Best Vintage Cassette Decks: A buying guide from $100 to $1000

technics rsb 905

I Love that Dual C844! Never knew that existed! I am biased toward silver components. I have an Akai GX-F35 deck which has the glass heads. I love it and it looks nice with my setup. I love the backlit buttons too

My deck is the Akai GX-7. I use it often.

Nakamichi made phenomenal decks but it can be tough to get them serviced. There's only a few places in the states so think about that before getting one.

Where are you from? You say tier like "tyre", are you european, hard to tell, your english is so good!

Хотелось посмотреть на класные аппараты, в результате пол часа самолюбования и пустословия.

Using a Harmon/Kardon TD302 deck I purchased new in 1986.

Picked up a Nakamichi Bx300 a week ago for $400 with the original box/packaging and manuals. Absolutely love it

I have a new one . The Nakamichi DR-3 . just wow. He was renom to be the best 2 heads cassette deck of all time.

My 50$ JVC/Victor TD-V931 is so wonderful.

I still own a Sony TC-K 970 ES Cassette Deck. Fantastic sound and robust for over 30 years. Bravo Sony, well done!

The best deck is the one that still works. I have a Denon from 1987, no repairs except for a couple belts maybe. It works and sound good!

People don`t want to see your face. Instead just holding a little longer pictures of decks you talking about.

My first serious piece of hi fi was a yamaha tape deck freat sounding remembered fondly.

I have Pioneer CT-S540S, very nice deck, still works great with all original parts, even the belts are still good. I don't like dual capstain decks, they may have some minor advantages but they can lead to gradual stretching of tapes, and how the tape prices are today we need to be careful with what we have.

Up the ante. ReVox B710 and ReVox B215…….look no further.

The AIWA Adf800 is also a beast at recording and playback I still use mine today.

I am a cassette deck nut
I’ve owned 47 decks in 53 years
I absolutely love cassettes
How sad I know
The zx9 the cr7 and Yamaha kx960 and 1200 are what I have now. I personally think having 4 cassette decks on a rack with all the level meters going is lovely to look at

I have the Yamaha Natural sound stereo cassette deck KX-200U . It look very similar than 300U and he play Very good

What is your thoughts on Sanyo RD F Cassette Deck. Not finding much information about this unit.

Hello, Henk-Jan from Holland here....I bought a Pioneer CT 656 Mark II. Sounds great but what do you think about it....?

Lol dude, you believe that these numbers mean anything? This is like playing with those toy cards in school about cars, depicting horse power and such haha :)
Also, these specs are way off for cassette decks this old, as capacitors age, belts age, etc.
Making a video about you reading specs off a paper, without proper on hands experience and some in depth knowledge is disappointing. Sorry.

Just curious, where on the list would the Denon DRM 800 and Denon DRS 810 land. These in my experience sounds incredebly good. Imposible to distinguishe from cd with metal tapes in blind test.

Why are we watching mr. ANA[DIA]LOG while we are listening about cassetedecks ?

Reading specs like that is meaningless . When you said a frequency response from 20 up to 19 you meant to say 19 thousand hertz , again it’s meaningless without a plus or minus db measurement .

I remember taking a public speaking class and told not to gesticulate at all .

The Nakamichi, sounded great, BUT, it destroyed tapes ..... 😒😒😒

Analog is like organic.

your hearing is initially irrelevant. In addition, there is the mixing by the producer. Did he have a bad system? or pressed through a tin can like in the 80s. And you mean 1000s of equalizers with your good/bad system? Hahaha.

dont get wrong but not to mention akai gx 75 and 95 is saying everything

Wow, I got rid of cassettes like 25 years ago 😂

Appreciate the list, even with the Nak bias. These were some very good cassette decks.

The Nak dragon is the pinnacle albeit cassette deck. However, they are difficult to work on, and very expensive high maintenance machines!

Sony made Great decks not mentioned here at all?! They even made great tapes that closely rivaled TDK & Maxell.

Awia, put glass over their heads to offset premature wear that other makes suffered from.
The down side of glass was less music detail recovery and dynamic range. It was notable, but not a game changer. The compromise for sound consistency and longevity against sound deterioration.

Revox made the best cassette decks overall. Revox were the most durable with nearly no maintenance. They used high wear items like plastic and rubber inerts to a bare minimum.
They were the #1 studio deck primarily for that reason.
The Dragon did not make a good studio deck for its weaknesses by comparison.

có bán không

I had a Pioneer CT-F2121 that worked crazy good for me.

The word tier is pronounced t e e r. Let's try to use the English language correctly unless you happen to be from England in which case there's no chance you're ever going to use the English language correctly.

Nowadays it is very important to know about the reliability and serviceability of a cassette deck. It'd be rather useless to purchase an old deck that tends to fail or it is very difficult to service.

There is a 'famous' (they have a good YT channel) Baltimore shop which sell refurbished certified vintage.
5 of 10 current listings for vintage cassette decks are NAKAMICHI.
BX-125 $599.99, BX-1 $499.00, RX-505 $2,999.99, RX-202 $1,999.99, RX-303 $1,999.99,
BX any good? 2 heads and I may dub some more tapes. 2 or 3 thousand dollars is too much for me to play my collection of vintage mix tapes.

Edit Nov 1 2023. Above are also notes to myself. Thought I would need to dump my vintage (1988-approx) NAD 6300 and spend too much for something else.

It needed repair badly. I bought used NAD back in early 90s - and had it sit for the last dozen years also.
After replacement parts servicing earlier this year, I had to bring it back in right away with jamming still. After brought it home, again after dubbing one mix tape, the tape got twisted some inside the cassette and stopped. Cleaning! got it right The shop did not do it. Dirt - oxide 'stuff' was not visible. Over the years I had used a cleaning and demagnetizing cassettes, but the hand cleaning was necessary.

What do you think about the Pioneer CT-90R Cassette Deck? What category would you put this one on?

Very good video! But hey I have a question. I just bought used fully serviced fully working Pioneer CT-S550S and it costs only 50€! So it good C-Cassette Deck... what you think? ☺👍

The Yamaha kx360 is amazing too basic two head model yet with auto bias and calibration

Yamaha kx 960
Nakamichi zx9
Cr7
Also another gem the Sony tck 777 es

How come none of these decks had Auto Reverse?.. What's the 3 head thing all about? Other than monitoring your recording in realtime is there any other advantage of 3H Over Auto Reverse recorders?

I had a Nakimichi 3 head LX5
Wonderful machine, I gave it and 300 Maxell XLii, Nak and TDK tapes away.
I had a Nak 400? Car deck and I have never bested it. I sold the car.

I would love to have a NAK ZX9 to record moog synthesizeer meanderings
Where can you get quality tapes?

Keep the models longer in the video, we want to see THEM, not you talking! thanks

I was searching for a 3-head deck, and came across quite a few, on Ebay, that looked promising. There were several from Sony & Kenwood that looked good and were reasonably priced. I was especially attracted to the Nakamichis (of course). I missed out on a BX-300 that was on auction, and all the other Naks were out of my price range. Then I came across a Denon DRM-800, in good shape, that I could afford. I researched it, on the Net, and....bought it. I'm now eagerly waiting for it to arrive. I hope I made the right decision....

What is a fair price for an Aiwa XK-007 at the moment? (technically and optically in perfect condition).
Thanks
Greetings Marco

Just picked up two Pioneer CT-F500 decks for $20 a piece at a local flea market. Not the most feature heavy model, but sound great making cool demos

Excellent! That was very helpful - thank you so much!

Thank you for your advise.. I bought the Technics RS-555 € 120. It was also revised.