So had a bit of time at the old hands, dug out some gear that had become reticent to operate properly. Lovely things that needed some love. Fer instance and old Tascam CD/Cassette combo. A nice bit I got in a trade on some gear about a decade ago, it came out of a church. When I got it the CD worked but not the Cassette, when I fired up this week, neither bit would do its thing.



Well, in an electronic device its usually either the capacitors, or the mechanics, in this case the belts.
Rubber and ozone don't work well together, also rubber being organic likes to degrade just like humans into a mess of goo.

So opened it up and changed 2 out of 3 belts, had to order the flat belt for the cassette drive - it was functional but due to age, time to change it as well. Booted things up and all is working well.
Tested it out dubbing a Scifi Audio book cassette to cd.

Which is what got the whole thing rolling. I found a collection of 6 audio tapes in the basement, wanted to rip to mp3, but only had a walkman that was still functioning, Saw this lovely bit of gear and decided it would surely do the job more better and anyhow it was sexier and more fun to work with.

so the belt change was about 45 seconds, but I had to tear down the cd burner completely, after removing it from the deck, to get to the small belt that opens and closes the tray. which took about 45 minutes and many iphone photos to assure proper reassembly.

Its funny how they chose to make this simple belt the point of failure to make people give up and move on to a new model. a hundred belts on Amazon for 7$, a mere 25 seconds to change, an hour to figure out where the damn thing was and how to get to it and get it back together.

oh well thats done for another 20 years, date of manufacturer was 2004.

 

Geeze, you're a brave man

 

nothing ventured, nothing gained..

 

plus when its broke, you either fix it or make it broker, so a coin toss really..

 

yeah an access door or panel in the top of the cd burner would have made it a 5 minute job. Guess they didn't want that...

 

Maybe not easy to replace, but they do not use belts on anything to design a point of failure. It's to make inevitable failure cheaper to fix. With something that gets frequently stopped immediately or even jammed, stuck or seized, while in operation; smoking or stretching a cheap belt is a way better option than the damage that will happen with some good metal-to-metal contact.

It shows they designed the unit to be repairable by a technician, at a reasonable price. Using a consumable part like that, is a way to also call the failure due to normal wear and tear. Then they can exclude those parts from a warranty.

Someone just listed the same unit about 3 weeks ago on reverb.com, asking about $500 for it. Tascam have never really made junk.

 

There is also a "Planned obsolescence" that can be seen in many devices that have been brought to a "Repair Cafe" by users for repair. Where there used to be metal, there is now plastic. Savings are made wherever possible, especially in purchasing and material costs.

The most important person in your environment is someone who can repair things or who can provide help like this forum.

I was very happy and pleased to read your article, dear @ Garamondo Furbish, it is encouraging and in the end saves money and resources.

Planned obsolescence (copy from Wikipedia) :
In economics and industrial design, planned obsolescence (also called built-in obsolescence or premature obsolescence) is the concept of policies planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain predetermined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

 

yes, its a nice bit of gear, it will autodub from tape to cd if you want to, or manually. it has optical digital outputs co-axial and fiber optic. its has riaa phone inputs, so no preamp needed, just plug in a turntable and burn to cd.. it has additional ins and outs probably for MO disks (at the time) but you can use them to go to your computer interface etc.

the next model they introduced the MKIII, can read (and I assume) write mp3 disks, though I'd need to read the manual to confirm, they went to an MKIV - don't know what that featured...

lots on ebay some as cheap as 60$, but will need love and maintenance and cleaning..also shipping is often as much as the unit price, they aren't terriblely heavy considering they are metal chassis rack mount ears, etc. but the dimensions add to the size of the shipping box, and hence the shipping charges.. "dimensional weight" as they calculate it.

 

look on ebay for the same unit. some sellers in japan have them listed well over $1000 usd. There are too many of them listed for those prices to even be "I don't really want to sell it" prices. You see that on reverb.com all the time; ever since they started encouraging people to basically list every item in user's studios. That unit even has spdif coaxial and optical outs. The original retail price for that unit was $1299.

in 2004, $1300 was a lot of money for it. You can even tell it was made for some kind of "professional use" just by the simple fact it has rack ears. Consumer grade audio products never have rack ears.

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2024

i asked the guy that sold it to me why a church had one and they were using it to make copies of church services on cd/tape for the church members (and the band)...

 

Tascam also made a dual tape well unit for dubbing tapes..
Tascam 202 unfortunately it only as a single pair of analog in/outs on the rear panel..

 

My mixer came "used" from a church, never even used because it was their "backup". Who buys a backup 24 channel board? They do. Probably explains why Nord Stage pianos can still cost 4K. I guess it doesn't matter much when it isn't your money.

 

had a REVOX B-215 recorder since 80ies, sold it couple of years ago: no belts, 4 motors (2 capstan, two reel), great machine, loved it ...

 

Check out this very cool documentary on planned obsolescence

 

Not sure what the worst bit of maintenance is on a cassette deck, but luckily apart from cleaning the heads I've never had to do any repairs on my deck! I don't use it though these days.. It's just in storage. it seems to be worth more every time I look (Nakamichi RX505)

 

Visually, it's a tape deck of the audiophile class that has never been achieved before.
EUR 2,390.00, you were lucky, what did it cost back then? It's currently worth as much as an ounce of gold.

 

always liked the look of the Aiwa ad-1250
I still dig mid-century modern...




https://www.cassettedeck.org/Aiwa/AD-1250


a good site to lookup old machines and also to just check out industrial designs...

 

The analogue becomes digital.

"With the triumph of digital sound recording – especially the MP3 format as a medium for private music
collections – the importance of cassette recorders steadily declined from around the end of the 1990s."

The only thing that will survive from the "old days" are vinyl records.

The process of decay of analogue sound carriers such as cassettes or tapes is unstoppable.
Perhaps our topic starter should quickly get hold of cassettes before there are none left and make copies of his originals.

 

Right that's why way long before CD coming I always purchased vinyls and avoided album cassettes like plague (btw they were Fe, not even Cr).
I then recorded favorite tracks using a tape deck (at the time it was a Scott) using Cr cassettes (Tdk, Basf, Maxell, Telarc).
Then I would listen with a Sony Walkman II with belt gizmo and battery expansion.

However I can assure I recently transfered some precious cassette from late 60's to digital and they were acceptable (I think was shitty then, shitty today plus something).
I'm not sure, this could be the recorder (I don't know if it's still working).

 

I was indeed, it cost me £900 (ish) Was definitely less than the £1100 upwards they were going for at the time a friend of mine got it for me on a special order from his Hifi Shop. I also got my SL1200mk2 (For some reason I keep calling them mk3 but definitely mk2) from him as a huge discount too.

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It's why I keep considering selling it, but I dunno. It just sounds so good and it's also a piece of nostalgia. I just cant