Cassette Decks for Dummies
if you're looking to upgrade your cassette tape equipment from a boombox or a walkman or a shoebox recorder to a proper component tape deck without spending hundreds of dollars on a good quality new deck like this TEAC W-1200 or a completely refurbished vintage deck that means you'll have to take your chances at finding a used deck that will probably be sold as-is with no guarantees or returns such as this TEAC W-370C i just found at the thrift store the price on it was 14.99 but it was a 50% off discount so i got it for 7.99 including sales tax even though i have no need for this cassette deck because i already have other ones that are far superior to it i thought it was worth picking up to serve as a test subject to demonstrate some of the features to look out for when you're choosing a used cassette deck some of the ways you can test the deck before you buy it and also how to refurbish the deck once you do buy it without needing any special tools or equipment first some of the features to look out for when considering whether or not to buy a vintage cassette deck you can see this is a double cassette deck but that's not necessarily an advantage because the only real benefit to having two cassette decks in one unit is that you can copy one tape to another and in fact all the really high-end cassette decks are strictly single deck designs they're not double cassette decks you can also see this one has a basic mechanical piano key design where you get direct push buttons for all the functions and your force of pushing the button is what activates the mechanism the higher quality decks have soft touch controls it only takes a very light touch to activate them and then the machine does the rest of the work in moving the mechanism into position and the high end decks have what is known as full logic controls where all the controls are just electronic push buttons which barely move at all when you push them and the machine electronically activates all the functions and some of those can even be operated by remote control but for a beginner i don't think there's anything wrong with having a basic mechanical push button deck next are some of the features which are the main reason to choose a component tape deck over a stereo system that may have cassette decks built into it along with a radio tuner a cd player maybe a record player those usually just have very basic cassette decks whereas a component tape deck gives you extra features such as dolby noise reduction this one has dolby b and c noise reduction dolby b the first and most widely used noise reduction system in consumer audio equipment it significantly reduces the background hiss when playing tapes that were encoded with it including the vast majority of pre-recorded cassettes from the mid-1970s to early 2000s dolby c provides even greater noise reduction but was not as widely used because it does not sound acceptable when played without the matching decoding and is more sensitive to the alignment of the deck's heads and for recording you get a manually adjustable recording level and a level meter these manual controls and level meters allow you to make much better quality recordings than a more basic cassette deck in a stereo system that just has automatic recording level which usually doesn't do a very good job at getting the recording level right where it should be on the tape where it's not too quiet and buried in a lot of tape hiss and not too loud and distorted with a manual level control and meter you can make those adjustments so that it's just right when you're recording onto the tape and in addition to the aforementioned dolby b and c noise reduction the really nice features on this deck are its ability to record and play back chrome and metal tapes many decks also feature auto reverse which gives you the convenience of automatically playing both sides of the tape without needing to take it out and flip it over but it requires a more complex mechanism which may make servicing the deck more difficult there are many other bells and whistles found on the higher end cassette decks such as more advanced noise reduction systems HX Pro automatic music search and bias calibration however i just wanted to cover the basic features that you're most likely to encounter when you're looking for your first cassette deck but having all these nice features is meaningless if the deck doesn't work the first thing to check out when considering whether or not to buy a used cassette deck is its overall condition however the way it looks on the outside may not necessarily reflect how well it works because i've seen plenty of decks which were covered in scratches and even rust and yet worked fine after i gave him a good cleaning and other decks which were in pristine cosmetic condition but didn't work at all due to needing new belts or some kind of electronic fault this one is covered in a fair amount of scratches however as the sticker here says the top cover is covered with a scratch protection sheet you may take it off if necessary and yes it definitely is necessary after probably almost 30 years of having it on so let's see how easy it's going to be to take off this protective film it was already fraying at the edge here so i use that as my opportunity to start peeling it off and hopefully it's just going to all come off in one big sheet but it may tend to come off in little pieces and underneath it should look like a brand new cassette deck some of this is getting stuck underneath the front panel so i'll probably need to remove the top cover to get all of it off but that's at least the vast majority of it but of course of a cassette deck it's the condition of the tape mechanism that matters the most so looking inside this one the first thing we can see is it's not covered in a thick layer of dust like i've seen in a lot of cassette deck mechanisms and the head is nice and shiny as is the capstan and one thing which can really tell you how heavily used the cassette deck was in its life is the condition of this rubber roller here if you see a buildup of brown dirt on it or if it has a very shiny finish on it those are both indications that the deck has been heavily used in its life but this one has a nice matte finish on it so it's not supposed to be shiny it's supposed to be slightly rough which allows it to grip the tape as it's running through the machine now that we've determined that this deck is in reasonably good condition both cosmetically and inside the mechanisms we of course have to make sure it works so naturally the first thing you want to do is plug it in and turn it on and when you