Cassette Tape Decks

With the resurgence of cassettes in the underground music scene, who here is knowledgeable on the subject, does anyone collect tape decks?  I'm looking at purchasing a used Nakamichi 500 or 550 for Xmas, but I'm indecisive.  The EQ on the 500 is really sweet, but the 550 is the field model, and looks much more durable, kind of militaristic.  Opinions welcome.

*paging joshuatx*

edit: here it is

  On 11/8/2015 at 4:50 PM, joshuatx said:

 

here's a big write up i PM another watmmer awhile back:

 

  Quote

 

 

The first good news is ripping tape is far less complicated than recording on it! (That's a barrel of monkeys of discussion and debate, something even pros are always trying to perfect and refine and the variables on what you want vary too.)

I'll try to go by priority - i.e. most to least important:

1.Good deck:

- avoid dual decks (some are ok) and look for 3-head decks.
- 3-heads generally have inherently better playback. Most decks are 2-heads which means the heads have to do both recording and playing modes, compromising performance. The huge exception is Nakamichi - many say their 2-head decks outperform even good 3-head decks from other brands and few debate this.
- Brand - as you guess Nakamichi is king - but they are expensive and often costly to maintain.
So Nakamichi alternatives I've seen praised: Denon, Aiwa, Onkyo, JVC, Tandberg, Teac, Tascam, Akai, Pioneer. Depends on era and models though.

http://www.audiokarm...ead.php?t=97583
http://www.tapeheads...read.php?t=2824

I personally have a JVC TD-V541 I found on CL for $10 and had repaired for $150. It's direct drive and mid-90s and from what I've read pretty good reviews.

- Go with direct-drive and not belt - unless it's professionally refurbished it's probably good to avoid belt-driven and go with direct-drive for archiving - it'll avoid a headache of a belt wearing out and that notorious wow and flutter emerging.
- Tascam (and Teac I think) still makes new decks - tape snobs don't love them but they are good and pros and a lot of tape labels use them for duplication and dubbing now. They're probably reliable as hell too.

Just always look up online! There are always odd exceptions. Walkmans and boomboxes are a general no of course.

2. Clean heads! Otherwise there's potential (maybe small but why risk it) that you can damage tapes on playback - dirty tapeheads cause damage that can spiral out of control every time you play tapes in the deck - it strips away the magnetic tape from the cassette and more magnetism means more damage. This is what infamously occurred with that album the disintegration loops. And more generally they will simply affect the performance of the cassette deck.

That's the scary bit, it's really easy:

- I mentioned this in the cassette day thread.
- Since you are digitizing important cassettes, it wouldn't hurt to clean you pinch rollers and tape heads fairly often, maybe every 20 hours of playback or so. Again, I'd google for tips. Basically if you use the cotton swab and isopropyl alcohol (91%+) and if there's no rusty colored tape residue you're good!
- demagnetizing - it's controversial and debated BUT I would confidently say it's a must at least once: when you first acquire a used deck. I have done so with a wand demagnitizer with all new decks I have acquired. there are good tutorials for this online - I would say unless you leave a tape in the deck for a long time on accident or have some odd electric outage or something don't worry about demagnetizing often at all - maybe every 4-6 months or after 100s of hours of playback/recording. Some say its not even needed if the deck is well maintained. Cleaning is the only constant.

so don't playback anything you value before clean and demagnetize (if it's new or refurbished it's probably ok) and check between major digitizing sessions

3. Interface:

- probably the biggest "quality" aspect besides the deck itself
- since you make music and all you're likely covered - I have a Tascam us-122 that works fine
- a lot of "digitizing cassette" articles/tutorials don't cover this and that's really a major difference between casual digitizing and serious archiving

4. Cables
- Heh, I actually don't know much about cables - I have a Hosa cable connecting my deck to the interface - it's a 1/8 RCA to 1/4 guitar jack cable. If you have studio cables use those I guess.
- In other words, avoid crappy RCA cables that don't work?

