It’s Time for another tape recorder

Fantastic video and I'm looking forward to seeing the repair. The internals look extreme. Regarding the tape mechanism shift to vertical over horizontal. It makes me wonder what my JVC R-E600L is all about? A horizontal drawer mechanism type on which I assumed was an 80's unit, but I'm now wondering if it's actually 1970's instead. Maybe one day Google will throw up some clues as to its age.

Cant wait for that repair video

looking forward to that repair video.

not sure how i'd never managed to see a loading mech like this before. But I suppose that I'm a patron of yours to learn new things after all as for that supposed 10 hours of video.... Well. The unabridged minidisk video gained alot more views than the abridged one. So perhaps a 1Million subscriber special? P.S. Pre Congrats for when you do hit that 1 Million mark. You certainly deserve it

I just wanted to let you know how much joy your videos have given me. Thank you so much!

Looking forward to the repair video, Mat, but this was really interesting. You have soaked up so much information over the years. Impressive. :-)

I love that type of gear as well! It's rather unfortunate not to have much use for 10 different cassettedecks in my audio system, otherwise I would surely have them ;) And VU meters and a flip clock. How can you go wrong? Oh, I did resist for a long time, but I just really wanted to try some quality 1970s gear (with their great looks) and bought a Luxman R-1500E amplifier. Wow! It's like new (it was professionally restored) and it sounds fantastic! And another cool set of features: a loudness button and treble / bass dials! On an amplifier! Imagine that! Stupid modern gear which has none of that... So, eh, well, also 2 Nakamichi decks (1979 482 and 1981 682ZX) and a Thorens TD-124 (1965, also fully restored) later, I wonder why people buy modern stuff.... Sure, for streaming I didn't really have a choice. So I went for one with a normal remote control and buttons on the front to control it like that (don't like using an app either!): Naim ND5XS. Used of course, otherwise it would be WAY too pricey. Lots of inspiration here from all your videos Mat, I love it! Especially videos like this for me ;)

Once again I am educated about something I thought I knew a lot about. I had no idea there were tape decks with angled tape mechs. That's very cool. The built in flip clock is a bonus win. I love it.

Can never have too many tape recorders...

can't wait for that repair video now....

Regarding the Pioneer logo - mind blown. It has looked like the head of a spanner to me since I first saw it (early 90s). I can't believe I spent almost 30 years not getting the logo! (In my defence, at the same age I always saw the 'bowtie' on this logo as Colonel Sanders' arms and legs: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/5/57/Kentucky_Fried_Chicken_1978.svg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20190319131856

An excellent video! One of my favorites of yours.

Awesome video. Those JVC tape decks with the opposite mechanism used to be for sale in House of Fraser I seem to remember. Interestingly I was told by multiple car dealers, the handbrake should always be left to ratchet (not push down the button) as there is a risk that if you hold down the button it won’t engage properly. My Audi A3 had a recall just for this issue - the handbrake was prone to releasing if you had held down the button and it hadn’t locked into a latch point. We did come to the car one day and find it had rolled 20ft across a car park gently into a wall due to this exact failure!

Very nice, Mat! When I see this stuff I recall real emotions that were attached to the equipment. It’s not just nostalgia. It’s the way that the equipment was styled that made you feel excitement about it. It’s sad that the experience is disappearing for electronics now.

Oh, the slanted cassette deck. In 1977 or so our fam bought a new stereo and that's what it had. And, like yours, you better open the door before you hit eject. Ours was a Lloyd's, a brand I thought was confined to Canada but was actually Japanese. Low-end, department store type stuff. Worked well enough though, and for me, sped the transition from AM radio to FM radio. :-) I bet if I dug hard enough, I could find cassettes recorded from the radio - no timer, though.

Ooh excitement - just watching again, and notice that I had the exact (or one very similar) Akai Cassette deck you show in a brochure at 6:41. NIce to see that again. It still looks quite cool, I think.