turn on the cassette deck you should see some sign of life usually the bottom segment of the level meter will light up if it's a electronic level meter like this if it has old-fashioned mechanical meters those usually have a little light bulb that lights up however they may be burned out so even if it doesn't light up that does not necessarily mean that the deck is dead next i like to do what i call the finger test this mostly applies to these basic mechanical push button decks because on the fancier decks that have soft touch or full logic controls they usually will not operate without a cassette inserted but on these basic mechanical push button decks what you can do is hit eject to open the door and then press play and hopefully you will see the take up spindle start to turn if it does not that means the belts are no good and will need to be replaced but even if this is turning that does not necessarily mean that the belts are in good condition because if the belts have gotten stretched out with age they may still have enough tension to turn this take-up spindle just spinning freely like this but once you actually try to play a tape they won't have enough power to turn the tape so i like to do with it playing like this i just grab onto it a little bit and feel how much torque it has by how much you can grab onto it and still feel it turning if it stops the instant you grab onto it that means the belts are getting weak but if you can tug onto this fairly firmly and still feel it turning like this one that means the belts are in good condition and likewise do the same thing with fast forward it won't be as strong as it is in playback but you should be able to grab onto it a little bit and still feel it turning like this one is and the same thing with rewind now you saw it just popped out of rewind mode a few seconds after i engaged it that's normal for a deck which has full auto stop because that means once it reaches the end of the tape when it's rewinding it's going to detect that the tape is no longer turning and automatically stop so you may have to hold down on the button to do the finger test on this but you should be able to again resist the movement of the spindle and feel it has a nice strong tension on the belt so this deck passes what i call the finger test even though that finger test is surprisingly effective it's best to have a known good pre-recorded tape on hand to test it with so you want to put it in you want to make sure the deck rewinds and fast forwards and that you get some indication on the level meter when you're playing it and of course you want to test both decks if it's a double cassette deck and this one appears to be in working condition if it pegs the meters as soon as you hit play even without a tape inserted that likely means that the record playback switch in the deck has dirty contacts one quick fix you can do which usually does work is to open up the door hold down the erase knockout tab detection thing with your finger it's in the upper left corner here you can feel it with your finger hold that down and press record but not all the way just enough that it engages the mechanism and you can see that little red light come on and just hit that repeatedly like this and that scrapes off the oxidation from the contacts of that switch and now when you play your tape you should no longer have that problem and you may have realized at this point in the video we still have not actually heard what this deck sounds like when playing a tape and that's intentional because there are a lot of situations where you may come across a cassette deck for sale that you're interested in but you don't have any means to test what it sounds like when playing a tape but if the deck passes all the tests i've shown so far in the video and it's reasonably priced then i would feel confident in buying it the first thing you should do when you get a used cassette deck is clean the mechanism even if it already looks clean like this one clean it anyway it's not that hard and only takes a couple minutes on some decks you can remove the faceplate of the door to give you better access to the mechanism when you're cleaning it but this one does not so we'll just have to work around it all you need is some isopropyl alcohol and some cotton swabs i recommend using the pointed ones because they have a tighter pack of cotton on them which is less likely to come off in strands as you're cleaning the mechanism so you just take your isopropyl alcohol dip a cotton swab into it and then you clean the erase head just scrub it back and forth and then the recording and playback head same thing just give it a good scrub and then for the capstan it's a lot easier if it's turning when you clean it on this deck is easy because as soon as you turn on the power the capstans start turning automatically even without needing to press play so we can just take our cotton swab and hold it against that and kind of go back and forth and that will automatically since it's rotating clean all sides of the capstan as you hold the cotton swab up to it you don't want to press it too hard right against the tip here because that tends to pull off some of the cotton threads onto the capstan but if that happens just pull that off with your fingers and start over it's no big deal if your deck does not allow you to have this rotating when you clean it that's no big deal either you'll just have to try to work at it from multiple angles to try to clean as much of it as you can but for cleaning the rubber pinch rollers i like to use window cleaner because it still does a good job at cleaning it but it's less aggressive on the rubber than alcohol is you can certainly use alcohol i've done it myself many times with no ill effects but i just prefer to use window cleaner when cleaning the rubber pinch rollers so again you just take your cotton swab dip it in and now you're ready to clean the pinch roller and again this is a lot easier if you can have it rotating when you clean it on a simple mechanical push button deck like this that's easy you just press play and there it goes rotating so you can take your cotton swab and just hold it up against it and it as it rotates it's going to clean it all the way around and that should do it this one wasn't that dirty now that you've got your cassette deck and you cleaned the mechanism and it's all ready to go you're going to need some way to listen to it when i've done videos in the past about cassette decks a couple people have asked me if these things have built-in speakers that may sound like a silly question but you have to realize it's not the 1970s and 1980s anymore