flatgrass Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Production still strong in Springfield, MO Independent bands seem to be one of the drivers. Since selling a great condition Tascam 122 six years ago still looking for a good replacement. Wish I hadn't have done that. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billybob Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 That is pretty cool. Maybe the young and nostalgic will revive the market for hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frzninvt Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Parted with my Nakamichi RX-505 and Teac R-999X and all my TDK MAX-G cassette tapes many years ago. Did a lot of recording before CD's became mainstream in cars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teaman Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 (edited) I have about four Technics cassette decks in storage still. I think two dual deck three motor and two single deck three or four motor. Very nice decks. Free to good home if anyone wants them.....just pay shipping! PM me if interested! EDit:.....forgot, I also have a brand new sealed twelve pack of Maxell XL II 90 Chrome tapes....same deal. Just pay shipping! All decks and tapes are sold....thanks Tim Edited September 5, 2015 by teaman 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muel Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Parted with my Nakamichi RX-505 and Teac R-999X and all my TDK MAX-G cassette tapes many years ago. Did a lot of recording before CD's became mainstream in cars. The only tapes I don't still have are the ones that were stolen through the years (mostly college). I loved watching that RX-505 flip those tapes around! Maybe I'll find one someday that isn't all scratched up. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 All well recorded cassettes sound incredibly good, but I have a couple I made on "last generation" metal tape, Dolby C encoded, that sound as good as anything, and I mean anything. The technology may be obsolete but the sound quality remains state of the art. Dave 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricktate Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 I still use my Akia GX-F71 deck three head deck I bought from Crutchfield when their catalog was very thick. In fact I have an old Team electronics catalog with awesome stuff in it. I have some old cassettes from Teac that look like little reel to reel tapes. Remember the old stereo buyers guides got some of those that were as thick as phone books also. Rick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 I have hundreds of recordings I made using a Nakamici Dragon (which I still have) and they sound great. I even made a recording of a banjo trio using the Dragon and a Revox B77 simultaneously. The B77 had slightly better fidelity but more noise. I also have a Tascam CL222 for dubbing/transfer of CD/tapes. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teknoid Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 It's interesting to me that cassettes are experiencing an upsurge in sales in parallel with vinyl. I was a devote' of both formats back in the day but abandoned both with the introduction of CDs. Hey... nobody ever accused me of being the sharpest tool in the shed. Back in the late 70s early 80s I had a pretty nice system that included a Revox B77 and a Nakamichi 1000 Tri-Tracer. Every weekend a group of 6 to 10 friends would gather at my house each of us with a brand new album. We would play each album simultaneously recording it on the R2R and cassette. The owner of the album got the first generation cassette. If anybody else wanted a copy I'd dub it to cassette from the B77 during the next week and deliver it to the the next weekend gathering. At the time I was adding to my album collection (on cassette and/or reel) at a rate of 6 to 10 per week while only buying one. Yes... I know... It was "music piracy" but we really didn't have that term at the time. A couple of years before that there was a local "album rock" FM station. Every night at 11:00 PM thay would play an album uninterupted. A couple of minutes before they started the album they would announce the track names then at a couple of seconds before 11:00 they would do a countdown to play. At the time I was using a Pioneer CTF-9191 cassette deck. I had the whole stereo on a timer so that I could record every album every night. When I moved to CD in 1985 I boxed up my cassette deck and most of the collection of cassettes (3000+) and began re-building my music collection on CDs. Some years later being the complete dumb@$$ that I often am I gave away the Nakamichi and sold the cassettes for 25¢ each at various garage sales. