Sony TC-350 is a Ken Kessler recommendation

[Deleted User]

Ken Kessler, who contributes to the British magazine HiFi News has listed some of his recommended tape decks and the Sony TC-350 is one he feels "sounds amazing". These can be found in good shape for reasonable selling prices. It's a bare bones, no frills very basic deck but can last forever.
I believe this is his personal deck, you can see the use of a chemistry lab flask stopper being used for a right hand reel holder.

jdjohn

There are several old Sony decks in my dad's stuff. That one looks familiar. Many of them have tubes inside, and a couple of especially beasty ones are basically suitcases with detachable speakers.

After working on the Akai GX-77 and Pioneer RT-707 I've posted about, I can certainly agree that simple might be better for longevity. I wonder if finding replacement heads might be easier with these older ones as well.

[Deleted User]

One of the most popular decks ever made was the Sony TC-377 (called the "slant deck" because of the angled shape) probably closely followed by the TC-350. Units that have self-contained amplifiers and speakers can be thought of as "tape recorders" and will usually have a line level output to bypass the internal circuitry. I would recommend to get a deck that doesn't need head replacements. On most decks the heads have a curved face and as the the tape travels across this face it tends to make a flattened wear pattern. Usually as long as this flat space is around 1mm or less in width then the head is fine. Another approach if the deck is "in person" and can be inspected if you can move a thumb nail across the head, from top to bottom, and not feel a significant click then it should be okay. Replacing a tape head while not impossible is usually difficult and requires a calibration tape for alignment and some careful soldering. It's best to try and avoid the need.

jdjohn

KennethSwauger wrote: »

I would recommend to get a deck that doesn't need head replacements. ... Replacing a tape head while not impossible is usually difficult and requires a calibration tape for alignment and some careful soldering. It's best to try and avoid the need.

Oh, absolutely. I meant long-term, like if you wear them out yourself over time, it might be easier to find a new equivalent replacement head. Yeah, soldering four bare wires onto posts in close proximity is definitely a challenge. It's [cough] easy to melt the insulating jacket I don't know why they didn't use slide-on clips for those posts like with a phono cartridge. The heads wear-out over time just like a stylus, so why not make it easier to replace them?

[Deleted User]

I agree about the cartridge type clips it would make life easier. Heads can also be resurfaced, sanded so the original shape of the head is restored. I think there are some Youtube videos on how to do this. There are also small wire shaped soldering shields that can go over the wire's insulations to protect it from excess heat. The nice thing about Cardas solder is it doesn't need high temperatures to work.

mhardy6647

Interesting -- and odd.
My thesis advisor had one of those which he passed along to me, long, long ago. It needed the usual CLA & belts and I just ended up giving it away.

All of the Sony one-motor, mechanical control decks were OK, but I'd say only OK.

I do like the TC-377 -- the one here isn't working so well mechanically the last time I used it Although it is utterly as found (at, of course, the Harvard town dump, years back) so maybe that's no surprise.

It's just hard to get excited to work on them (although they're less aggravating than cassette decks in that regard!).

DSC_0016 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

As an aside -- my first "hifi" tape deck was a TC-252D that I bought used from someone in Towson... from the Sunday Classified ads in The Sun. Remember the classified ads in the newspaper?

I had Soundscape adjust it for Maxell UD and it served well for several decades.

mhardy6647

PS: @jdjohn No tubes in a TC-350
There were, of course, vacuum tube Sony decks -- but the cosmetics were different. Sony went to ss pretty early (as one might expect).

I am sure @KennethSwauger is familiar with this, but now seems like a good time to mention the fun resource of vintage ads at:
https://r2rtx.org/node/37




From 1965

jdjohn

mhardy6647 wrote: »

PS: @jdjohn No tubes in a TC-350
There were, of course, vacuum tube Sony decks -- but the cosmetics were different. Sony went to ss pretty early (as one might expect).

To clarify, my "many of them have tubes inside" was referencing Sony decks in general, not specifically the TC-350. Of course 'many' is a relative word, so I may be still be off-the-mark even with that qualification I just know a few at my dad's have an amber glow through the ventilation screen, and offer a certain fragrance of toasted dust and lint after warm-up

mhardy6647

jdjohn wrote: »

mhardy6647 wrote: »

PS: @jdjohn No tubes in a TC-350
There were, of course, vacuum tube Sony decks -- but the cosmetics were different. Sony went to ss pretty early (as one might expect).

To clarify, my "many of them have tubes inside" was referencing Sony decks in general, not specifically the TC-350. Of course 'many' is a relative word, so I may be still be off-the-mark even with that qualification I just know a few at my dad's have an amber glow through the ventilation screen, and offer a certain fragrance of toasted dust and lint after warm-up

Yeah, I think we understand (understood) each other! There were some Sony decks with tubes, but relatively few compared to some of the other 'big names', since Sony was an early adopter of transistors for consumer audio & video


There was one pretty highly respected Sony tube reel to reel deck that I recall.
I think it was this one: Sterecorder TC-300.



or maybe...


(earlier)

both of these ads are from the aforementioned site, via google, though.

mhardy6647

Oh, and sort of on topic (and with apologies to @KennethSwauger *) -- there were a fair number of "hybrid" reel to reel decks with solid state electronics other than the record bias oscillator.

Here're two that fairly leap to (my) mind.

P1020715 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

EICO RP100 rear flash by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

_____________
* And, yes, I am having regrets now about not keepin' the boss's old TC-350!

[Deleted User]

"fragrance of toasted dust and lint after warm-up"

I know exactly what you mean, good description!

mhardy6647

KennethSwauger wrote: »

"fragrance of toasted dust and lint after warm-up"

I know exactly what you mean, good description!

Indeed!

I actually got that bouquet (or cassolette, if one prefers) last night from the 2A3 amp. I haven't used it for about a month, and when I fired it up last night, that oh-so-evocative scent of warm dust wafted up so quickly, I quick checked the PT and P/S choke to make sure that there wasn't something bad happening! The were ice-cold; it was just the dust on the 2A3s and the 5V4 being... yes... firebottle toasted.

jdjohn

Somebody had to do it...