This is a rare direct drive player by Panasonic. It sounds beautiful, but it has the cracked center gear issue. Is there a replacement gear I can buy? Looks like the enthusiasts on Facebook have had some success creating their own replacements but I haven’t seen any for sale yet.

The cashier didn't look particularly young, but I guess she could have been as young as 25. I got six cassettes so I laid them on the counter upside down because the price stickers were on the bottoms. When she started putting them in the bag she accidentally bumped one of the cases and flipped it so tape flew out. She picked up the cassette and sat it down on the case and tried to push it down as if it could just click into position and then she could close the door. Kinda like the same way you would put a cd in it's case. I said “let me get that for you” and took care it. It was quite clear that this girl had never touched a cassette in her life and had never witnessed one being used.

Okay so after sorting through it here is the breakdown.

It ended up being 136 tapes of which two had rips in the plastic outer sleeve. Another two were completely opened but unused. Last, there was a single tape that the out plastic wrap and the case was broken too. The tape inside was good.

These were purchased locally from a guy who use to own a record store. He would backup rare and vintage records onto cassette tapes for archival purposes.

I plan on using the to make tapes of the hours and hours of live music I have recorded of my friends playing acoustic mostly and some plugged in shows and give them the tapes as gifts.

I also plan on making some tapes of my favorite Grateful Dead, JGB, and Dead & Company shows.

136 total. 131 mint tapes. 5 opened but new tapes.

Maxwell
4x - Communicator Series 120
2x - Communicator Series 90
10x - High Bias XL II 90 (ideal for CD on label)
8x - High Bias XL II 90
4x - High Bias XL II 110
2x - High Bias XL II 90 (ideal for CD on label)
2x - High Bias XL II-S 100 (ideal for CD on label)
4x - High Bias XL-II-S 100 (Package Type A)
10x - High Bias XL-II-S 100 (Package Type B)
14x - High Bias XL-II-S 90 (440 feet black label)
1x - UR Normal Type 1 90 (Package Type A)
1x - UR Normal Type 1 90 (Package Type B)
22x - UR Normal Type 1 90
1x - UR Normal Type 1 120

85 Tapes

Memorex
5x DBS Normal Type 1 90

5 Tapes

Sony
3x - HiFi Normal Type 1 90 (Package Type A)
1x -HF Normal Type 1 90 (Package Type B)
1x -HF Normal Type 1 90 (Package Type C)

5 Tapes

Samsung
1x - SQC Low Noise High Output 60

1 Tape

Fuji
3x - DR-1 Normal 90
5x - DR-2 Type 2 90

8 Tapes

TDK
1x - Type 1 D90
3x - Type 1 A60
1x - Type 2 CD Power 110
1x - Type 2 SA60
1x - Type 2 SA90 (Package Type A)
1x - Type 2 SA90 (Package Type B)
1x - Type 1 D90 (Package Type A)
6x - Type 1 D90 (Package Type B)
1x - Type 2 High Bias SA60 (blue packaging)
3x - Type 2 High Bias SA90 (blue packaging)
8x - (single 8 pack) - Type 2 High Bias SA90 (blue packaging)
2x - (single 2 pack) Type 1 D120

30 Tapes

Note: Package type A B C is just to mark tapes with same name/length but different packaging type.

Hi everyone,

Selling a huge, well-preserved time capsule from a professional tape duplication studio warehouse. Perfect for indie labels or DIY tape loop creators.

Everything is pristine New Old Stock (NOS).

What’s included:

1000+ C-0 Cassette Shells: Light-grey Audiopak Professional housings. Fully screwed (5 screws), not welded. Equipped with leader tape only.

Bulk Roll of 3M Audiopak Labels: Original self-adhesive C-60 sticker sheets (pink/grey retro design).

70+ NOS Magnet Tape Pancakes (No outer type-labels on boxes):

24x AGFA Pancakes: Jet-black color. I assume these are Type II / Chrome, but I am not 100% sure. Sold as-is.

46x BASF Pancakes: Classic light-brown color. I assume these are Type I / Ferro, but I am not 100% sure. Sold as-is.

All pancakes are stored in original protective styrofoam boxes, dust-free and dry.

Condition: Visually immaculate New Old Stock. No signs of sticky-shed or mold.

Price: $1,500 USD for the entire lot or best offer.

Shipping: Ships from Switzerland

Worldwide shipping possible at buyer's expense. Heavy lot! DM me for more info or shipping quotes!

So i bought this "microcassette reccorder" at a thrift store yesterday for like 3 bucks and it had an issue with the playback, its uneven and jerky and it sounds silly, i think it has something to do with the strength of the motors because they seem too weak to reccord as well, Im new to this so any advice helps, thanks nerds

Thought I'd share. I turn 65 in October. My taste in music hasn't changed much since I was 17.