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teaman Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 I still remember waiting and counting down the minutes to hear the laumch of the new Van Halen with Sammy as lead singer for the first time. WRIF in Detroit played it at 12:01 am on launch day and I sat eagerly awaiting the first play. With one finger on the record button and the other on pause I waited until AP stopped talking so I could get only the music. Cool when you look back at silly things we did.....hahaha 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teaman Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 It's interesting to me that cassettes are experiencing an upsurge in sales in parallel with vinyl. I was a devote' of both formats back in the day but abandoned both with the introduction of CDs. Hey... nobody ever accused me of being the sharpest tool in the shed. Back in the late 70s early 80s I had a pretty nice system that included a Revox B77 and a Nakamichi 1000 Tri-Tracer. Every weekend a group of 6 to 10 friends would gather at my house each of us with a brand new album. We would play each album simultaneously recording it on the R2R and cassette. The owner of the album got the first generation cassette. If anybody else wanted a copy I'd dub it to cassette from the B77 during the next week and deliver it to the the next weekend gathering. At the time I was adding to my album collection (on cassette and/or reel) at a rate of 6 to 10 per week while only buying one. Yes... I know... It was "music piracy" but we really didn't have that term at the time. A couple of years before that there was a local "album rock" FM station. Every night at 11:00 PM thay would play an album uninterupted. A couple of minutes before they started the album they would announce the track names then at a couple of seconds before 11:00 they would do a countdown to play. At the time I was using a Pioneer CTF-9191 cassette deck. I had the whole stereo on a timer so that I could record every album every night. When I moved to CD in 1985 I boxed up my cassette deck and most of the collection of cassettes (3000+) and began re-building my music collection on CDs. Some years later being the complete dumb@$$ that I often am I gave away the Nakamichi and sold the cassettes for 25¢ each at various garage sales. I don't think it was dumb to jump ship on a nearly expired technology, I did the same thing. I had over 600 lp's and I sold them all to my sister along with my Technics turntable for $250. I still don't see any benefits of hearing ticks and pops on an album that can only worsen with time. To me, only the nostalgia of owning a TT or trying to fit into the hipster setting would be reasons to hang on to a turntable or a cassette player at this point. But of course, to each their own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 Back in the late 70s early 80s I had a pretty nice system that included a Revox B77 and a Nakamichi 1000 Tri-Tracer. When I moved to CD in 1985 I boxed up my cassette deck and most of the collection of cassettes (3000+) and began re-building my music collection on CDs. Some years later being the complete dumb@$$ that I often am I gave away the Nakamichi and sold the cassettes for 25¢ each at various garage sales. WHAT??!!! GAVE IT AWAY?. In 1985? Man, I sure wish I was one of your friends back then! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 All well recorded cassettes sound incredibly good, but I have a couple I made on "last generation" metal tape, Dolby C encoded, that sound as good as anything, and I mean anything. The technology may be obsolete but the sound quality remains state of the art. Dave Dave, are you feeling ok? I mean really, there's "state of the art" (like me, ha ha), and then there's state of the art of a particular technology. And quite frankly, there just isn't (wasn't) any cassette tape that was "state-of-the-art" tape even at its peak. A Mark Levinson modified Studer recording and playback at 30ips is certainly capable of better sound than anything you could ever hope to get from any 1.825ips cassette. Yes, they could, with certain decks and tape types produce amazingly good sound (even by today's standards). However, years ago I made an experimental recording of "natural sounds" outside in my backyard feeding the signal to both my Nakamichi Dragon and a Sony A7 digital tape deck. When the signal level was high enough to capture the sound of the crickets and cicada (above the cassette tape's noise floor) the cassette tape ran out of dynamic range and clipped when the aerial bombs went off at a nearby festival. The digital tape deck easily handled the dynamic range. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 Artto, put it in perspective. "Good as anything" refers to commercial releases, not recordings as you or I might make. And metal tape with Dolby C on a good cassette deck does sound as good to me as the best CDs when copied from a top quality source. As I've said before the, to me, extremely minor differences in the highest in gear and such are not really meaningful as I don't listen to equipment but music. To the extent the equipment doesn't draw attention to itself it's perfect, IMHO. Many above have talked about "obsolete formats." I find that silly. The past two weeks I've listened almost exclusively to 78 rpm records. Some of these, especially from the 40s, have such punch, presence, and range as to simply disappear as "format" and present as a pure musical experience. I've yet to see a "modern" format that can make a 78 sound as good as the "thing in itself" when play properly. Granted, as I suspect you'd agree, this is probably due to poor engineering rather than format but I am never really tempted to record these as I see no sense in stepping a generation away from the original when the original works just fine. I've done those same sort of experiments with the same results. But it doesn't apply to commercial releases which so rarely live up to the abilities of the format. Beyond that, there remains the situation, as at least one or so mentioned above, that years ago with these great analog mediums we and others listened to a LOT more music than we do now. I still believe something is inherently wrong in the commercial music industry as I KNOW from personal experience that modern digital media can deliver a superior experience. But it doesn't. I wrote a piece some of you have read on my blog called "Whatever Happened to Hi-Fi? The American Pastime of a Passed Time" that covered my own view of these issues. Many have picked on various bits, but there was no single cause but a combination of issues. Personally, I rather doubt I'd notice a significant (and the word choice itself is significant) difference between that moded Studer and my Sony R2R. Not saying it isn't there, just saying that the difference for me might be like closing a door or moving a chair in my listening room. I try to avoid writing here in anything like absolutes as this pursuit has none with the possible exception of achieving a true zero noise floor after your system takes a lightning surge. