The reason why cassette Is more fun: buttons!

Wandered into the Goodwill on half-price day and pick this up for nine bucks. And miracle of all miracles someone must’ve services it down the line because the belt and idler are fine and this thing just purrs. Really a nice little deck. You can just sense the quality. This may have been one of Nakamichi’s budget decks but it makes most peoples top of the line decks look cheap.Everything has a nice firm laboratory feel. I have an even listened to it yet but I’m sure it just sounds fine. I’ve got this pioneer and this Aiawa deck right now laying around And it’s time just to trash those.. Double well decks which I never liked so I think they’re going to hit the road and I’ll just stick this on my shelf even though I’ll probably never use it except for the next couple times I play with it. Which is the point of this thread: yeah streaming is easy, but I really like playing with equipment. Pushing buttons. Seeing wheels spin. Watching counters. When you get a nice machine like this you appreciate that side of audio. Anyway I just took a picture in case anyone wants to see it.

 

"Nakamuxhi"...?

 

My two year old gets a big kick out of pushing buttons on audio equipment. We try to discourage him.

 

I like buttons and sliders as well. I have a fully functioning JVC cassette deck and I enjoy playing the odd cassette purely for the tactile pleasure of the controls.
Maybe that's part of the reason people like tone controls and equalizers. (Like me).

 

CD players don't have buttons?

 

Chinese knock off. Kidding. This deck sounds freaking amazing. Pretty amazing how good cassette is. I didn’t even clean the heads in the highs are right up there. Extended and airy. Nice deck. I just threw the other two decks in the garbage.

 

I really need to get my Nakamuxhi CR1a tuned up...

Actually, I've been sort of toying with the idea of doing it right and getting a 3-head deck, like a Tascam 122.

 

I fell in love with a Sansui HC-5100 the other day while in Connecticut. Wood case, this thing is a behemoth. Had it been serviced and available for purchase I would have grabbed it. But it was not working and only a museum show piece.

 

Hope you really didn't do that. Lots of folks will gladly take them if you list them for free on craigslist!

 

I know three heads sounds better than two but I never really found any huge benefit out of having a three head deck. Barely ever use the monitor.

 

Duuuude! nice score! that looks like a ripper of a tape deck.

 

I believe 3-heads is mostly helpful for calibrating to different tapes to record. Most people don't understand you have to calibrate to each brand/batch/year, for example TDK SA's from 1990. Some go so far to calibrate each time they record on each side of the tape..

Otherwise you won't get "spectactular" sound, just "good" sound when recording.

 

Ohhh, that looks beautiful. And suddenly, all the joy I experienced making all those mixtapes in Production Room 2 after-hours from multiple sources cued-up at one time, and timed for seemingly-effortless segues throughout one pass, come back to me.

 

Yeah, man, there's a real physical pleasure from making tapes. Making mixed CDs just wasn't as much fun. And I have yet to figure out how to share a playlist! Ha. Luddite. I'd love to have a heavy metal deck like a Revox or Tandberg, but I'll settle for goofing around with a cheapie that sounds nice. It came with someone's vinyl rips of Nat King Cole that sound REALLY good. Damn. Nicer than any digital needle drop I've ever heard.

 

Oh I have nothing wrong at all with making mixtape CD's...and besides, I do it mixing with Adobe Audition, so I can mix and segue and juxtapose to my heart's content. Burn, baby, burnin' - Mixtape Infernoooo...!

 

I could be wrong, but I thought another advantage of a three-head deck is that the playback and record heads can be optimized for their functions.

Returning to topic, as far as buttons go I prefer logic controls rather than mechanical controls, but I never liked the slider controls, preferring knobs for functions like adjusting the recording levels.

 

“Alexa, play ‘I am the Walrus’”.

OK, it’s not as tactile as pushing a button and hearing a clunk, but’s it’s quite magical nonetheless.

 

One of the features that I've always gotten a kick out of on my old Sony TC-FX6C are the "feather touch" soft-touch control pads. That and the digital counter with memory along with the multi-color LED VU meters that held and displayed peak readings for a small period of time. This piece has lasted now for approximately 37 years with only one trip to a technician at about the halfway point in it's life (thus far).

 

Yeah, I was pretty much the same as a kid. Maybe if my parents had discouraged me just a bit more I wouldn't have spent so much money on hifi gear and music over the past five decades.

 

BTW, the only "buttons" on a cassette deck I find worthy of promising any fun, are the standard, "piano-key" buttons of the earlier style transports, as opposed to the more modern, "selenoid-style". This is because selenoid buttons react slightly after being pushed, so more tape rolls past the head before responding to your command. But the piano-key button stops tape transport dead in its' tracks, allowing you to engineer beat-correct pauses, and even flawless edits, including beat-to-beat splices, with Record mode still set!

Many highschool geeks have been able to show off their creative segues to their friends, in the cozy privacy of the Audio-Visual Department office, without the scornful sneers from The Cook Kids. And, who knows how many of them may have gone on to start their own tech companies, eventually scooping-up trophy wives on the rebound from failed first marriages to the Senior Class football heroes!

 

That was the great thing about Sony's feather touch pads. In practical terms, the DD system responded to their inputs immediately. I could hold my recording with the pause pad and when I was ready to record, just the slightest touch of the pause pad (disabling the pause) would instantly fire off the recording. Probably quite a bit faster than the "piano-key" style buttons.

But I get what you're saying as I've had various cameras over the years, some with mechanical shutter releases and others with electronic shutter releases. Each effective in their own way, but there is a certain satisfaction to using an all mechanical setup.

 

I'm always saying "Hey, Google, Play the Beatles" or "Play the Velvet Underground" and it always directs you to some crappy Pandora station which plays some psuedo-Beatles track (performed by the Prague Orchestra) or one VU song and then inexplicably veers off into Vampire Weekend and Taylor Swift. They play you want they want to play you, not the other way around. You think youre in control, but you're not.

 

"Alexa, play 'down by the seaside', preceded by a nice detent button click sound."

 

Mine has some

 

I love buttons. I love VU meters. I'm easily wooed by shiny stuff with buttons, dials and VU meters. I'm terribly weak and should be placed under the care of a responsible adult.