Decked out. Or not.

[vakkotaur]

I have a number of audio cassette tapes of varying quality. A few were commercial recordings and of those most have been replaced by CDs which have since been ripped to mp3. Most are things taped off of FM broadcasts, generally from the Dr. Demento Show, but also from other sources. I'm not sure how much, or perhaps how little, of all this I could find now in a more modern format.

A while back I decided to digitize the contents of the tapes and make them more accessible. To that end i purchased a used cassette deck. It worked, but not today. Today I switched it on and it lit up, but PLAY, FAST FORWARD, REWIND, and RECORD do nothing. Before this there was DC offset problem on one channel, so now it's at least two problems. Pulling the cover off, the power transformer was fairly hot. hotter than I think it ought to have been. This deck is a Technics M234X which was made in 1983 and I don't know its history. And how much effort do I want to put into this thing, without any manual or schematics? I might look at at a bit, but at this point I'm figuring it's broken enough that I can't hurt it. If I break it, well, it was already broken. Big deal.

However, what I want is a working tape deck. It doesn't have to be fancy. It has to play tapes, and it has to have outputs that the computer sound card can deal with and that's pretty much it. A counter would be nice. I don't need anything fancy, like a remote control or autoreverse. In looking around, it seems that audio cassette decks have not quite followed the price trend of VCRs.

Any recommendations for a good basic (and inexpensive) audio cassette deck? Or where to look for such? Preferrably a place I can just drive to, rather than a web site that wants me to register before letting me do anything. I've already avoided pricegrabber.com and I'd rather not do this on ebay if I can help it.

Comments

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm using old decks that are no longer available in the marketplace, so can't make recommendations there. But if you are mainly looking to rip cassette tapes direct to digital audio, almost anything will work, even one of the cheap boom boxes you could get at Walmart or Target. Just be sure it has a headphone jack to use for a connection.

To buy online, you can use BestBuy or Radioshack. You will of course have to supply a credit card and matching mailing address, but neither has bugged me with spam. Just be sure to uncheck any boxes about being added to their mailing lists.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I've looked at the Best Buy and Radio Shack web sites and only found things for more than I really care to spend. As for the boom box approach, I'm trying not to degrade thing any further and so want to avoid having to fiddle with twitchy audio level controls. Also, I've dealt with a couple cheap boom boxes and when I can notice that they lack in audio quality, something's wrong.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The poor audio quality from boomboxes is usually due to cheap speakers and plastic housings, not the electronics. Since you'd be taking the output right from the line out, that's pretty irrelevant and keeps the cost down.

Tape decks are pretty cheap from most of the big retailers when they have a sale, of course. Or you could get an automobile tape player and run it from a DC power converter. Probably even could get one at a junk yard.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

The trick is finding anything like that which actually has a LINE OUT.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Most have an earphone jack. By adjusting the volume suitably, it works. You said the original recordings weren't high quality, so you aren't likely to lose anything. A little experimentation does it. :)

Car audio decks do usually have a line out, for those who insist on hooking them to power amplifiers and those speakers in the trunk that make the windows rattle.