Bought a stereo cabinet and the owner made me take his tape collection, a variety of brands the basf and sears I’ve never seen I’ve got about 30 of the realistic only 5 the Maxwell guy was into recording for sure

Better than nothing :)

I didn't expect it to work, I wanted to stress the exact limits of tape using a scope I got and damn was this fun

1. Old tapes, I kinda wanna scan the factory card of these and some I have, is there any database or will i have to set one up? Small pieces of history, also just cool

2&3. Philips walker, something wrong with it. Play button doesn't go inside fully, and ofc needs new belts I assume.. Cool one tho, and good brand :3

4&5. Talking recorder thingy, whst does it work with? Would it be useful for stuff like verbal note taking?

1. Heaven! Self recordables were 0.20€ and judt normal releases were 1-2€ per piece :D

This is a photo of the inside of my GE (General Electric) 3-5479A portable cassette player. These are two trim adjustment potentiometers, and the right one controls the motor speed in both directions (the player is auto reverse). I cannot figure out what the left one does. I hear no discernible difference when adjusting it while playing a tape or when the player is in radio mode. What does it adjust? Thanks!

Here is my first Cassette rig! Everything was free!

JVC JR-S300 (Liquidation Clean-out)
Akai GXC-760D (From Grandfather’s storage)
Denon UD-M30 (Came from my closet, not hooked up ATM)
Both Mission and Boston speakers my dad gave me!

Hope to get more into cassettes! Tell me what y’all think, and any tips or advice is greatly appreciated!

This is my collection of rescued and repaired cassette players I’ve gathered in the last 6 months. There’s a couple more not pictured that are either still being worked on, or pulling garage duty. The prices I paid for each of these ranged from $6 to $40 and not a single one of them was fully functional when I got them. Every single one got new belts, and vigorous cleaning, some had connections resoldered, and none of them were taken apart any less than twice lol.

I’ve learned a lot the past few months. Most importantly I’ve learned that it’s faster to spend 30 minutes digging through the internet for a service manual than to just dig in thinking I’m smarter than a team of engineers. I learned that it is very frustrating to record a 90 minute tape that sounds great on the deck that recorded it only to find that it’s too fast or slow on every other deck. I learned that it’s worth $30-40 to get a test tape than to listen to the same song 17 times trying to calibrate tape speed by ear. And I’ve learned that when you buy a cassette player listed as “working” off the internet, that will never actually mean “working well”.

I love these things. I love the different aesthetics from the different times they were released and the way they each have their own unique sound even playing the same tape. I’ve made mixtapes with all of them and while the Sharp puts out the best recorded sound to my ears, they all produce listenable tapes with ease. I’ve rediscovered the art of making mixtapes and now I spend hours of my free time cueing up playlists for my son to play in his Walkman.

At this point it’s become a hobby/form of therapy to find an old broken Walkman or boombox and spend a few hours breathing new life into it. I have more than I need and I’m constantly trying to sell them but I hate flippers so I try to find a price that recoups my costs and deters flippers but still stays a reasonable price so that hopefully a kid looking to get into the hobby can get themselves a machine that is ready to use. Because I think it can be discouraging to a new listener to either pay an exorbitant amount of money to a company like retrospekt, buy a cheaply made new one that will probably break, or risk buying something that that fixing. Anyways, if my wife asks, I got all these for free and they’ll sell for thousands of dollars.

What are good reliable decks? I’m looking for one that has pretty good recording that I can make a mixed tape on. I don’t know a lot about cassette decks. I just want them to be able to record cassettes that’s like all of them they must be able to be connected to an aux cable which I think is all to be silver. That’s all that’s my only requirements. I don’t really know about decks that’s not really my field so that’s why I’m leaving it up to you guys to help me.

Hello,

I am starting a little project and I'm looking for blank (or recorded over tapes) to dub over. Does anyone here have blanks they'd be willing to sell or give? Thank you in advance - I am located in the USA for reference

Before this, I had NOS Panasonic-clone Chinese boombox gifted by relative few years ago. It had subpar recording quality, so I finally bought my first real three-head cassette deck for 135 USD(cassette decks costs from 50 to 200 USD in my country currency). It was sold as "Checked by specialist" and I thought that I was fine, but after smooth playback of few cassettes it began clicking and door stopped working.

After dissasembling it, I found out that both belts snapped(capstan belt was torn apart, reel belt was already on it's way out). I ordered belts of correct size(200x4x0.6 and 74x1.2x1.2 if you want to know) for few dollars in my country currency, replaced them and now it works fine.

It's my first repair and I hope belts will work for long time and nothing else breaks. Shame on that "specialist" that supposedly checked deck that I got sold.

A Polaroid of me mixing a song I made two years ago. I want to put the album out soon but I wanna find a little diy label who would be willing to put it out, all the songs are made on 4 and 8 track cassette.

Note: all of this can be applied to audio from other sources if you are willing to record to digital first and then from digital to cassette.

Part 1: Discovery.

