obsessed with cassettes

[fonografmaniac]

here are some vids of my vintage cassette decks, portable, and other pieces of equipment with cassette recorders/players.

link below is a vid of my 1967 sony tc-100 cassette recorder.

please note: the sony tc-100 model was release in 1966 and it was sony's 1st cassette recorder they ever made, but my unit was manufactured in early 1967.

 

[red_october]

Interesting things I have encountered...

I once came upon a tiny little thing that looked like an 8-track in miniature, and it was that essentially, had 4 mono songs on a cartridge barely bigger than a matchbook.

I have a couple cassette decks I'd part with if you're interested; a BIC T1 two speed and a big Sony that's seemingly built on the same chassis they made the big Elcaset decks on, though it's regular compact cassette. I'm drowning in cassette decks (Have a Marantz double, a Pioneer double, an Akai, and several others. Both the BIC and the Sony need belts, but I haven't bothered as I have all the others.

 

[fonografmaniac]

1971 craftsman model 1000 cassette recorder

 

[fonografmaniac]

1984 mitsubishi dt-15c cassette deck

 

[fonografmaniac]

1986 soundesign model 4949 boombox

 

[fonografmaniac]

1986 musictime/vanity fair ac/batt record and cassette player music center.

 

[fonografmaniac]

1978 kmart ac/batt record player, am/fm radio, mic, and cassette recorder.

 

[fonografmaniac]

1984 realistic model sct-70 dual cassette deck

please note: this unit was made by sanyo rebadged realistic.

 

[fonografmaniac]

1984 sears stereo system

 

[fonografmaniac]

1976 sankyo model std-1410 cassette deck

 

[sudsmaster]

Sony TCM-121 mono portable cassette tape recorder. Circa early 1970's. I recall using this to tape lectures in college. Still works, except I think the rewind button must be held down to work (it doesn't stay in rewind position otherwise). Fairly good sound, too.

It came with a leatherette case but that self-destructed long ago.

 

[tolivac]

WOW-Sony TCM121 cassette recorder-the agency I work for used to use these in some of its program recording work out in the feild.-such as interviews.They also used the larger TCM 110 machines and Sony 5000 cassette machines-before the transmitter site I worked on these neat little cass decks.Was fun.The agency ordered what was called "Belt-pulley" kits for the machines. Have installed lots of those.If one belt was worn-you were better off to replace them all--would be embarassing for the machine to fail in the feild during a critical interview of a famous person!Now--sadly the cassette machines at the agency are gone-have gone to "memeory stick" recorders.

 

[nmaineman36]

I used to work for a company in Maine that used to make Audio cassettes. I was there for 11 years and I learned alot about what goes into them. The clear cassettes with the black bridge is called a Mark 10. The idea behind it was that it could sound like a CD and often times it did. The black bridge was floating to align with the playback head and the spring pad was wider. Most pads are made of felt and some were made with poron. The wider the more tape contact with the head.
The shells of the clear cassette were made with polysar polycarbonate...the hubs ABS and the rollers were sometimes made of delrin if they were white and polyethylene if they were black. the Mark 10s were 5 screw and some were sonically welded. The plant used to pump out well over 8 million cassettes a week going full bore with all 3 shifts 7 days a week. And that was when cassettes still outsold CD's. Today its hard to find a US manufacturer of audio cassettes...they dont exist anymore that I know of. Oh and we used to make 8 Tracks and reel to reels.

 

[fonografmaniac]

lot of the 60's and early 70's tape recorders the rew or ffwd button dont' lockdown. my craftsman 1000 and sony tc-100 are like that.

 

[tolivac]

The Sony 5000 RWD and FF buttons could lock if you pressed them all the way down-light pressure allowed them to work and stop when you let go-was useful for "Q-ing" to a spot on the tape you wanted to play.

 

[63getelevision]

Here is a Panasonic mini cassette unit, and a '67 Magnavox reel to reel. The Panasonic is from around '76 I'm guessing.

