O/T Tape Decks (1 Viewer)

[RobCar]

Any of you still have a tape deck in your rack?

I ask only b/c I just let mine go, and could only get 50 bucks for it. It was a sweet three head, three motor sony ES model, but I simply haven't used it in like 2 years. Sure did like that thing when I bought it, but w/ CD-Rs, couldn't justify taking up the shelf space.

For that matter, how much longer will vhs units be around, especially w/ the likes of Tivo?

 

[Mike Up]

I have a JVC dual cassette tape deck. This thing offers great sound for cassette. It's has auto bias and auto sensitivity adjustments where it uses test tones to determine where the settings should be. Crutchfield.com still sells it at $200. Mine was the older model, but it's the same with the exception of the shape of the cassette transport doors. I have a lot of old cassettes I listen to. They're worn and it seems like every time I pull some out to listen, I have to throw some away.:frowning: Since they're worn already, no sense in dubbing them to CD-R. I'll just use them until they all die, then buy CDs. BTW, I don't record anything to cassette anymore. I use to record to MD, and now that format has died, I record to CD with my HK CDR20.

I had my cassette deck packed away also, but I had to bring it back to my system. I just kept looking at all my old cassettes from the 80s.

VHS has a strong life still. Tapes last quite a while and DVD recorders are still in a format war. I thought of the Panasonic DVD 30 recorders that are $400 at crutchfield but they're limited. Only 1 DVD well, so you can't ever record off of a DVD-Ram, to make a permanent DVD-R. DVD-RAM is incompatible with everything making it useless as an archive format. Since there is not 2 wells, you essentially have to record everything to DVD-R just to make sure it will be compatible. I rerecord a lot on VHS and DVD-R being able to be recorded only once, makes it a useless option. If the decks had dual wells, everything would be great, but they don't. You'd think they would had learned why CD recorders all have dual wells now, so editing can be done on CD-RW and the final version can be burnt to CD-R as a permanent, compatible, archive format.

Besides, 1st and 2nd gen. CD recorders were all filled with Bugs, these DVD recorders most likely are also.

As far as Tivo or replay, they're not archiving formats so they'll never replace VHS or DVD-R. You also have to pay $13/month to use Tivo. I had Tivo and Ultimate TV, I thought both were over-hyped, over expensive formats. I tossed both as I found them useless. Just my opinion.

Have a good one.

 

[Danny Tse]

I don't have a tape deck in my rack anymore. But I still have my treasured Sony TC-K670 cassette tape deck from about 10 years ago. This was not in Sony's ES line, but it was at the top of Sony's regular line....aluminum front face plate, 3 motors, 3 heads, back-lite cassette well, individual bias control, headphone jack w/ own volume control, CD direct input, etc.... Memories.... One day I will take it into a technician and get it clean up and calibrated.

 

[Michael Marklund]

Got rid of tape deck?...no. Just bought one though. New Sony ES dual deck. Store goofed too. Price was $350 and they said it was on special for $100 plus 20%off. Paid a whopping $79.00. Sent my Dad down to pick one up and they said it was supposed to be $250. (Wife is an ice skating coach and has to edit music on the computer and dump to tape for skater's music at the rink. Then has to make mulitple copies of the tapes. Rinks/competitions only accept music on tape.)

VCR going away...nope. Gonna buy a new one next month, but have to save. JVC is the only maker of a dual SVHS and miniDV vcr. Retail around $1400+...street price around $800. Mom has dozens of Disney classic movies (NIB) she's been buying for out daughters over the years. Need a decent vcr for the future and the miniDV allows me to play my digital tapes from my camcorder and dub them to either VHS or a dvd (when I get a dvd recorder...when they figure out the format war.)

FWIW...the turntable is in my garage boxed up.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Bill Will]

I still have a tape deck & a turntable in my rack I never did buy into the Mini-Disc format though because as soon as I saw that Sony was keeping the prices high on them & very few other companies were getting into the MD business I knew it would end up a dead format. Too bad though because MD is a nice format. Sony also did the same thing with the 8MM Format VCR's. If they had come out with reasonable prices on them to compete with VHS VCR prices the 8MM format could have replaced VHS especially seeing the smaller 8MM format did take off in camcorders because of the size.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I finally demoted my old TEAC 3 head, 3 motor cassette deck from my main system rack to my secondary system in the basement when I was rearranging equipment a year or so ago. I have not used the deck in several years, and just recently started throwing out old cassette recordings, since I have not played them in many years and no longer have a cassette player in either car.

The VCR will be the next component to get demoted when I need more rack space. I rarely tape anything anymore, and I only have a few pre-recorded VHS films (letterbox Star Wars Trilogy, Looney Tunes, etc.).

 

[AaronBatiuk]

Any of you still have a tape deck in your rack?

Got rid of mine nearly ten years ago. I replaced it with a MiniDisc deck a couple years later, and have never looked back. I currently have no MD deck (only a NetMD recording portable), but I will probably be picking up a MD/CD high-speed-copying deck soon. Still, if I could get a Sony ES cassette deck for $50, I would probably jump on the opprotunity, since I still have a 'deck in my truck.