Ooh, careful with Beethoven's Ninth... people might get the wrong idea. 😉 The instruction manual of my wife's car specifically mentions that you should rattle the handbrake, and it's a German car, so there. The 1970s were a strange time period. Some of the best (rock) music ever comes from that period – as does the earliest hip-hop for that matter – but it also had disco, and punk. There were some very, very, VERY questionable fashion trends, especially for men. And then, it was a time where, like you said in just a couple of years, hi-fi equipment reached its pinnacle, and everything afterwards was basically digitalisation and cost-cutting.

My father bought a Sony Hi Fi in ‘81 and I spent hours playing with it, listening to music and recording radio and also my voice. It was my only amusement back then. But it was soon forgotten when the mighty JVC VCR arrived at home :)

What a great surprise to finally get a chance to relax and find not one but two new videos from Techmoan! Besides my grand daughters birthday party this was the best thing this weekend....well done as always!

This video is a neat case of double-synchronicity. Whereas COVID-19 self-isolation-induced dementia inspired some people into learning how to cultivate sourdough starter, it got me to start collecting Odd Old Tape Recorders. It's really interesting to see how industrial designers experimented with all kinds of shapes and forms, from the Sixties through the Nineties. So I've seen many of the models you showed off and I own one of them. Today, in fact, the mailman delivered a canary-yellow Panasonic RQ-711S. Glad I got into it before The Techmoan Effect drives the prices above the current collector-friendly "large pizza" price level! I also hauled my big 1990 Pioneer A/V receiver/amp out of storage and I'm slowly piecing together a complete stack of Pioneer components from that same era and design language. I'm building a simple switch box so I can share the same set of speakers with my Modern and Old systems. I'm gonna design a label for the box that says "CENTURY SELECTOR" and mark the two poles of the toggle switch "20th" and "21st".

The fact that in these days I have received, from my subscribers, three cassette recorders from the 70s, to work on for a video .. it is quite unusual ... and now your video! Great video! One of the best for me! But now i have to delay my video about 70's recorders :-)

I expect this video will be demonetised and restricted because pornography. Those tape decks...

The 30 degree thing. Phwoar! I've always wanted a deck where you can see the whole of the tape shell as it plays.

Matt, in these days of virus panic and (stateside at least) random violence and political warfare, your videos offer a most welcome bit of sanity. Thank you!

Those '70s wonders are very pretty indeed. A month ago I fixed a Technics RS-615 cassette deck produced between '76-'78 for a friend, who had bought it off e-bay. It has the same diagonal type of drive, which worked quite nicely if noisily right out of the bubble-wrap, but it was whining in one channel and distorted in the other. Apart from a couple suspicious solder joints it really only needed a drop of oil and some contact cleaner, even the large caps looked nice and dry and were not out of spec, but the very weird and over-engineered mechanics had me thrown finding out where exactly some of the switches were located. I persevered though, after finding the service manual. I love the internet and its helpful netizens and databases.

I agree with your fascination in the evolution of a technology as a result of aesthetics and practicality. Add the fact that retail products also follow trends that have no other value than being a trend (remember when EVERYTHING was made of semitransparent plastic like the original iMac?). The cassette tape as we know is interesting in that once the form was settled, all the changes (tape formulation, noise reduction) were essentially invisible. But the Unicorns, the one offs like the Tefifon remain my favorite. They are like the SR-71, things that exist in their own reality.

Great video! Interesting machine, and you showed lots of different aspects and added lots of interesting tidbits of history and other info that kept me glued to the screen. I think I've seen a cassette deck with the cassette at an angle like that one, at a party a long time ago, but I don't think it had the flip clock or I would have remembered.

Gorgeous hardware, wow. Never seen one of these with a flip clock! Otherwise it reminds me of my favorite mid-70s cassette deck in my collection, the Marantz Superscope CD-310. I love the way tapes fly forward on ejection due to the diagonal tape mechanism, which is probably half the reason I bought it.

