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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

I got into watching techmoan and similar YouTubers who got me interested in vintage audio. I thought seriously about getting into tapes because I have nostalgia for them and saw you could make really great recordings w/ metal tapes and a deck that supports Dolby S…. Decks like that can be had on ebay but the metal tapes are crazy expensive, for what a deck like that costs plus two metal tapes you could probably get two minidisc recorders and 100 discs.

Today the new decks all use a cheap mechanism that is reliable but sounds awful. New tapes are ‘type 0’ frequently. On top of that it is really no fun to rewind so I gave up on getting a cassette deck but who knows, if a really elite deck shows up at the community reuse center I might grab it.

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> it is really no fun to rewind

You gotta make a game of it. I crafted a tape rewinder made from an old ballpoint pen and bent paperclip that held the cassette as I whirled it around. Like a '80s fidget spinner.

i use two hands on a pencil and race. have to remember to slow down at the end though.

> it is really no fun to rewind

Does Dolby S have double-sided tapes? For regular cassette tapes I’ve never really had to worry about rewinding because after playing both sides you’re back at the beginning.

Dolby S is a type of noise reduction that’s done in the deck, and actively works on the audio stream as it’s being written to and read from the tape.

It’s best used with a high quality tape, but I believe it can be used with any of the 3 major tape types.

Do you have tips on a good tape deck model, or manufacturer that consistently made high quality decks? A friend gave me his old Sony TC-W365 which worked admirably, until recent mechanical failures.

Nakamichi is widely regarded as the highest quality manufacturer. The decks can be expensive and some of them are extremely complex to service.

/r/cassetteculture is a decent resource for info.

I would repair the one you have or get a refurbished Sony from ebay like

https://www.ebay.com/itm/185721049456

those Sony(s) do need maintenance more than some decks but they are very available.

The best ones seemed to use direct drive motors.

In my opinion, the "god-tier" would be Revox B215 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revox_B215) and the Nakamichi Dragon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakamichi_Dragon).

I've personally used the Revox in the late 80's and early 90's as a DJ in a college radio station. It was super durable (it had to be, in a punk environment). I don't have any experience with the Dragon but it looks cool and I see it has good performance.

I think anyone who adopts a tape deck these days had better be ready for getting it serviced. Aside from the mechanical stuff that just wears out, the electronics are likely to need work after 30+ years. Capacitors, mainly.

I have a TC-WE525 circa 1999 or 2000 that stopped working - when I would start a tape playing, it would play for a second, then stop, like it got to the end of the tape.

The belts disintegrate over time and must be replaced. I successfully repaired mine from a belt kit I was able to get on Amazon. It's not terribly easy to replace the belts but I did manage to do it.

One handy resource for tape deck belts, aside from the library of service manuals at hifiengine (whose user registration has been "under maintenance" for months, at least), is turntableneedles.com.

Despite the domain name they carry a large variety of belts for things well beyond turntables, and more importantly have a searchable resource to match belts to product models and OEM service manual numbers: https://www.turntableneedles.com/find10.asp

If they don't stock the belt, you can often find the same-sized belt elsewhere. But it helps immensely to know what you're looking for. They also stock tools designed for belt replacements. This helped me replace the belts in my old Realistic/Radio Shack boombox's deck.

Techmoan has fallen back to reviewing new and mostly lame products lately but back in the day he made 25+ videos where he brought some old audio equipment back to life by replacing belts. Sometimes he replaces capacitors but he does very little with electronics, but his mechanical repairs are highly effective.

Here is a generic repair of a very unusual tape deck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntV8gUsbIsk

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