when people had a rack full of stereo components in their living room most people don't have anything resembling a stereo system anymore so when you get a cassette deck like this you need some way to play the music from it one way to do that is with a pair of powered speakers like these Bose Companion 2 speakers these are very popular these days with turntables and they work just as well with cassette decks on the back of any cassette deck you'll find two pairs of RCA jacks usually labeled line out and line in or playback and recording now for playing tapes you use the output jacks also sometimes labeled playback or line out and you take a pair of RCA cables the white one goes into the left output and the red one goes into the right output and then you take the other end of the RCA cables and you plug it into your powered speakers this one has two sets of inputs they both do the same thing so either pair will work you just plug it in like that and now you're ready to play your music from the cassette deck into your powered speakers some powered speakers have a 3.5mm jack on the back which looks like a headphone jack and for that you'll need a cable like this which goes from two RCA plugs to one 3.5mm plug you plug the RCA plugs into the output of the cassette deck and then you plug this into the input of your powered speakers if you want to connect your cassette deck to a traditional stereo amplifier or receiver it may be a little confusing for a beginner because you'll probably see two sets of jacks labeled tape such as this one which has a pair of RCA jacks labeled CD/tape and another pair of RCA jacks labeled tape out in this case the pair of jacks labeled CD/tape as an input to let you hear the audio coming from the cassette tape in the tape deck and the pair of jacks labeled tape out is an output from the amplifier to let you record whatever is playing through the amplifier onto a tape in the cassette deck so the way you connect this is you take one set of RCA cables and you connect it from the output of the cassette deck sometimes labeled playback and you connect that to the tape input of the amplifier in this case labeled CD/tape and you take another pair of RCA cables and you connect that to the pair of jacks on the back of the cassette deck labeled line in or recording and the other end of that goes to the tape output of the amplifier and now when you want to play cassettes you just move the selector switch on the amplifier to the position labeled tape or often there's a button labeled tape monitor that you push in and when you want to record you just move the selector to the position of whatever source you want to record from such as the radio tuner or the phono and that will automatically feed the output of the amplifier into the input of the cassette deck to let you record it some cassette decks have the added convenience of a headphone jack for private listening of cassette tapes without needing a separate amplifier but they almost always use a larger 1/4" jack so you'll probably need one of these 1/4" to 3.5mm adapters
to let you connect a modern pair of headphones if you're in doubt about how to connect everything or how to operate all the features of your deck read the manual even for decks which are 25 or 30 years old you can usually still find the manual for it on sites like manualslib hifiengine manualsonline or sometimes even still on the original manufacturer's website and don't be afraid to ask for help on user forums such as audiokarma tapeheads.net or the cassetteculture group on reddit now that we're all set up for playing tapes let's finally hear some samples of what this cheap little cassette deck sounds like and here's an oddity it's a pre-recorded cassette made using dolby c noise reduction a lot of people say that these didn't exist that nobody ever made pre-recorded cassettes using dolby c but this one definitely was because i've tested it and it sounds best with dolby c enabled the real fun with a tape deck is being able to make your own recordings and mixtapes first you need to connect your audio source you can record from anything that has a line level audio output such as a cd player or a turntable with a built-in or external phono preamp or using the same kind of 3.5mm to RCA cable i showed earlier you can record from the headphone output of a smartphone or computer but you may need to adjust its volume setting to get the best results then you need a blank tape or a tape whose contents you don't mind recording over if you want to record onto a high bias chrome or metal tape you may need to select the appropriate button or switch position unless your deck has automatic tape type detection and if you want to use dolby noise reduction make sure it is engaged during both recording and playback then enter recording pause mode decks with full logic controls usually do this automatically when you press the record button but on a basic one like this you do it by engaging the pause button before you press record then you start your audio source playing and try to pick a louder part of the music to help you set the recording level you may need to do a few test recordings to find out which level setting works best with the tape you're using and the kind of music you're recording but a general guideline is to adjust the level control until you see the meter constantly peaking at or slightly above 0 dB once you get everything set up and ready to go release the pause wait a few seconds for the tape to get past the leader if you haven't cued it up already and start the music playing now let's hear a sample of the recording i made from my turntable onto this Laser Type I normal bias cassette tape using Dolby B noise reduction there's many more advanced things i could cover in this video such as aligning the azimuth and demagnetizing your cassette deck's heads calibrating its speed and testing its wow and flutter but i really just wanted to make this an all-purpose beginner's guide to cassette decks sort of a cassette decks for dummies kind of video although i think if you're interested in a cassette deck you're not really a dummy you're a pretty smart person and i'm glad i featured a very simple low end deck like this because if you look on the tape forums online you see a lot of glorification of the really high-end expensive decks with people posting threads like the 10 best cassette decks of all time and asking people what is your holy grail cassette deck well i'd rather give some of the attention i think these beginners decks deserve because they are affordable easy to maintain and they can have surprisingly good sound quality
2021-10-22 23:57