So.. the 10-hour repair video will be available as a Patreon Exclusive, I presume? 😐 *sets JT-215A timer for popcorn pot on stove* The doorless system on the CT-F1250 is easily my favourite, by the way! First time I saw one of those, I thought the deck was broken and the door had snapped off... Then I realized it was just beautiful simplicity. Especially nice that the full face of the cassette is visible that way. Shame the doorless solution didn't become the norm. Oh, and pulling a handbrake lever without pushing the button makes a terrible racket if nothing else. 😛 Edit: wanted to check out some other tape decks after this video - and the CT-F1250 in particular. So that's when I stumbled upon this: https://youtu.be/YzCA3iOGeoQ Sorry, but does Techmoan have a twin brother? 😂

Thanks for this video - what an awesome machine! Can't wait for the repair video!

Keep doing what you are doing, Mat. You are a perfect fit for my interests. I regret the day that I gave away my silver fronted Pioneer system to make room for a black one. I even had their silver fronted dynamic range expander with analogue meters. It turned every record into a concert hall performance!...

I loved this video, because it ticked all my boxes for interesting stuff and a bit of history. I was selling hi fi in the mid ‘70’s in and right after high school, so I experienced the evolution of cassette first hand. When the first front loading decks appeared, I became a total snob and looked upon the old top loaders with disdain. Funnily enough, top loaders are now favorites of mine. The Teac 450, the Marantz “pan pot” models, the Akai reverse-o-matics are treasures of my collection. Still looking for an affordable Sony TC-177. They seem to be in the Tefifon area of senseless high prices. I sold a ton of the CT-2121 decks, although they were never favorites of mine. I suppose they were better than most of the entry level decks we sold. I bought lots of used decks back then, but my first new deck was a Sharp RT 3838, which had a digital clock and timer, a tape counter that simulated minutes and seconds rather than just a random number. It also made a quite acceptable tape. Sharp sold them for a few years under various iterations and also as Optonica models, and I seem to have amassed quite a few of these. I can’t wait for the repair video. Seeing the drill made me very curious. You know, my wife doesn’t seem interested when I tell her about the history of wire recorders, or why Accutrac turntables are so cool while being a nightmare. Women, eh?

Thanks for showing us this lovely machine, it certainly does cram a lot in. Additionally I really like the military aesthetic of the ICF-6800W you had there, I don't think we've seen it before.

Love the cassette player, beautiful flip clock, a lot of thought into it, one can only dream of having it 😃

Love these history lessons and share the interest in the 1970s esthetic. Aesthetic? Anyways... I only truly noticed the tuning fork in the Pioneer logo while watching this, then at the end you specifically pointed this out. Can't wait to see your repair video for this device.

My parents had the Pioneer CT-5151. It was amazing and fueled my love 70's hi-fi and VU meters. The little square display at the top that showed the cassette rotation was always fascinating. And it was so well made. Ah nostalgia. Thank you! Great history lesson / tour / love letter to 70's hi-fi tech.

Lovely video! I am really looking forward to a video about the repair of the deck, I am a huge fan of your repair videos! :)

Oh, I immediately fell in love with the four-track machine QT-74 (at 4:30). Never seen that one before. Gosh ... :-) Hey Mat, you didn't mention the odd Stereo/Mono switch on your cassette deck. I've never ever seen such a gadget on a hi-fi-style cassette player before. It just doesn't make sense. What does it do? Sum the incoming stereo signal to become mono on both tracks?

I really liked the intro with ode to joy and the die hard reference, but I do think you'll get a lot of negative comments on your box-cutter skills just before that. I thought you were going to slice your hand open, so maybe re-cut that bit to avoid it looking like you're moments from a heinous injury?

Thank you for another great video, and for all your past output. I'll say goodbye now before your handbrake reference (and side-taking) appears before the general public on YouTube. It's been great.

Lovely tape deck, can't wait for the repair video!

Got to love the older tech. I use a Pioneer CT-F500.

Great video mat, lovely editing in time to the music at the start. My favourite era for hifi and even though my much later Sony deck is so much better it will never look as attractive. Looking forward to the behind scenes vid

What a great looking device. A flip-clock and that low-lit tape cave, fantastic. I have never seen that before. Thanks for sharing it.

