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In Reply to: RE: cassette experiment HK TD292 posted by ltman on May 26, 2024 at 11:53:58
I owned several cassette decks over the years, including two HK models. I don't remember model numbers but the first was a horizontal top load unit while the second looked like the same series as yours. Mine was 3-heads and I did a fair bit of recording with it. I thought the HKs were among the best that I owned.
I still have a TOTL Pioneer deck but one of the two belts needs replacing. That appears to be a somewhat complex task so I've successfully put it off. But I still have a collection of tapes to enjoy if I got it working again.
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing, if you can fake that you've got it made." Groucho
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I always liked the h/k decks. The horizontal loader you mention is probably the hk705, a pretty heavy unit with the removable top door to allow access to capstan and heads.
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I always liked the h/k decks. The horizontal loader you mention was probably the hk705, a pretty heavy unit. Note the removable top door for access to capstan and heads.
Yep I would have preferred a 3 head HK cassette but they are hard to come by in working condition unless outrageous pricing, and I didn't want my very first cassette deck ever to be a junker.
I skipped the cassette craze back in the day - went with an RT-707 as my first tape machine and never looked back.
Sold four Pioneers - two 707s and two 909s a few months ago - and now experimenting with Sony reel to reels and the TD292.
And inexpensive used commercial cassettes are widely available still and seem to have avoided the worst of the tape shedding problem that vintage reel to reel tapes often have.
So far though none of my replacement decks can hold a candle to the sound quality of the 909. As a test, when dubbing onto tape on the 909 from TIDAL, when I switched between source and tape monitoring I could not hear any difference at all!
Like the girl that got away, I guess now I will always regret selling that one...
I did have a Sony R2R for awhile, TD350?
I didn't have the patience with loading and searching for specific songs, so sold it to a friend and returned to cassettes.
I was not impressed with many prerecorded cassettes. The ones I made seemed much better sonics. A problem with high speed duping?
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing, if you can fake that you've got it made." Groucho
"I was not impressed with many prerecorded cassettes."
"A problem with high speed duping?"The vast majority of commercial pre-recorded cassettes were made on high-speed duplicators. As a music major in college, I worked part time in the A/V department, where one of my tasks was to make cassette duplicates of lectures. We had Telex duplicators which ran at (I think) 4X or 8X speed. Large commercial duplicators ran much faster. And therein lie the limitations. I wouldn't call them "problems", but rather, limitations.
Fortunately, many of the people buying pre-recorded commercial cassette music didn't notice or care about the marginal sound quality - they just wanted to play the Ray Conniff Singers or Twitty Conway or Classic Classicals in the car, even if they had to use a portable tape player to do it (but installing after-market car cassette players was big business in the 1970s and '80s!).
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We are inclusive and diverse, but dissent will not be tolerated.
Edits: 05/29/24 05/29/24
Were they any labels producting decent sounding cassettes?
Open Reel also has the same manufacturing method of high speed duplication I presume?
"Were they any labels producting decent sounding cassettes?"
I don't know.
*********
We are inclusive and diverse, but dissent will not be tolerated.
Even in the early eighties there were companies doing that, places like DTR (Direct-to-Tape Recording) and Barclay Crocker. You were able to specify the format you wanted including the number of tracks, speed, noise reduction, etc.
Unfortunately, all their tapes that I bought back then had some noise reduction, which made them useless for me today, so I sold almost all of them, I think I still have three.
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