3/24/2023 0 Comments Best tapedeck app android pro![]() A typical high-end deck will have Dolby B and C NR (maybe even Dolby S and dbx), auto-reverse, direct drive motors, fine bias adjustment knobs, wide-range power meters, and other wacky doodads. Electronics in general during the 80s/90s generally followed the motto of "more buttons=better", so higher end gear will generally look like it came off KITT's dashboad. After the mid-'90s, the tape deck started to fade as a serious device and most decks after this will be pretty flimsy and lame-sounding. Cassettes were in their infancy in the 60s, and most of the kinks were being worked out during the 70s, so take some caution with those nice silver-faced 70s beauties, unless you have a 70s-era received and matching aesthetics trumps function. The heyday of the cassette was generally between the the '80s and the early '90s, so most decks you'll come across will be from this time period. Buy the best one you can for the money you have. ![]() Make sure the head (the biggish silver thing in the middle) isn't completely worn flat, although numerous head types and shapes were used, so make sure it's either round or pointy. That can be cleaned off easily, which I'll cover later. If you're buying from a yard sale or a goodwill or a friend's dad's uncle's sister's best friend's ex-boyfriend's boxing buddy's basement, chances are it'll be pretty gunky from years of playing tapes or sitting unused. Open up the tape doors to check the tape mechanism. Don't mind any scratches along the top or sides, that's merely cosmetic. Check to make sure the screws on the sides and rear haven't been stripped, that means someone else was monkeying around in there, and as any classic car collector will tell you, don't buy someone else's old project! Make sure the buttons all work with no fiddliness or looseness, since that usually means it's either cheaply built or beat to heck or both. Make sure the appropriate lights, such as the power meters, an on light, maybe a digital display, all come on as they should.Ĭondition. This is usually a cheap fix if you fancy yourself slightly mechanically savvy, but it's still a drawback. If the machine fast forwards, rewinds, and plays and stops as it should with no funny noises, you've got a functional deck. Most cassette players won't let you press play without there being a tape inside first, so either track down/bring a spare (but ultimately worthless) tape, put it in, press the buttons, and see what it does, or open the tape door and press your finger somewhere along the top to trick it into thinking there's a tape inside. Before you buy, try and at least plug it in to make sure that the machine still powers on, and that the buttons still work as they should. Most tape decks you'll come across are going to be 20-30+ years old. Here's a good video that goes into why they suck.įunctionality. The new boomboxes from Urban Outfitters or Aldi or whatever are pretty miserable and way overpriced. I've only seen such a thing once, so it'll be an easy pass if you see a stray one in the wild. In a similar vein, stay away from "rack" systems, which are usually promising separates that have been cruelly conjoined with other components (amplifier, turntable, tuner, equalizer, maybe a CD player, etc.) by means of ugly ribbon cables sticking out of the back. They're ugly, sound horrid, usually an unfixable electrical mess. ![]() Stay away from all-in-one/shelf stereo systems, which are stereos with an amplifier, radio, tape deck, CD player, and sometimes a turntable all thrown into one giant, usually kitschy looking box and paired with equally crappy and kitschy speakers. These were normally the more expensive option back in the day, and are arguably the most plentiful and easiest to repair.īoomboxes and Walkmans (Walkmen?) are neat relics of the days of yore, but were usually cheaply assembled, tossed around with little care, and thrown out when they broke, so they can be a little harder to find and repair. In plain English, a regular cassette player that you'd put next to your CD player and your turntable and plug into your receiver. The best, most reliable tape players are undoubtedly the standard standalone hifi separate decks. Speaking as someone who started with absolutely zero info and only has some inkling of what he's doing, I'm writing this to help other beginners, so that they don't make a potentially stupid decision. So you wanna get into tapes in this day and age, but chances are you have pretty much zero idea what to do or what to look for. ![]()
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