Thanks. I think I wrote on your beer froth maker video that I came for the hifi stuff and stayed for the variety, well this is the kind of hifi stuff I came for. A fascinating glimpse into the history of lovely old tech. Just the ticket for a rainy Saturday.

When I was a small kid, we used to have a similar design cassette deck from Technics, but with everything driven by big solenoids: https://www.hifi-wiki.de/index.php/Technics_RS-671_USD After it broke down, I used the motors to drive my toys, and we used almost all the parts for other stuff. But I had always been wondering why they used the special design with the cassette laying almost flat and the door just for dust... But they thought about everything: a light in the cassette compartment, a mirror so you could see the cassette from the front

Thanks for your hard work (hoping for a behind scenes video of getting it working, that would be very interesting but appreicate you probably to busy to do it). What a nice looking tape deck didn't realise they had angled tape decks. My wife switches off when i talk about tech to.

Nice work as ever, only marred by the ad for a mini vacuum cleaner developed by someone who decided to develop his own after being frustrated by... you know the story. Interesting what you say about smartphones being boring because they haven't changed much in recent years. Some of the big YouTube reviewers (eg Mr Mobile) of these things have taken to making videos about devices from 15 years ago, when they were evolving rapidly and were therefore more interesting.

Nice vid Mat!

I remember the evolution of cassette decks reasonably well. It was surprising how few cassette decks were available back then. All the cassette decks were Phillips to start with. Matsushita Electronics corporation developed a couple of chassis and they sold them under the Panasonic. The cheaper mechanisms they old to a lot of other companies before they developed there own models. Back in 1973 I had just become the assistant Manager of the new Hi Fi department Harvey Nichols decided to open. The buyer was a Glass and porcelain buyer so knew little about Hi Fi. The only cassette decks he had bought was a National Panasonic 3 head model, a Sony TC177SD which was also a 3 head model and a Yamaha model that had won a design award. It looked like a wedge of cheese. I have a couple of Electronic Timers made by Technics. They are great and yes I had to buy some American 2 pin plugs for all the bits of Hi Fi you might want to comment to it. Nice review Mat I had never seen this model of Pioneer cassette deck. The conventions of top loading and front loading equipment was fascinating to watch. Aiwa produced a lovely 3 head Cassette deck which had a motorised mechanism that took the cassette into its fascia and pulled it in and out when buttons were pressed. The Sony rep told me that they had gone to a lot of trouble concealing there design intentions of compact disc machines when they came out.

But does it make tea, Mat? Actually, I do recall having an automatic tea making machine with a flip clock timing mechanism, which could spray boiling water all over your bedside table without much provocation at all. I wonder if they did one with a radio cassette too? This is a great video which brought back teen memories of me drooling over the window of Munster Radio, a proper, old fashioned HI-Fi shop in Fulham, and being absolutely captivated and intrigued by the angled cassette tape decks on display. Thanks, Mat - really looking forward to the Repair of... saga.

Just seeing a component cassette player conjures up the phrase, "When I were a lad..." But it's true. When I was in junior high school cassette players, especially high end ones, were such a thing, what with all the knobs and levers. A bygone era now. Thanks for bringing this gem back from the dead.

You need the Pioneer MB761 Tape Deck Matt, with flip-clock VU Meters.....🤔

The tape eject made me remember The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (1981 TV series) where Slartibartfast ejected the very important disc and it flies out the machine and smashes on the floor.

I admit I laughed out loud at the reveal of the machine – another great video. Hope Patreon support means you’re at least a wee bit more free to make videos you like and a bit less reliant on the vagaries of the YouTube algorithm and audience!

This is the kind of video that I know will perform worse than some simple, easy to understand one. And it's also why I became a patron in the first place and later bumped it up. Thank you for showing us these interesting objects. I know I wouldn't have been able to see them otherwise. You inspired me to get a tape deck and a open reel one as well. Cheers!