cassette tapes the sequel

danger boy

I was in Good Will yesterday and stopped in to see if they had anything decent to pick up... and I run across a lonely little Onkyo TA-R301 stereo cassette deck in really good condition with manual for $12.99

Ok.. not the find of the year or anything.. but it looks well made and the manual says it's circa 1994. cool.

Bring it home clean up the dust, ect.. and hook her up. Wow... is all I can say. Either this is the best cassette deck I've ever owned or I haven't heard my system in a while with the newly rebuilt crossovers in the monitor 7B's. But i'm liking this a lot.

Yeah... cassettes have their downfalls of course.. but it sounds dang good to me. This Onkyo deck is full audio reverse.. so at the end of the one of the cassette sides it changes the tape direction and begins playing the other side without interruption. Nice feature. It has the standard Dolby B, C and HX pro... never heard of HX Pro before.. but whatever.

The cool thing about cassettes.. is they are ANALOG... so none of that digital harshness you might hear from CD's at all. closer to vinyl than anything really. but without the pops and clicks.

Now if I only had more cassettes to listen to

Monster Jam

danger boy wrote: »

The cool thing about cassettes.. is they are ANALOG... so none of that digital harshness you might hear from CD's at all. closer to vinyl than anything really. but without the pops and clicks.

Now, the vinyl camp I can live with: "I like the warm, unique sound the LP affords." OK, got it.

But tape? I gave that up when I got my first CD player back in the late 80's. One can get that "analog" sound from digital material. Simply truncate the frequency at both ends and introduce noise into the recording. Voila. A tape.

Like every other source, Not all tapes are created equal. At the time CDs were becoming mainstream, I remember buying one of my last tapes which featured "XR" technology (which stood for Expanded Range if Im not mistaken) which sounded damn good. Like a Chrome or Metal tape would. Even then, tapes were no match for CD.

....I can't tell you how many times I had a deck eat a damn tape. There I was with a pencil spinning the tape trying to fix it. Uggghhhhh..... :mad:

Monster Jam

That said, nice pickup. I still have my Pioneer deck that I bought new for $100+. My dad went to the pawn shop the same week and picked up the same brand and model for $20.

George Grand

Talk to ESavinon. He stopped by here a couple years ago and hauled out over 1,000 cassettes for $100.

heiney9

Monster Jam wrote: »

....I can't tell you how many times I had a deck eat a damn tape. There I was with a pencil spinning the tape trying to fix it. Uggghhhhh..... :mad:

Tapes in a Nak deck rock, they're just an huge inconvenience. I never had a tape eaten by one of my Nak decks.........never in 13 years. Kept up the cleaning and used top shelf blank cassettes. I was a big cassette-o-phile in the 80's, but alas they don't hold up in the extreme and they are just plain inconvenient.

Rock on Danger...........I'd hate to see your face if heard a Nak deck with a well recorded cassette tape. You might fall over! :D:p.

H9

BB3

danger boy, that Onkyo was a really good find. I own that model myself. Did you notice the "Accu-Bias" control knob ? Pretty cool really. Onkyo made that so that you could adjust for the various cassette manufacturers tapes and or their particular quality(Bias,CR02,Metal). If I recall correctly, the owners manual lists the cassette manufacturers(Maxell,Memorex,TDK,BASF,etc..) and the bias setting that would best suit the particular tape you were using.

I remember buying mine because I thought the electronic companies were going to stop producing cassette decks, so it was really a last ditch effort in my mind to add a very high quality product to the rest of my system. I've used it literally 1 time.

Take Care, BB3

danger boy

BB3, thanks for the info.. I was lucky enough buy it with the manual.. and you are right. it does list the bias setting for each tape type.

Can this deck play metal tapes? My memory is bad thinking back when I used to have a cassette deck in my system.. or do I need a deck that says it can play metal tapes?

inside the owners manual is a receipt for the unit when it was purchased new for $269 (along with a CDP someone purchased at the same time).

cfrizz

Welcome to Club Polk BB3!

Rock on Al. It looks alot like my Onkyo 2600. I haven't used it in years. But it's still in my rack.

RuSsMaN

It'll handle 'metal' tapes fine. Tapes are cool.

Danny Tse

I think your deck will automatically sense what kind of tape you inserted, especially one of HX Pro vintage (HX Pro was a B&O invention to extend frequency response)

Makes me want to resurrect my 3 head 3 motor Sony TC-670K cassette deck.

danger boy

Danny Tse wrote: »

I think your deck will automatically sense what kind of tape you inserted, especially one of HX Pro vintage (HX Pro was a B&O invention to extend frequency response)

Makes me want to resurrect my 3 head 3 motor Sony TC-670K cassette deck.

and why don't your bring your Sony deck out of mothballs?

heiney9

Danny Tse wrote: »

Makes me want to resurrect my 3 head 3 motor Sony TC-670K cassette deck.

I've got a Nak sitting right here in my computer stack. For awhile a few years ago I was transferring all my Zep bootlegs from the tape trading days to cdr. What an arduous process of indexing each song, eliminating gaps and trying to fit analog tape (at ~45 minutes a side) onto a cdr (80 minutes). It all had to be done in real time.....arghhhh!!

Thank God, I've just recently been able to get all digital versions of my 325 Zep shows I collected on cassette tape over the years.

Still might hook the Nak up to the main rig for old time sake.

H9

H9

ESavinon

Hx pro does not need decoding. It's a process used to extend the hi frequencies during the recording process.

BB3

cfrizz wrote: »

Welcome to Club Polk BB3!

Rock on Al. It looks alot like my Onkyo 2600. I haven't used it in years. But it's still in my rack.

Well thank you cfrizz. I appreciate the welcome. I do apologize for thanking you this way in using another post on this subject instead of sending you a P.M., but I do not have enough of a post count yet. I'll try and make for that....

Take Care Gentlemen.

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BB3