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 (edited) "Many above have talked about "obsolete formats." I find that silly." "I've done those same sort of experiments with the same results. But it doesn't apply to commercial releases which so rarely live up to the abilities of the format." "Beyond that, there remains the situation, as at least one or so mentioned above, that years ago with these great analog mediums we and others listened to a LOT more music than we do now." 1. agreed 2. agreed. the majority of cassettes commercially released were duplicated at high speeds, so much so the frequency response and noise floor suffered immensely. 3. I listen to a LOT more music now and enjoying it more than ever now that I'm not screwing around cleaning records & stylus before every play, trying to find a particular track on the tape, searching through a physical library for tapes & LPs, etc. My main source now involves completely digital throughput (laptop/J River), direct digital amplification/DAC amplifier. I'll also go on record (not arguing with you, just saying) that most people have never heard true, all digital hi-res throughput, even though they think they have - there's almost always more than one DAC/ADC conversions and analog processing somewhere in the "digital" chain. And that IMO is the weak link (other than what the recording/mastering engineer can do to mess it up) But yes, and you know I agree with you on this since we've both done a lot of our own recording, both digital and analog for many years (ne' decades), the recording engineer is king. As you know, it's difficult enough to simply capture a good recording regardless of the medium or technology used. If you're ever in Chicago you've got to stop by and hear my current setup. A lot has changed. Edited September 5, 2015 by artto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted September 5, 2015 Share Posted September 5, 2015 If you're ever in Chicago you've got to stop by and hear my current setup. A lot has changed. Would love to. Your system is beyond my imagination. However, I never clean a stylus, or a record, unless I hear an issue. Playing an LP or a tape is no more difficult to me than it is to boot the computer and hunt through the menus for something. Beyond that, the vast majority of great music of the past 100 years still resides on analog media of a variety of formats. I don't list to media or formats, just music, so I have no preference. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rummy Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 I still have my Nakamichi 700 II. I don't know if it still works, but it looks really cool on the shelf. My B&O 4002 still works, probably not as good as it should or ever has, buts its neat to play an lp every once in a while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 (edited) If you're ever in Chicago you've got to stop by and hear my current setup. A lot has changed. However, I never clean a stylus, or a record, unless I hear an issue. Dave You can't get away with that around here - you live where it's very humid. Around here any static build up (and there will be static) because it gets so dry inside in the winter will attract enough dust or whatever to require cleaning before and after. Even with a good whole house humidifier you're lucky to get 30% indoor humidity, and any more than that just results in condensation. Edited September 6, 2015 by artto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 Even with a good whole house humidifier you're lucky to get 30% indoor humidity, and any more than that just results in condensation Probably got down to 30% in my house maybe once this year for a couple of weeks. However, I recall the issue from living in El Paso and in far west Texas. Lean over a disc and it would pull dandruff off your head! Pretty near wore out a D-Stat out there. A miracle device! If that dry you should consider the Magical Mystery Goo disc treatment. No way to verify here but the anti-static chemical in it is said to be permanent. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mighty Favog Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 (edited) Still have my Yamaha K-1020, still sounds o.k. given the miles on it. Could use a set of belts. Heard through the grape-vine it has a lot of Nak parts inside. Got about 2-cases on unopened TDK MA-90 around here somewhere. Also have my Teac V-33 in storage that also needs belts. Definitely not a high quality machine but I can't bring myself to get rid of it; it was my high-school graduation present from my mother (R.I.P) in 83'. Edited September 9, 2015 by Mighty Favog Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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