| Used Cassette Recorders Vintage Electronics (USA) This retailer has a nice range of old recorders, perhaps a bit pricy. Play It Again Sam (USA) Ditto Mostly recent models and reasonably priced Recorder Repairs ES Labs US Repairs Nakamichi recorders Tape Retailers Strart searching for tapes with your local supermarket and discount stores, frankly I can find both better tapes and better prices than most of the dealers here below offer within 500 meters from my home, recently got Emtec chrome C90's for 50p (€ or USD .70 or so) in Aldi and Lidl general stores, and Maxell Ferric C90's for 20p in Argos. Tape City (UK) Arcal (USA) Cassette House (USA) Andol (USA) Church Cassette (USA) Have Got Emtec/BASF Chrome 2 at nice prices if you buy bulk WTS (USA) APR (UK) Dreamhire (UK) Dr.W.A.Günther (Switzerland) GBC Records (Austria) Bluz Bros (USA) These guy's sell remainders etc, interestingly they have stocks of some high quality metal tapes that have been discontinued recently like Denon HD-M, Fuji Metal-Z and That's Suono Chemicals & demagnetisers Last Make head and tape preservants & cleaning solutions. Allsop Make 2 automatic cassette cleaners, info hrere and here. Bib Makes 2 budget cassette head cleaning systems, note that the head cleaning system (the non mechanical one) is a bit abrasive and thus only recommended for occasional use Coby Makes a Wet/Dry cleaning cassette, abrasive Alignement Emtec Makes a lot of really good alignment cassette but limited info on their hompage, take a look at this dealers page instead Almedio Makes an intereesting range of tapes, these are widely used by Japanese manufacturers, more info here Cassette Links Recording Website Buying a recorder German Cass & R2R page CC history in German Tape Trader Network Cassette Mythos A great page on the underground cassette network that spread across the world in the late 70's and was HUGE in the 80's and early 90', much bigger than most people realise. The author of this website was very active in this sub-genre between 1982 and 1993 so seeing this page was a joy, however my recollection of things are not quite as sterile as this but a great job nevertheless. BTW what happened in the 90's and killed the phenomenon was not the advent of the Internet and the CDR but a split between music fans and music makers in the network itself, fans continue trading illicit recordings of old and established artists (most of which had their heyday in the 70's) on tape/disk trading networks or the more modern equivalent, the p2p MP3 networks. Music makers moved onto promotional networks such as MP3.com but that ultimately failed and by now they really have no alternative means of distribution, this killed the "will trade for anything as long as you have the right to distribute this tape" and the optional "right to reproduce a swapped tape" ethos that got you a lot of new music and got a lot of music heard that would otherwise never have been heard Russian Cassette page Some info in English, some text nicked, some dead pages, but interesting stuff in-between Cassette Tape Scans Facinating but odd site Please send any factual corrections, dead links, information and/or links that you feel that should be on this page to the page maintainer but please note that I do not have an Internet access at the moment so there may be some time before I can answer.
|
Please note that we only list hi-fi recorders here and in most cases only recorders. Personal stereos are not listed unless they have a recording facility of a reasonable quality.
Acoustic Research (Teledyne)
Introduced the RD-06 recorder in 1988 a couple of years after the rest of the "Black line" was introduced, it was basically a Japanese recorder either rebadged or had some final assembly in the USA. It featured 2 motors, heavy flywheel mechanism, full logic control, manual record level, digital readout real time counter, headphone socket with level control and could be controlled by an AR remote via the tuners or receivers that the company made, the USA RRP was USD 500 when it was introduced.
Aiwa
There is some basic info on the WD-110X here.
Akai Electric Co.
The last range of decks from the company was introduced in the latter half of the 90's and the last 2 decks the company made were the DX-1200 a deck with a dolby B,C & HX Pro but fairly modest technical specifications and the dual DX-W1100 deck that has the same spec's, they were both discontinued in late 2001.
BIC
When the company stopped manufacturing cassette decks in the 1980's a company called South Street Service Company bought up the spares inventory and does supply both spares and service for the company's products, BIC was one of the few cassette player manufacturer that made recorders that supported double speed.
Denon
The company axed the whole range of their Professional line of cassette recorders in early 2003, these were fairly recent models originally introduced in the latter half of the 90's or later. The cheapest of that line-up was the DN-720R that features auto tape selector, Dolby B, C and HX Pro and bias adjust, next up is the DN-730R similarly featured and specified but comes with a wristwatch style remote control and other control improvements. Top of the pro line single decks was the 3 head DN-790R that features Dolby S and balanced connectors in addition to a host of other features, and has a much better audio specification than the cheaper decks. The pro style dual decks were the DN-740R and the DN-770R, both are auto-reverse decks that feature Dolby B and C but in addition the 770 has Dolby HX Pro and fully independent decks (you can record on both decks on the 770, from 2 different sources at the same time). These decks will make an excellent second hand buy as they are all fairly recent models and have robust mechanisms, the only problem may lie in buying them from radio stations were they have often seen very heavy use. Note that all the above decks feature a variable speed control, have a fast music search and are rack mountable, in addition the 730, 770 and 790 also feature some advanced automation and control interfacing options including serial ports etc.