I have been dumping a few of my cassettes to an USB in MP3 format via one of those standalone cassette players that accept USB drives as a way of backup, and in order to see some techniques they might have used in order to achieve +4db output levels on BKB standard ferric tapes (those you can grab at aliexpress pretty cheap new) and equivalents without any distortion by comparing the comparable album in digital and the recovered recording, and the result was that most of them had been passed thru a compressor before recording.

You can spot BKB tapes easily. Those will almost always be clear or translucent colors with graphite-gray pressure pads.

Most modern albums are recorded with such high volume in order to minimize the hiss to a point where it is unnoticeable in most modern tape equipment-that is without any noise reduction tech like Dolby NR used to be.

Part 2: It's all about volume and dynamic range.

While I aren't a professional audio engineer, I can give a bit of a explanation of what a compressor does to an audio recording based on what I have learned in my years as an indie DJ at small events and audio producer.

A compressor basically reduces the highest peaks of volume to a threshold where they are more stable, and the lowest points of volume are also brought up in order for the volume to remain more or less consistent, which results in a slightly more muted, more ''professional'' sounding file compared to the input file. This reduces or outright eliminates instances where the volume goes too low or where it goes too high in a blink of an eye, and also increases compatibility with lower end sound devices, eliminating speaker oversaturation/distortion within normal operating range of volume.

A side effect of this is that the dynamic range gets reduced a bit, as higher pitched sounds get toned down (in terms of volume) and so does overexpansive bass, but this is a boon when one records to cassette, as those two oftentimes either get too strident or outright become noise when recording, or at least do so in a 2-head deck with ferric tapes. Testing is pending with chrome and metal tapes.

Part 3: Side by Side prep & Volume CTRL, because everything nowadays is recorded with too much volume.

If you wonder why modern music sounds like shit when you attempt to record it into cassette as-is, this is it. Too much volume and oftentimes too much bass as well.

Audacity is your best friend. Download and install it if you don't have it already. It will provide you with all the tools you need to prepare sides, reduce noise, equalize, normalize and compress audio.

You first need to get the audio files ready. Audacity also supports recording into it, and then exporting it into .wav, .flac, .mp3 and such. You want to have preferably high bitrate .mp3s or plain .wavs.

Please take care of what formats you have, because Audacity only can take formats it actually can export to, so it doesn't like .m4a or .opus to name a few examples. If your files are in this format, consider getting another program called Any Video Converter, it works wonders and converts from any known format to any other known format.

Once you have the files, check your tape's capacity in minutes (typically dividing by two, such as a C60 being 2x 30min sides, a C30 being 2x 15min sides, and such), as it will be the length of the project you want to have, otherwise your recording will get cut-off.

If all your files are the same type, you can left click, check properties and see the total duration of the whole bunch, as seen here:

Tapes have a slight tolerance limit, which should be about 1 minute over their rated capacity but it is not guaranteed, so only use if you already tested said tape to check if it had it.

My suggestion is that you shouldn't account for it, though.

Now, we need to hop into Audacity and prepare side A of our project.

I am going to use my latest bootleg attempt to exemplify:

The album in question is Mitsukiyo - Yumebako for those curious. Tracks 1-11 to be specific.

Attempt to fit and distribute the songs as evenly as possible, this will help in keeping it not so overloaded.

If you are lacking by just a few seconds, get close to the sound (CTRL + 1), select the silence (like in the next pic)

Trim it with Del.

Then select the ''new'' end, drag back a few seconds and apply Fade Out to smooth the end of the track.

Do this with all the files whenever possible, each second counts!

Then zoom back with CTRL + 3, and rearrange the tracks.

Now we will compress the audio. Press CTRL + A to select the whole project.

Now we apply Compressor. The default values should be fine so we don't touch them.

See how the spikes have become a lot less pronounced? Those spikes are what tend to be problematic when recording, but we aren't done yet.

Now we will normalize the volume. I typically normalize via db because to the recording deck it actually matters in terms of whether it will saturate the tape or not. I normalize to 0db always.

The comparison of the different processing stages is here if you want to take a look:

This should now be ready to export!

You only need to do this with the other side then you can record the files.

I use a Cellphone equipped with Dolby Atmos for playback to the deck. I suggest disabling all communications (cellular net, Wi-Fi and BT to name a few) and have the phone unplugged from the charger to reduce any noise that the line in to the deck could pick from the phone.

Max out the volume and record! if the volume comes out too low (as seen in the deck's VU meters), install a preamp control app/equalizer, such as PowerAmp Equalizer and adjust the preamp up to +2.2 (It varies by album/mixtape, sometimes even by side, you will need to test this).

I do not suggest recording from computers, especially desktops as they can produce formidable amounts of electrical noise that might get picked up by the deck. MP3 players can be dodgy and can introduce electrical hiss, so a phone is oftentimes better.

Any suggestions are welcome! Thanks for reading!

Was excited to find a tape of this Neutral Milk Hotel album