5. Tape repair/cleaning
- I have not had to deal with this yet - this seems helpful though: http://www.tapeheads...read.php?t=2560
- tapes vary - some you can unscrew easily and fix and others hold up better than other brands
- I've seen videos of people taking tape out, using adhesive to put torn tape together, even "custom" cassettes with a shell from one band and tape from another

6. software - I haven't digitized whole albums much but I have used wavosaur and audacity and goldwave seem perfectly adequate. If there's a DAW you use for your music I'm sure that's fine too

7. Bit rate

...is up to you - I personally was OCD about this - would spend hours combing threads all over the internet for the best rate
- advice rates with ripping vinyl or recording music is just as relevant to tape
- I would say 16bit/44.1khz is a good standard - tape "rolls off the highs" frequency wise and when tape gets quiet the hiss comes in as it does with vinyl (a reason why classical music was such a hit on CD) so in other words anything beyond CD quality is not going to capture anything else - just take up space. - if it's crap tape or a bad dub it's going to be negligible (i.e. mp3 would probably be fine) but .wav is good for editing such rips too
- I'm sure 24/96 is great if you have space but probably overkill (24/192 is overkill imo) especially since you aren't recording, you're digitizing playback. For awhile I was thinking of 24/96 or 24/88.2 as a standard but I feel 16/44.1 is good enough

Also, don't mess with Dolby - it compromises the playback
Dolby is hard for me to explain but basically it eliminates as much "noise" in playback to prevent tape hiss - a lot of commercial releases you see have a Dolby setting to use with cassette decks for optimum performance: ex. a Dolby B recording sounds ideal with Dolby B set on the deck. But many simply leave Dolby off because no matter what it EQ's the sound in some manner. Again, some like it for certain music.

You might find it useful but I would only digitize in Dolby as a 2nd recording, not the primary archive. You can always EQ and remaster it yourself if the hiss is bad - without Dolby on you have the full spectrum of the recording.

8. Save your cassettes! (Or like maybe sell them after ripping them)

I wouldn't toss them out. I've read that DAT Tape (I know little about it) is a reliable redundant back-up: U-Ziq mentioned his stuff was archived on DAT. My assumption is that it has the benefits of analog physical storage but the digital data is easier to retrieve and is consistent upon playback. Some tape audiophiles back up their cassettes on DAT with that in mind, and/or use DAT masters for duplicating onto cassette tape.

Man, I need to get off my ass and start digitizing and recording in earnest. I often end up talking about it more than actual doing. I'd like to share some of my rare stuff too (we could trade rips maybe)

I've been meaning to start a blog of what I find as well - perhaps we could collaborate. I'm sitting on a lot of cool finds - really odd demos, foreign pop tapes, out of print self-released new age and electronic albums. Sounds like you have a lot of really neat and interesting tapes in your collection.



Good luck man! I'd love to hear how it goes!

Sources:

When I first got a deck I found this and it's been a wonderful guide for anyone new to tape deck maintenance:

Another good overview from SOS 1994:

http://www.soundonso...ssettecare.html

My hobby of collecting lead me to a forum called tapeheads.net as a major source: tapeheads.net

(good source of info for reel to reel: http://messageboard.tapeop.com/)

Tapeheads is quite friendly but here's the ironic catch - many of these guys don't really collect tapes, they record onto them as audiophiles. For example some of these dudes that labor over vinyl to cassette transfers. The geek out over performance comparisons of decks and like vintage gear (similar to audiokarma.org)

Those are great resources for finding decks - easily why I go to tapeheads there above all else. They also have cool threads featuring neat tapes and pictures. Couple threads here about digitizing:
http://www.tapeheads...ead.php?t=10892
http://www.tapeheads...ead.php?t=18346
http://www.gearslutz...on-project.html

Threads about sample rate to use:

http://forums.steveh...prepare.281069/
http://www.gearslutz...ette-tapes.html

Really good thread about storing tapes and preserving quality:

http://www.clir.org/...re_degrade.html

 

TLDR: I would totally get a 2-head Nakamichi or a 3-head Japanese/German 80s or 90s era deck if have say $100-200 to splurge. If you can find a refurbished model, i.e. new belts, that's even better. I assume that's how much they go for now, I haven't looked in awhile.

Also that post is tailored toward recording so you can overlook a lot of things. Playback is a lot more consistent than recording quality wise. There's no reason to splurge on a hi-fi deck for playing back pre-recorded tapes, so I would would say any cleaned up dual deck would be a-ok. 

The cost of the highly desired models, the ones fetching $500+ or decks like Nakamichi Dragons, are really that way for audiophile hobbyists who like to record LPs or lossless digital to hi-quality tapes for personal playback on specific tape decks to get their analog tape fuzzies warmed. 

Dolby is something you want (it's more of a debate recording wise and TBH I wasn't as well informed about it earlier when I posted it) in case you have tapes recorded with Dolby or some other NR format.

Also clean you tape deck heads with alcohol to avoid it getting dirty and sound quality declining. Tape demagnetizers are a bit overkill (really more for recording a lot) but worth it in the long-run.