The company also axed the upmarket consumer model DRW-840G at the same time, it's a dual deck that can record on both decks, an unusual feature on a recorder in this price range but unlike most other decks that have this feature are in actually 2 fully independent decks the DR-W840 has only one pair of ins and outs, so the only thing you gain by being able to record on deck 2 is the ability to make 2 copy's at the same time, otherwise the unit is well specified and sports a manual bias control, Dolby B, C and HX Pro and auto tape selector amongst other features. Denon discontinued the DRR-M50 in late 2002 leaving owners of the M-30, M-50 and M-31 systems with only the choice of the lowly DRR-M31 as a cassette recorder, the company has erased all info of this model from the net but it sheared the exact same specifications and features as the DDR-201SA (link in German).
DUAL
The Dual Classics website has information on some of the decks they made.
Harman Kardon
The company appears to never have really made them cassette decks from the ground up, they do however seem to have a knack for selecting quality OEM products to sell, their line-up in the 70's and 80's included some really good Nakamichi decks for instance, the company has manuals and technical information for most of their older cassette decks available from here.
JVC
The company has minimal information on the following decks available on their website : TD-V662BK, TD-W718BK and the TD-R462BK. All of these decks were discontinued in 2001 or so and if you press on the "Features" option on the sidebar (on the JVC site) you will get the full technical specification of the decks.
Kenwood
The company scuttled most of the separates audio range in early 2003 including most of their cassette decks but still has some information on them on the web including the American/Asian market models such as the CT-405, it a dual deck that sports Dolby B, C and HX Pro, auto tape sensing, manual bias adjustment and an MPX filter, all this sold for less than USD 200. The cheaper CT-401 and CT-403 models, both dual machines that have more basic features and have only Dolby B. Getting information on the European models that were discontinued at the same time is a bit more difficult find info on, the KXF-W3030 is a basic dual deck that sports Dolby B etc. in many respects similar to the CT-403 shown above it had a sister deck called KXF-3030S that had all the same features as plus a sync channel so that you can have a synchronised recording from a CD player. The KFX-W4030 is another dual deck but offers Dolby B, C and HX Pro in addition to auto tape calibration and BIAS adjust all in all similar to the CT-405 shown above this deck was also available in a sync capable version as the KFX-W4030S.
Marantz
You can find some pictures and specification of early 80's era cassette recorders at Marantz homepage at classicaudio, note that some of the info is incorrect, specifically design attributes (the website claims they were designed in the USA due to that being printed on the machines while they were actually designed in Japan).
Luxman
The last 2 recorders were discontinued in 2002 and were the 2 head K-322 and the 3 head K-373(both single decks). they were strangely enough only distributed in certain markets (mainland Asia and Canada for instance) but not even printed in catalogues distributed in other parts of the world.
Nad Electronics
I have never been a fan of cassette recorders from this company, even though I must admit that the amps are excellent. The company has manuals online for their discontinued 613 and 616 models, well those are the only 2 listed on their site but by poking around a little we found that they also have the manual for the 602 there even though they do not link to it, odd.
Nakamichi
This company was for a long time the premier manufacturer of cassette desks in the mid to high price range and one of the largest OEM manufacturer of tape decks, but the declining sales in high end cassette recorders with the advent of DAT created difficulties for them and for a time in the mid/late 90's they stopped producing recorders while the company was reorganised. After much pleading by fans they company reintroduced cassette decks to their line-up in the form of the 2 head DR 8 and the 3 head DR 10, however for a variety of reasons these did not sell well and remaining stocks were dumped by the company onto the market in 2001 at knock down prices.
For info on older products from the company we have usually pointed readers towards the The unofficial Nakamichi homepage which is an excellent source of information on Nakamichi decks from around 1980 and onwards, there are a couple of problems however, first and foremost the website has never collected information on the company's historically important early cassette products (perhaps since they were mostly OEM) and secondly the author of the website has always been somewhat paranoid about people "stealing" information from his website, this has resulted in him installing some sort of copyright protection software on his server which in some cases results in his pages displaying text backwards or completely garbled (if a copy of it is in your cache, press reload, works in most cases), if you keep this in mind the site is still an excellent resource. Another page that features scans of old brochures is the Nakamichi Cyberspot and there is a FAQ available from Sonic Sense, a company that used to be one of the leading Nakamichi repair shops. UK based rag Hi-fi world has retro reviews of the 480 line and the CR7E.
