DECKS APPEAL

DECKS APPEAL

Three heads are better than two!

So after digging out the tapes, you play them back on your cassette deck, that's if

you still have one and if you're like me, an obsessive that wants to hear tape at it's best

you get very curious indeed. Enter the world of the 3 Head deck! I never owned one

to be honest and I hear that they are better than 2 head machines. Why? Because It has a dedicated record head and a dedicated playback head and you can hear immediately what you record and compare it to source as you record. Now the market is still ripe with vintage decks from the 80s and the early 90s, but 3 head decks are becoming very rare. I checked out the local advertising websites as I would never buy a deck from overseas without hearing it first. This cannot be done unless you travel, and if you can afford to do that, you would spend far more than the deck would cost! Postage is another expensive addition as a courier is required. So I found a Pioneer CT-S810S 80 miles away and the seller said I was more than welcome to test it out at his house. I sped off and bagged it. I must say this deck sounds amazing. I have never heard a tape sound this good I have to admit. The clarity and detail is very impressive indeed. It is equipped with Dolby B, C and S, HX Pro and Pioneer's Super Auto BLE (Bias, Level, EQ. This ship dates back to 1992 and was a
considerable sum back then.

Hey, Don't touch the meter!

Buying an old Deck

When buying an old deck remember if it is more than 20 years old, it may have a lot of miles on the clock, just like an old car. You will have to take a bit of a gamble unless the owner kept it as a museum piece. Always turn it on and test it out. Check for pitch fluctuations during playback and wow and flutter means the belt might be knackered or even worse the motors. A lot of decks from around 25 years ago will have microprocessors in them and these may give trouble that cannot be fixed. Check the heads visually, if there is excessive wear walk away, a gleaming deck that looks pristine is no use if it has worn out heads, capstans and rollers. This will not only sound poor but could also chew your prized

vintage cassettes, so beware! Electrical goods from quarter of a century ago were never meant to run forever, then again I bought my first Technics CD player in 1988 and it is still working. Made in Japan, just like a Toyota, and they seems to run forever!

3 Heads and Dolby S no less!

Things to avoid

I am going to be very biased here. Avoid decks with Auto Reverse, there is no need for this and while it means that you may not have to turn the tape over, the heads may move out of alignment causing sound to deteriorate. There are of course some excellent Auto Reverse decks out there, take the Sony TCR-503ES for example, I even own one but for getting started, keep it simple but good. Forget most of todays decks, unless they are from high end manufacturers as they will more than likely be rubbish crammed with silly features that make no difference to the sound. Sound is the most important feature when it comes to tapes not flashing lights! The better the sound the happier you will feel when listening to your favourite music. Most modern decks will have lots of plastic parts and will be poorly assembled. Avoid them. But on the bright side, great cassette decks, like the tapes they play, are now consigned to the music listening publics dustbin thanks to the boring and sonically challenged old iPod and only people in the know hunt them down. 

Going Mobile

So you get a 3 head deck, it sounds fab, and that old Maxell XLII-S you just recorded sounds turbo charged. You're dancing again and you love it so much you want to take it with you when you leave the house, so what do you need? A Sony Walkman. A What? You heard me, I said a Sony Walkman. I picked this model up on a local advertiser, I met the guy. I put in a battery and it gurgled. Bad news. He just handed it to me for free out of sympathy. I opened it up and ran it on a DC power supply for a few hours and what the hell it came back to life. It even runs on a battery. The sound? It sounds amazing with tapes recorded on the Pioneer CT-S810S deck of course. The treble detail is incredible, mids are engaging and lifelike and the bass big and tight without a hint of distortion. In fact I had forgotten what real analog bass sounds like from listening to iPods over the last few years. The sound from this blows any mp3 player out of the water and it gets to my gut. What I mean by that is I can feel the music and it makes me feel warm inside, mp3 leaves me cold. Comparing the two side by side the mp3 sounds aggressive, raspy and lacks serious detail. It's hard to believe millions worldwide seem to enjoy such lo-fi sound. I'd love to do a blindfold test on a few iPod heads. There argument would probably be that they have all there music in their pockets but personally I'd rather the sound of a pocket to an mp3 file!

The sleek and sexy WM-EX552

Loaded with a Sony Esprit II cassette!

The not so sexy controls!

Vintage Sony Earphones

I can remember buying these in November 1988 and they were pretty expensive, but they sounded great. I have had them ever since but I didn't used them for years. I dug them out and low and behold they still work fine. They go with this Walkman perfectly well taking me back to the days of

analog odyssey! 

Anyone ever hear of Sony Twin Turbo earphones?