Cassette Deck, Eq, and a Receiver

To make it short. I have a marantz 2238b receiver. A yamaha eq. A sony tc wr 465. And a dual 1225 tt. I recently resurrected the tape deck after a 20 year hiatus. I got bored so I took the deck out of the cellar. The tt and marantz have been overhauled. Incredible sound. I bought new oldstock tapes (metal and chrome) and did some recording. Vocals sound terrible. Saxophones and trumpets lousy. The highs not so good. The Lows sound great. Bass nice. Drums great. Hooked up eq to receiver to tape monitor. Deck to the eq. Deck is now in for repair. New belts to be installed. Tech did a wow and flutter test. Tested good. I told him to check the heads for reallignment or replacement. Roller replacement? Comments welcome. I only did this because I am sick and tired of listening to digital music.

 

Having quite a few cassette decks in my time, the head probably needs a good cleaning and realignment. Not that hard to do, and probably you could do it yourself and save some coin.

 

Do you have a number? Just curious.

 

Bruno. Thanks for the advice. I tried taping Mel Torme off of an mazing audiophle quality vinyl German pressing. Everything sounded great except for his voice. Almost sounded like his voice was underwater. Glad you think it could be a head cleaning and re-alignment. I.ve noticed these tech guys need to be told specifics for them to focus on the problem. I just told them what yo think so they are looking into it. This deck has sat for 20 years. Should I be recording with the eq "rec" button engaged or leave the eq out of the recording and record straight off the receiver. Could the crossovers in my speakers be causing this distortion?

 

I would leave it off, but you can try it either way and see what you prefer.

I wouldn't think the speaker's crossover would only effect the cassette deck.

 

I'm pretty sure there are good CD player with a pleasing more analog sound, Also a DAC converter that you may acquire that youll like and its not gonna break the back.
However the cassette world to me is my main and prime listening tool. The nakamichi, pioneer, old rotel decks are my favorite. Pretty sure there are a lot more. Just keep posting if you have any questions. There are a lot of us here that are using magnetic medias. If you have any questions, we could always share our experiences.

 

The ART DJ2 phono pre amp did the trick. My eq into the tape monitor on the marantz. My cassette deck into the eq. They do make a usb version and one with blue tooth. But this is all I need. I can.t believe how this thing works and how it makes my system sound. Smooths out everything. No distortions. No hums. Great cassette recordings. No moe crazy vocals and horn sections. ART Dj2 on the bay and the A- --zon. This thing is amazaing. Can use it for analog to digital if you get the one with the USB. I bypassed the phono input and hooked into the auxilary line in. The phono pre amp in my Marantz was just too powerful to record from. I can t tell you 8n words the bang you get from 65 bucks that cured all my problems in one hook up! You gotta get one of these if you are a serious analog audiophile! Thanks for all the input. A little adjustment in the gain and accurate clipping adjustment and going off the phono builtin prw amp was all I needed.

 

Nice, I have a question that I haven't been able to rule out the cause of. I am getting an occasional tick or click sound on my Dennon deck so I ran a demagentizer thru it and it was fine, then my Tascam 4 trk recorder (it's a porta o2, I use it as a quick riff recorder) started doing this same thing with the tick or click sound.
Both of these are set up aside from my stereo and I swap the RCA's when I switch between them, also they are running on a different power circuit than my stereo is using.

My guess is it's the power as I moved both units to another room and used headphones just to see if this sound would occur and it didn't.

Any suggestions?
I might run a extension cord from a different outlet and see if any change, I say this as I don't really want to spend money till I can figure out what I need do and why.
I might try moving the decks to a different location too if the extension cord with power strip doesn't change anything. It's been driving me nuts, tho thankfully it hasn't hurt the tapes any. It's odd.
Thanks for any suggestions or advice in advance.

 

I'm not quite sure if that's the case but however where you want to start the most common one is the AC outlet.
There is a possibility that your AC outlet is has a loose screw or connection or bad outlet in that spot. You might as well replace it with even not too expensive but higher amperage and rock solid outlet. Atleast you know your high fidelity system is plugged in to the right spot.
***Be careful don't get electrocuted.***
Let someone do it comfortably if you haven't done it.

 

That's for reply.
So far so good. I dug out box of cords and strips, found a good AC outlet and moved the two decks to a different location and haven't had a problem (fingers crossed).
I was thinking it was the AC all along. I plan to replace it over the weekend.

Cheers