johnsmj (08/10/82)
I am interested in getting a new cassette deck, and would appreciate any advice/experience people have to offer. I plan to spend from $300 to $500. Mark Johnson ...stolaf!johnsmj
jj (08/11/82)
In the last year, we have bought and tried several tape decks, among them the TEAC-V7, eumig-FL-1000up, several unmemorable Panasonics, and a few not worthy of mention (portables, of the voice grade class). As far as I am concerned, the Teac-V7 is the best of the bunch. It costs about 300 at discount, has metal/Ch/feO compatibility, three heads, and the usual flock of feechurs.(Oh yes, has Dolby too.) The performance, as published, on standard tape, is as good as my Ampex AG440 (except, of course, you can't edit a cassette very well, you need a THIN razor blade.) On Chrome, it has the usual improvements. On metal tape, it (as one would expect) works very well. We measured 23Hz-19.3kHz response at -10dB, with a distortion of about .5% up to 3K, and about 2% at 18K. (This is exceptional, the Ampex, which is set up right, doesn't do much better in the distortion department.) Well, to make a long story short, the ones I had examined here were good enough that I bought one for myself, including the remote control. The performance at home is very nice. Its performance, by listening, is very good, with little of the usual scrape/flutter and distortion that I usually associate with cassettes. While I am sure that there are other good machines on the market, I like this one because of its high performance/price ratio. I would also appreciate hearing about other good cassette decks. I don't really care about lousy ones, unless you feel that the world should be warned.
katzung@sri-unix (08/16/82)
I have a Sony TC-K61 tape deck that I enjoy greatly. It has Dolby, Metal, and all the usuals. One very nice feature is the solenoid driven controls (I've had only one minor, easy-to-repair problem in three or four years of fairly heavy use). It had the smoothest tape pull of the machines that I looked at, especially when releasing the pause (many machines have horrible startup, which can be bad when you're recording). The deck has a remote control option, but the remote control is somewhat expensive. However, using the beautiful color schematics that Sony sent me for something like $1, I built my own (it's a simple resister net- work). I think it was pretty close to $300 when I got it, and I've enjoyed every penny of it.