[78-L] Best Cassette Machine?

[Sammy Jones]

Joe,

The content is mostly originals of my local big band radio show from 2001 
and 2001 (which I assure you, no one will want to hear but me...and even 
that's debatable!).  Also recordings of me and my brothers and cousins when 
we were kids, and some OTR shows.

The big band airchecks were made on the station's Tascam with Dolby B, so 
the quality is pretty good.  I seem to remember that deck had some pitch 
problems, though.  Could probably be fixed with a deck with variable speed 
or in the digital domain.

The homemade recordings were made on everything from a portable Panasonic 
recorder, a Radio Shack karaoke machine, to a Pioneer consumer cassette deck 
(that was actually pretty decent).  No Dolby on anything except the stuff 
made on the Pioneer.

I stopped collecting OTR on cassettes many years ago, and have tried to 
replace important stuff with CDs.  I still like to listent to some old shows 
on cassette every once in a while, but those tapes are not at the top of my 
list for transfer.  Nothing unique there.

A machine like the Tascam 122 is probably the range of machine I'm 
interested in.  Just wondering what the group's recommendations would be...

Is a Nakamichi Dragon overkill?

Sammy


Perhaps if you gave more details about the content of your cassettes,
other than being home made.

Do they contain music? Or just spoken voice?

Were they recorded on decent equipment of the day (whatever decent
means) or on battery operated machines?

Joe Salerno

On 7/28/2014 1:31 AM, Sammy Jones wrote:
>
> Mike Biel was talking about cassettes and cassette machines on his radio
> show on YesterdayUSA tonight.
>
> It reminded me that I really need to do something about my small (but
> unique) collection of homemade cassettes.
>
> What is the wisdom of this group about the best machine to get?  I have a
> Tascam 122.  Is it worth it to upgrade to something?
>
> Sammy Jones
>