Some of you may have noticed that every time a "what tape recorder to buy" question is asked on public forums the responders are always Nakamichi fans that recommend that you get an old Nak regardless of what sort of a recorder the original query was aiming for and for what usage it was intended (Nakamichi never made dual decks for instance, so if you are in the market for a new budget dual deck you are hardly going to be serviced by an old BX from the 80's). Now this is of course partly due to the enormous brand loyalty that the company has, but there is another reason for this that people often do not realise, Nakamichi recorders uses a non standard equalisation curve, it's close enough to be playable on other recorders and vice versa (the difference is only about 2db) and it is indeed an improvement from the standard Prague eq, but it means that cassettes recorded on a Nakamichi never sound as good on third party machines as they did on the original recorder and this has given the brand a bit of an invisible barrier when it comes to sound quality testing. And finally if you want to chat with other Nak owners try this mailing list, for repair information see the Cassette Repairs section on the grey sidebar but note that due to a head configuration that is different to other cassette decks you will have to find a specialised technician to align your machine since tools made especially for Naks are needed and the company apparently no longer supplies them.
Pioneer
The Classicaudio homepage has some information on vintage Pioneer cassette models. In the early 90's the budget CT-W103 dual deck was introduced and it continued in manufacture until the end of the decade. The recently discontinued CT-W616DR appears to have been the same model as the European CT-W606DR that is still in production, please excuse if the links below are dead but Pioneer USA appears to change them on an almost daily basis.
More interestingly in 1994 the company introduced a line of dual decks all based around the same frame, namely the 204, 404 and the 504, the basis of which form the mid/budget line up to this day. The CT-W204 was replaced fairly soon with the upgraded CT-W205 and the auto-reverseable CT-W205R but the CT-W404R model was more successful and is still in production albeit with a limited distribution. The CT-W504R is the most interesting of these models since it contained the NR/tape EQ processing electronics that ultimately resulted in the company's DNR system, probably the biggest advance in cassette technology in the last few years, it was replaced by a broadly similar 505 (and current see above) in the late 90's. I actually bought one of these older 504's on ebay for only 10£ recently, little used, and it's an interesting deck, while it's based around the same cheap dual well transport as the 204 and the 404 and will for that reason always display some wow & flutter, have audio specifications well below the more expensive dual decks from the company that had a better transport, not to mention the single Pioneer decks that all had an even better transport, and for that reason this deck will probably have a shorter mechanical lifetime as well, not to mention that the transport is much noisier than the one in the dearer decks. But it is with the playback of old cassettes were this deck shines, the FLEX, Auto NR and TDNS technologies do an excellent job on old cassettes from the 60's, 70's and the early 80's, even in this early analogue incarnation of it and regardless if they are pre-recorded or home taped. Of course with such a simple single motor/capstan transport this deck will have problems with tapes that suffer from mechanical problems and this is not my favourite deck for headphone listening due to the less than spectacular transport, but for listening to a large collection of old tapes collected through the years or picked up at the local charity store it's ideal, some that sound dull and lifeless on my more expensive (and admittedly much better) deck get a new lease of life, even with the above mentioned failings it's so good at this that I would really like to properly test out the high end DNR single decks that the company made briefly in the late 90's.
RCA
The company exited the hi-fi separates market in 2002 but you can find information, manuals and repair/parts info on the last 3 dual decks that the company made on the Radio Shack hompage, NB these models were only available in the US but may have been available in other countries under the Thomson brand. The models are the ST-570 a model that sports both Dolby B and Dolby C but no HX Pro for some reason, the STC-550 and the very basic STC-520 model.
Revox
The first cassette recorder that the company made was the C88 which was built into the same desktop style casing as the monoblock amplifiers that the company was selling at the same time (early - mid 70's), it's a fairly simple machine that is remarkable only in that it offered a full remote control and in that it's one of the uglier pieces of hi-fi ever made. After the split from Studer the company continued to make cassette decks, the last ones to be made were a part of their Emotion series that was discontinued in late 2001 or so and was the B21 MkII and the cheaper H11 which is for all intents and purposes a consumer version of the C115, unsure what the difference between the B21 MkII and the earlier MkI version was. Since Studer discontinued all manufacture of cassette recorders at the time of the split Revox did continue making a line of professional recorders for a few years, as far as can be gathered the only pro products from the company, this was mostly the C115 but that is a 3 Head, 3 Motor recorder with off-tape monitoring and balanced I/O, it does not have the more advanced remote/computer control features that some of the earlier machines had but does allow for a remote start and has advanced seek, loop and timer functions built in. Frequency response is quoted as being 30Hz~20KHz for a metal formulated tape. Noise reduction is in the form of Dolby B, C and HX Pro, the recorder has an MPX filter, bias and calibration controls at the front and the power supply works with both 115 and 230v.
