Hello everyone, I've been wanting to make a blogpost like this for a while. Since getting my first job, I've been spending a lot of my money on vintage audio gear. Hi-fi components and such. Especially in the first couple of weeks when I was less worried about saving. Now I'm trying to be more careful and not spend too much. But anyways, I use a lot of these things every day, and I really like this sort of stuff. I think I'll talk about each thing in the order I got them.
My first (and arguably my most ridiculous) purchase I made was a second hand Sony Walkman WM-EX651 from eBay.
I bought it early this May for over $200 including the battery and charger, and my flimsy justification was that I’d treasure it for years to come. It’s a cool little gadget though. As far as I know, it was the last high-end cassette walkman that Sony made, having released in 2004. Its design and build quality show that it was definitely a luxury item in its time. I think in some ways it demonstrates the pinnacle of cassette playing technology and miniaturization, but also foreshadows some changing priorities and a transition to a more CD dominated market. I think it’s a very interesting walkman model because of that. Also it is functionally and aesthetically very similar to Sony minidisc players of the time, which were popular in the Japanese and European markets (much less common in the US for a multitude of reasons.) It has a very minidisc/cd-player-like function called “automatic music sensing (AMS)” where it could automatically fast-forward through blank sections of the tape until it hits a new track. I don’t use that super often because a lot of albums don’t have distinct silent sections between tracks. It also has a speed adjustment slider which is fun to play with. I think that feature was meant for audio books and language learning guides. One thing that is lacking is dolby noise reduction. I’m not 100% sure why they didn’t include any noise reduction feature, as most high-end models previously did have at least Dolby B. Maybe they just realized it wasn’t utilized much. nonetheless, it’s a surprising omission. Also of note, this is the type of walkman that was meant to be used with an inline remote, but unfortunately I don’t have it and they are being resold at stupid prices.
Luckily all the controls are still present on the body of the walkman, but it’d be nice to get the remote someday. All in all, it’s a pretty cool walkman that is fun to use, and it sounds great, as far as I can tell. I definitely spent way too much on it though, and I probably could have found a better deal if I was more patient. By the way, I’m kind of embarrassed to take it out in public cuz I don’t wanna be seen as a dork.
The next thing I bought was also from eBay. Not long after I got the walkman, I bought a Realistic SCR-450 cassette receiver (aka a casseiver) for $166.
This might actually have been my most worthwhile purchase. I use this thing almost everyday now. It is a stereo receiver with a surprisingly great quality cassette deck built in. It is the heart of my system, it’s what everything else connects to, and it outputs the audio to my speakers. For a long while, I just used the speakers from my boombox with this receiver. I had to snip off the proprietary connectors on those speaker cords to achieve that though. Recently I found better speakers at Goodwill but I’ll talk more about those later. Anyways, more about the casseiver; When I received it, it was fully functional which was surprising. I thought the belts might need replacing, but the cassette deck worked great. some of the contacts were a little oxidized, but that was fixed just from regular usage. The visual condition wasn’t the best though. One of the knobs must have broken off and the previous owner replaced it with some random hex bolt. It bugs me but it works. I still think it looks really cool overall though, and the VFD display is awesome. It has a lot of really nice feeling buttons with a good clunk to them, and I like that sort of thing. The cassette deck uses soft touch controls by the way and it operates as smooth as butter. For being an all-in-one sort of device, they really didn’t skip out on much, quality wise. It even has a record-level knob for the cassette deck, and a real electronic erase head (instead of a permanent magnet.) Maybe the main cost-saving compromise is that the front panel is just plastic with silver paint. Anyways, I could talk about this thing for ages, and I guess I kind of have. It just has so many features. It also has an am/fm radio, a 3-band eq, radio presets, and more that I won’t mention. Fun fact: the brand “Realistic” was actually a division of RadioShack. I think it’s novel to have something from an iconic business that is now defunct.
This next thing I bought was essential for my ideal setup. A turntable. In June I found a Technics SL-5 turntable on eBay for $97. Again, I might have found a better deal if I had been more patient, but it could be worse.
