bad
| for the times but there were so many problems, the tape would
| frequently get jammed, as far as walkmans, the batteries were
| really problematic and would last from 45 minutes to a few hours.
| It'd take a few seconds up to half a minute to realize I had to
| change batteries as the music would drop in pitch, at first
| imperceptibly but then more and more until it'd just stop
| playing.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-10-25 23:02 UTC)