 

[Carl Johnson]

I've never had a tape deck outside of a car or boom box, it's been a good ten years since I last bought or listened to a cassette. VHS is out too, that format has been out of my HT for 3+ years now.

 

[KeithH]

Well, I have a Sony TC-KA2ES single-well cassette deck in my main system, but it doesn't work. The right channel maxes out continually, and all I hear is distortion. The deck has been in to Sony once already for this problem, and when it came back, it worked for awhile but slipped up again. It's a shame too because the deck sounds great when it works. Sony actually makes an optional remote for it, which I have. It has a motorized door that opens by remote. If only it worked properly. :frowning: Someday I'll replace it. I've been thinking of getting the Pioneer CT-W606DR dual deck. I owned it once. It's a great deck. If it had a remote, it would be perfect.

I also have an old Pioneer CT-WM77R 6+1 cassette changer in my second system. It too works by remote and is great.

 

[Scott Kriefall]

I've been thinking of getting the Pioneer CT-W606DR dual deck.

Curiously enough, that happens to be the deck that I'm staring at at this very moment. I hadn't used it in several years, until a coworker recently asked if I could dub a couple old cassettes to CD. I'm surprised how well this deck works, even with standard bias tapes with no Dolby NR encoding. The deck's digital processing usually works very well, although I can occasionally hear digital artifacts when it attempts to process particularly noisy or low-quality source material.

 

[Rachael B]

I stille have a Technics DBX cassette deck with mic inputs in my studio. I don't record on it. It's analog outputs go directly into the analog inputs of an MD recorder. So, it's just a mic input. I disconected my JVC 621 3 head cassette deck from my stereo 5 years ago and finally sold it about 6 weeks ago. I sold the last of my open reel decks 2 years ago. It was an Akai that did the big 10" reels. I regret selling it now that I bought a house and could make space for it. Even without DBX it blew away any cassette deck. At 7 1/2 IPS it response was close to 40,000 hz. It was a deck truly worthy of recording off hi-rez discs. BTW, I stille have a half dozen of those Maxell Metal Vortex cassettes that weigh about a quarter pound each.

 

[KeithH]

Scott, thanks. When I had the 'W606DR, I only used it for playback of pre-recorded cassettes. I was very pleased with the sound for the money.

 

[BrentPollard]

I punted my cassette deck about 8 years ago as my cd collection grew. Any LP's that I didn't compliment with cd I then archived to hi fi vhs. Then in 95 I purchased a MD recorder and retired the VHS. I haven't watched VHS since 94 when I moved to LD.

 

[Marc H]

I bought one of the last three head, dual capstan decks Yamaha made about ten years ago but it's probably had less than ten tapes run through it!

 

[ColinW]

I still have my TEAC 3 head, 3 motor cassette deck in my setup. I actually have two of these great machines, and one is in the music setup while the other stays with the theatre gear!

I used to tape many live shows back in the day and dubbing them with two single 3 head decks was the height of sound fidelity until the whole CDR thing came around to being so cheap! What to do with the hundreds of tapes collecting dust???

COlin

 

[Jerome Grate]

About a year ago, I was going to buy the Pioneer W606DR, I was attracted to the 10 bit digital processor, but I just couldn't justify the purchase even for the HT downstairs. Well, I couldn't justify it to my wife anyway.

 

[KeithH]

Jerome, I'm in a similar position as you. While it is true that I have some cassettes that I cannot use in my main system right now, I can't really justify the purchase of a new cassette deck. I mean, we are talking about the cassette after all. Plus, I just bought a Denon DVD-3800 DVD-Audio player. There is no way my fiancee will let me buy a cassette deck.

 

[KeithAP]

I just recently disconnected my Nakamichi CR-3A. Paid around $800 for it new which was better than 10 years ago. It made great tapes but I hadn't used the deck in years and when I got a new rack I didn't see the point in hooking it back up. Same thing with my VCR. It was an older Sony model and haven't used that in ages either so it got the axe as well.


-Keith

 

[Jerome Grate]

I tried playing one of my old mixed tapes in the theater downstairs, and it just didn't move me. Something was miss or should I say hiss. I'm a tape advocate when it comes to S-VHS and good quality vcr, but tape recording, I haven't done in awhile. I have the better Teac deck upstairs with the wife's system and occasionally we listen to some of my old mixes, but with satellite music channels (DirecTV) and their mix tape versions it's hard to play back tapes. I have the computer hooked up to the wife's receiver so I can record analog material and then burn it.

 

[Allan Jayne]

I still have my Sony open reel tape deck and recently acquired another, an Akai.

I still have and play open reel tapes. One of these days I may burn the music onto CD's, once I can figure out how to manage headroom and set record level.

Still have many laserdisks and don't plan to buy the same titles on DVD.

Still have many LP's and don't plan to buy the same titles on CD.

I have always tried not to buy anything on cassette, either audio or video, much preferring to buy some kind of disk (or back then, open reel tape).

My movies:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/laser.htm