This turntable isn't anything special, but I like its compact form factor and the linear tracking design. It works perfectly, and has served me well these past 6 months. I haven't changed the stylus at all which is probably bad but it still sounds fine to me. This turntable has a cueing button which lifts the stylus and lets you move it to any part of the record, using the start and stop buttons as left and right controls. It feels kind of like a claw machine haha. I often use the cueing button as just a makeshift pause button. I really don't have much to say about this one. It doesn't have a ton of features but it does the job.
This was basically my entire system for a while, besides also a cheap DVD player I've used as my CD player, which isn't even worth discussing. I could play all my records, CDs, and cassettes. I even recorded a few of my own cassettes using the casseiver, which was fun. While I wasn't actively pursuing new components, I would frequent thrift stores a lot and just kept my eye out for that sort of thing. One day at Goodwill I lucked out and got this tape deck for like 10 bucks:
It's hard to tell because it's missing the Logo decal, but this is a Technics RS-TR210 cassette deck. To be honest, I haven't really used it much. It's in working condition, but the cassette deck built into my receiver is more than adequate. And it has a bigger window to see the cassette inside haha. So I really don't know what to do with this cassette deck. I might give it away to someone, but they'd need some sort of receiver to properly use it. I might try recording onto a cassette with this one and do the same with the casseiver and compare the quality. If it's better, I might keep this one just for recording purposes.
I don't have much to say about them, but I also found nicer speakers at Goodwill. They are the ones in the photo at the top of this post. They aren't great or anything, but they sound nicer that the previous ones I think.
Anyways, at this point I was less focused on looking for vintage hi-fi components and more interested in finding a multitrack cassette recorder. Like a tascam portastudio or something. And for that purpose I finally got on Facebook marketplace. This was back in September/October. I wasn't able to get a 4-track recorder but I did spot an odd TEAC tape deck/2-track recorder hybrid thingy. It was called the TEAC Syncaset 124, and it was listed for $50 in not working condition. I went ahead and bought it. I had to drive kind of far to pick it up, but it was fun and it went smoothly, and I stopped at an old Karma Records store on the way back that happened to be in the area. Anyways I was basically certain that the issue was an old belt that needed to be replaced, because that's usually the problem. In any case, this thing was, and still is a beaut!
I'm a sucker for VU meters like that. And I love all the lights. Once I got it, I procrastinated on actually fixing it for a while, and basically just used it as a guitar preamp. The direct input sound was really nice. Eventually I did get around to fixing it, but it was a massive pain. The old belt had completely melted into tar, and I had to spend a long time removing it with q-tips and isopropyl alcohol.
And after that ordeal, I had to unscrew the whole cassette mechanism to slip the replacement belt on. And the screws were so tight, I had to use pliers to remove them. I'll admit that a lot of my difficulties with this were due to my own incompetence with this sort of thing. Anyways, even surprising myself, I was able to get it working again. It felt super satisfying. Since getting it fixed in early November, I've been having a ton of fun with this thing. Even though it's only 2 tracks, it's fun being able to record guitar harmonies and stuff onto cassette. I also discovered you can get some interesting feedback effects in a few different ways, connecting the headphones output into one of the 2 mic inputs, and turning the knobs in various ways. You can also half-press the pause button to cause the playback speed to get all screwy. Someone actually invited me to go on stage with them at a local music venue, bringing this deck and doing that sort of stuff, which was a fun memory. I think I'll be playing with this thing for a long while more, getting all sorts of weird sounds out of it.
Oops! I forgot to mention that it also works as a normal cassette deck for playing prerecorded cassettes. And in that regard, it functions pretty well. It does sound different from the tape deck in my casseiver though. Not necessarily better or worse, just different. I barely hear any wow and flutter, but it sounds like it has a more mid-bass weighted frequency response if that makes sense. And I don't have Dolby or anything turned on for this comparison
Anyways I'm just rambling at this point. I don't think I have much else to share. If you read through this whole thing, I'm insanely happy about that. This was definitely a very self indulgent blog post that might not interest many people, but hey, that's what this website is for! Thank you! Look forward to more additions to the site!