SAE
The company had a cassette deck or two in their lineup, they were admittedly nothing special even in their day and sound a bit vintage today, however when there is a gaping hole in your 19" rack nothing but an SAE will do. We have limited information on the actual models but do remember the Direct Line C101, a 3 head deck that offered Dolby B and C and hopelessly optimistic wow and flutter and audio specifications, did have a reasonable mechanism though and was produced from 82 to 88 or so, the Direct Line C102 decks were introduced in the late 80's and had a list price of 499USD in 1989, 2 head 1 motor affair and is best left alone. The SAE TWO line of the cheaper Korean designed an built decks were the C3D and C4, the C4 was early 90's Dolby B and C, bias adjustment and was better than the higher priced USA made 102 sold at the same time.
Sony
Sony dropped the TC-KA2ES from their lineup in 2003 shame since it was the cheapest 3 motor deck from the company, 3 motors have much less wow and flutter and there are less problems with old cassettes with bad shells etc., they also ditched the TC-KE400S at the same time, it's a mid priced 2 motor, 2 head deck but it's so recently deleted that I have been able to find it here in Europe for sale (sept 2003), it features Dolby B, C, S and HX Pro and has a good rather than stunning technical specs, and Sony also took out the TC-WE835S it is similar to the TC-WE675 that is still available from the company but adds Dolby S and a wide range pitch control to the equation, is should be noted that Sony still has the TC-K7ESA in their catalogue which is a slightly improved version of this model but removed the 2 top of the line dual decks as well namely the TC-WA8ESA that a model similar to the aforementioned K7ESA but has recording capabilities on both decks and the top of the line deck, the TC-WA9ES, it's feature list is almost complete, both decks are auto reverse and can record, they are both 3 head and 3 motor designs etc. and at a similar price to the TC-KA3ES, represent a relatively good buy if you can still find one new, the audio specification is very close to the KA3 but a 2 deck recorder will always be slightly noiseier than a single one. Portable models discontinued by the company in 2003 include the TCD-5M a high end stereo broadcast recorder, Sony still has the mono equivalent in production.
Studer
Studer made really high quality recorders beginning with the A720 in 1982, introduced in response to requests from the US broadcast industry, they were increasingly using the cassette format but had problems getting machines with the operational reliability of professional machines. Under their Revox brand you could get basically the same recorders somewhat cheaper (they no longer own the Revox brand), you can find an old review of the B-215 model here, and if you have one such recorder this company has replacement LCD lamps in stock for that model.
TEAC
There is a review of the V8000S model from 1994. A single deck budget model that the company was making until very recently was the V-377, you can find basic info on it here, it's a very basic devise with mechanical transport controls, you can also find info on the AD-500 a combination of a CD Player and an bi-directional auto reverse cassette deck, the deck sports Dolby B and a +-12% pitch control. As for the Tascam subsidiary they recently upgraded the dual deck model 202 MkII to a mark III status, I have not been able to find the specifications for the MkII so I am unsure what changed but the feature set is identical.
Technics
The Unofficial Technics homepage has more info on some of their older models (this site is down occasionally do not be alarmed if it unreachable), so has this page. An English gentleman has a user review of the recently discountinued CTS-830S model here and he is fairly impressed and you can find an old Hi-fi Choice has review of the RS-AZ6.
Telefunken
There is a page on 80's Telefunken Hi-fi here that lists most cassette models made prior to the take-over by Thomson, has pictures and technical info on some models.
Tesla
While there were some quite reasonable cassette recorders made in the DDR and Tesla on the other hand made some quite good open reel recorders the only hi-fi cassette recorder I have seen from this Czechoslovakian company, the SM-261 looks OK but sounds absoluetly dredful, the Oldradio.cz site has pics and specifications.
Yamaha Corp.
There is a review of the K-600 here, the reviewer notes that this model is very well suited for the blind operator. Yamaha also still have info on the KX-690 online, it was their top of the line deck up until about late 2000 and was the last 3 head cassette recorder that the company made, it's very much like a high end version of the 580 and thus a very much desirable second hand buy. A manual is available online for the KX-380, KX-480 and KX-580 models from the 90's here, the company also discontinued the most basic cassette option for the "Pianocraft" line in late 2002, namely the very KFX 5, not a great loss really considering it's very proletarian specification.