are my audio cassettes doomed to the trash heap?

April 3, 2010 7:44 AM

Has anybody had any recent luck with any available commercial product for playing audio cassette?

I have a large audio cassette library. I do not play any of it much, but enough to keep around so far. I have had bad luck with the last player. It was a Philips shelf multi format stereo and the only thing I used it for was cassette playback and it is fritzed after only a couple years. What they have on the shelves right now at Target and Best Buy looks to me like they may make it through one cassette if I am lucky. What I can bring up on google looks dismal.

Have you bought a product you feel confident to recommend?
Have you trashed an audio cassette library out of frustration?

I am headed to the Goodwill store right now and I feel like I am chasing a long shot.

Thank you!

posted by bukvich to Shopping (9 answers total)

You probably have the right idea going to Goodwill. I'd check out pawn shops in the area that have a decent selection of audio equipment, as the older tapedecks are likely to be more durable.

Off the beaten track, you might try a music equipment store (i.e. the kind that sells recording equipment). You might luck out and find some formerly high-end used/consignment tapedecks.
posted by Beardman at 8:01 AM on April 3, 2010

Your best bet might be to pick up a second-hand separate cassette deck, perhaps on eBay. You'll need an amp and speakers as well, but it's worth it if you're looking for quality and reliability. Those cheap plastic radio/cassette things were always disposable junk.

I had a couple of Denon decks over the years and they were pretty sturdy. You might need to clean and align the heads, and possibly put in a new drive belt to get the best from it, but they don't make cassette decks like they used to. If you're lucky, you might even be able to get yourself one of the legendary Nakamichi Dragon decks; they were the bees knees.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 8:05 AM on April 3, 2010

When it comes out, the ION Tape Express can be a USB tape player. They also have a component style one with two cassette wells (handy in case one breaks!). You can also buy a cable and module that will allow you to use whatever tape deck you want (I wouldn't recommend a Nakamichi Dragon to someone who uses bookshelf systems, though). I don't have any connection to ION, I just know them to be creating a lot of products for oldaudio-to-computer connections.

But then you have to tie your computer and your tapes together. If that's a drag, I would just get a cassette boombox off of Amazon. If you're confident of judging brokenness (or know someone who is; you don't want your tapes to get eaten!), you could get a high quality older boombox that was made to have a durable tape mechanism off of Craigslist or EBay.
posted by rhizome at 9:24 AM on April 3, 2010

I bought a Pioneer CT-05D a few years ago, new. I imagine they still make them; think I paid around $250 for it. It has a digital processing chip that takes the analog signal from the tape and runs it through some algorithms to remove tape hiss; works pretty well most of the time, but in quiet passages, with headphones on, it produces an odd sound effect, a pinging. But bearing in mind the source material for many of my tapes were beat the hell albums borrowed from friends or the library, it does a pretty good job. And you can disable the digital processing if you want.

At this point, I'm using it mostly to dump tapes to my mac for conversion to digital, since many of my tapes are at or near the end of their 30 year life span. The deck has not eaten any of them so far. It makes a pretty loud noise when it auto-reverses (the heads rotating), but so far it's working fine.

I haven't had any luck w/ the boom box route; I looked into getting something I could sit on the seat next to me for the commute, but the best option looked like a used Marantz PMD430, with more bells & whistles than I needed (and price tag to match).
posted by Bron at 9:35 AM on April 3, 2010

Response by poster: The Nakamichi Dragon is overkill. I do have a component stereo system and most of my music collection is on CD. The main thing I use the cassette player for is spoken word--Teaching Company courses, poets, Shakespeare plays on tape, Feynman lectures on tape, some old Esalen tapes of Leary & Bateson & Capra and the like. The only music I listen to from cassette is old Dead shows and those are mostly of sentimental value as I have much better Dead show music on CD.

If you got a manic attack coming on sometime and you want a cheap fast bring down, go over and look at the home electronics department at your local Goodwill. Crikey.

I am inclined to go for the 120$ Sony component cassette player, but I am still interested in hearing others' opinions.
posted by bukvich at 9:44 AM on April 3, 2010

Ah, so you're clued in. That helps. Might be a bit spendy, but I recommend the Tascam 202mkV, which should last you most of the rest of your life. Many major component manufacturers like Sony, Onkyo, etc. still tend to make at least one cassette deck.
posted by rhizome at 10:01 AM on April 3, 2010

No way, man. Pick up a one from your local gigantic thrift store. I recently started listening to old tapes and 4-track recordings on this awesome Technics deck, and it really sounds much different than a mid 90's pioneer deck or something similar. It's incredibly heavy and cost around $10, but you see things like this move in and out every single day at the thrift store and they add a depth to your tapes that sounds really pleasurable, even if its not exact.

I would say you should definitely buy some used crap, plug it in at the store and find a cassette deck that appeals to you on the cheap. Or buy three of them and give away the ones you don't like. The bottom line is that you can get some really cool, hi-fi components if you spend your afternoon off digging. Plus they may have giant knobs instead of a digital display and working VU meters...
posted by kittensofthenight at 10:30 AM on April 3, 2010

A couple of years ago I bought a new Teac cassette/CD deck, and the cassette section crapped out in less than a year. I ended up buying a used dual cassette deck for $20 at a thrift shop which has been working just fine. The only annoyance is the lack of auto-reverse. You might want to watch out for that in used decks if you go that route and auto-reverse matters to you. You also want to make sure there's a return period with a used deck, just so you can make sure it's really working.
posted by DarkForest at 12:29 PM on April 3, 2010

Tascam still makes decent decks.

You didn't ask, but there are also cassette decks out there that let you copy the tapes to you PC which might not be a terrible idea for you to consider. Your tapes aren't going to last forever, unfortunately.
posted by jjb at 5:34 PM on April 3, 2010