Pioneer CT-9R

[DADoES]

 
Found this nearly-mint specimen on eBay buy-it-now, so I did.  I had a lower-featured CT-6R back in the day so there's huge nostalgia involved.  The design of this line, circa 1981-82, was quite distinctive when introduced.

Amazingly I found a matching SX-9 receiver NEW-IN-BOX a couple days later.  Had the winning bid.  Then I had a HUGE brain-fart with 8 mins remaining -- made a phone call to a business associate for a quick question.  We got to yakking about other things, and I lost the item.

However, now I found an SX-8 for buy-it-now.  Has some wear vs. NIB but still is a nice alternative.

 

[cfz2882]

Really cool!

that is a really cool looking cassette deck-and a really good one no doubt,probably 2-motor? Hopefully no repairs will be needed(belts,tires,pinch rolls)but parts might be readily avalible.Enjoy the proper analog sound

 

[DADoES]

 
It has 3 motors ... a direct-drive for each reel, and one for the capstans by belt.

 

[frigilux]

Awesome. I remember seeing these back in the day. Mixtape time!

 

[dartman]

I think Radio Shack used to sell those as a Realistic rebrand but pretty sure the upper end models had 3 heads and all the better bells and whistles.
I still have the last high end 3 head Denon deck I got at Costco probably in the mid to late 90s and it sounded great. The last gen of cassette decks really got as much as you could from the slow, tiny, tape heads and path.
Getting really hard to find decent tape for any type of tape deck and I have found some deals on high end older tapes like Maxell and TDK back when those two still made excellent tapes. Try finding reel to reel tapes now. I used to have a LOT of excellent Maxell ud x90 rtor tapes when I was using my Akai deck and sold almost all of them and could kick myself now as I got a few GX head reel to reels for a family tape project and sure wish I still had all those tapes now.
Once I got my first cd recorder for my pc I stopped using most of my tape decks so traded most of them away.

 

[frigilux]

My tape of choice back when cassettes were king was TDK SA's. Made hundreds of mixtapes for myself and others. I really liked the crisp sound of the high-end frequencies on SA's.

 

[DADoES]

 
Yeah, went through a bunch of TDK SAs.  And Maxell.  And some metals.

 

[lordkenmore]

As I recall, I liked TDK tapes. But my standard tape in the 80s was a cheap Type 1 BASF tape. It was handy--a local college bookstore had a great, big barrel of these tapes. They were individually sold, and priced nicely. The bookstore was handy--it was close to my high school, and I did a lot of school supplies shopping there.

 

Many years later, I ended up visiting that college bookstore. I asked out of curiosity if they had those tapes still...and the 20-something college kid said no. Then he told me about the wonders of burning your own CDs...

 

Those BASF tapes were good enough for the 1980s--I was stuck with not-so-great mass market equipment back then. I pretty much lost interest in tape once I got a good audio system, although I've played with/used tape a few times. I think my first passably good tape deck was an old Sony, which I got at Goodwill. The main reason for getting it was because I had just gotten a car for the first time that had a tape player, and I was curious to try it...but not curious enough to pay more than Goodwill prices for a tape deck.

 

[cfz2882]

a tapehead here...

cassettes still rule around my house-most of my cars are still cassette(even the 2003 Land Rover and the house stereos all have cassette avalible: Revox tape decks-'82 710 and '85 215 make some good mix tapes,a 1981 Akai and 1978 Norway made Tandberg are also really good units.