 

[selectomatic]

An early attempt

Philips (/Norelco) introduced the Compact Cassette in 1964, primarily for dictation use. Later, they would introduce the far inferior (but much smaller) Mini Cassette.

Before all that, however, they came up with this, less successful, cartridge system.

I don't have a player for it -- I've never even seen one.

-kevin

 

[whirlcool]

Anyone have one of those Uher Model 4000's? Those were legendary for reporters and such. The best sound quality ever on a cassette. They still fetch tons of money on Ebay.

FWIW, my Mazda Tribute came with both a CD changer AND a cassette player! It's mounted right below the CD layer and since all the controls for it are mounted on the CD, they are integrated together. I'm usually the kind of guy who upgrades the standard factory radio and speakers to Alpine/Jbl or such, but this system sounds just as good as those!
I am very happy because I too have a large collection of cassette tapes.

 

[fonografmaniac]

any of yall seen this type of cassette before?

 

[fonografmaniac]

how bout this machine?

 

[washabear]

fonografmaniac, it's obvious that you like cassettes! I do, too. I have a little Tascam 4-track cassette recorder to put down my own music. It works pretty well. I just have a Technics cassette component unit to play them back on. It's from the early '90s but it works OK.

Whirlcool, that's nice to have a cassette player in your car! I know they are hard to come by these days.

 

[selectomatic]

I don't remember seeing the RCA tape cartridge before,

I was looking for something to watch while I ate dinner this evening, and this thread prompted me to type "Tape Recorder" into Archive.org's search bar.

One of the first results was a 1958 Jam Handy short subject about the RCA cartridge. The first half of the program is a Living Stereo Album promotion, the second half touts the many virtues of RCA Tape Cartridges.

They had a lot of modern features in these machines, considering the time when they were introduced.

-kevin

 

[sudsmaster]

Sleeper

One of my favorite scenes in the movie "Sleeper" is where Woody Allen and Diane Keatton are supposed to be taking care of a huge reel-to-reel tape deck mounted vertically on a wall. Needless to say, the tape comes undone and all balled up.

 

[jasonl]

I don't own the first cassette :-( .

But at the flea market I was listening to Loretta Lynn on a 70s 8 track player :-D .

 

[whirlcool]

Anyone remember the Playtape machines? The tapes were about the size of a deck of cards and contained 6 songs or so. You see these on Ebay now and then. Several auto manufacturers offered these around 1970 or so.....

http://cgi.ebay.com/PLAYTAPE-1200-V...ryZ71574QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[bundtboy]

1971 Advent 201 cassette deck

I have an excellent example of the very first deck ever to use Dolby. It's a 1971 Advent, and it still works like the day it left the factory, and sounds more natural than any other cassette deck I've ever owned. It's an amazing piece.

I have attached a photo of it that I found on the internet, and here's the link to the page where I found it also.

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue16/advent.htm

 

[Cybrvanr]

Anybody know if any of the high performance metal alloy cassette tapes can be found anywhere? It's even hard to find the high bias chromium tapes nowadays. I've got a fancy Tascam 112 studio grade cassette deck that sounds really nice with those high-end cassette tapes!

 

[Cybrvanr]

Totally neat cassette decks guys! Many of those older cassette decks were really made nice. I'm always fascinated by those rare portable reel to reel decks. Here's a picture of my "ultimate" mother of all cassette decks...the Tascam 112!

 

[Cybrvanr]

The media

Here's my collection of cassette tapes. Each bin holds 100 tapes, so that's a lot of tapes. These are all high bias and metal bias TDK tapes. They contain copies from my record album collection. In my van, I have a fancy cassette player that will play back Dolby C and dbx encoded tapes, so I'll record my record albums with these noise reduction modes. Most people cannot tell the difference, and when I tell them they are listening to a tape copy of a record album, they don't believe me!

 

[Cybrvanr]

OOPS, picture didn't post!