[cheap-Jack]

HI.

The Western Electric Company got it right as far as tube amplification back in the 40's and really hasn't been approved upon.  I also embrace many of the technological marvels, but still derive much love for vintage.  You will not find better tuners than the old tube analog ones. 

Jim

As a sorta kinda old radio collector, I love vintage gear strictly for its historic collector value, nothing to do with their vintage sound - I hate bigtime. I always upgrade any vintage gears, like all the vintage radios I collected to the modern sound I like -  fast, transparent & detailed.

Yet withOUT changing a bit their vintage outlook. So they look same as they were decade back but sound
very ultra modern.

Like the 50-year-old stock Dynaco PAS-2 & ST70 combo which my friend donated me FREE, which sounded noisy, hummy, veiled, slow that was totally unacceptable to me. If I were NOT a DIYer, I'd have returned them back to the donor, saying thanks but no thanks.

Now I've rebuilt them to sound, IMO, like yet BETTER than the best brandname SS & tube amps I've ever auditioned in the past - vibrant, see-thru transparent, yet musical. But their outlook still look the same
50 years ago. So I managed to transform their sound from me-unacceptable slow, veiled vintage sound to
ultra modern sound withOUT changing a bit their panel outlook.

So historic art & modern sound can come hand-in-hand.

c-J

[Wayner]

I have a Sony TC-K707ES deck, in like new condition with almost zero hours on it. It has bias control for all tape types, as well as volume maximization for tape type. It also has Dolby B, C and S which approached CD noise levels (at the time). Sounds very analog, but not the dynamic range you'd expect from a classy reel to reel deck. This was one of the last machines made during the slippery slide of the cassette.

I think it was touted as the medium that had almost as good of sound as a reel to reel, but didn't take up nearly as much shelf space.

Sure the pre-recorded tapes were bad, they were mass produced in high capacity batch machines and the music was recorded at a very fast rate. You could obtain a much better copy from your own LP.

You can smug the medium all you want, but they still sold lots of tapes, blank and recorded.

Wayner

[SteveFord]

Today I had on a college radio station and the DJ announced that this one band has a new album coming out on cassette only.
He continued with that's right, kids, I'm seeing that all the time and there's more and more of them, the cassette is making a comeback.

I'd like to see it happen but I draw the line at 8-track.

Wayner's right, home recorded cassettes can sound very good, even decades later. 
I was given a Carver deck by a very generous fellow which I hooked up to a headphone system, put on a copy I made of Creedence doing "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" and there's a background vocalist on there I'd never noticed before.
Great stuff from  a 25 year old tape.

[vortrex]

John Frusciante released his last 3 recordings on cassette.

[FullRangeMan]

John Frusciante released his last 3 recordings on cassette.

A compatible release, cassette is a suited media to this kind of music.
Otherwise listen classical music in cassettes is a torture.

[dB Cooper]

Despite the fact that it often seemed to sound better than it had a right to, I don't miss the format at all, either the maintenance, the proliferating tapes, squeaky cassettes (including the "big" brands), finding spun-out tapes all over parking lots. Phooey.

[Donald]

My Sony TC203SD served me well in the mid to late 70's and into the 80's. It had a slight bit of tape hiss with Dolby B and a very fine amount of rolled off highs in a direct A/B comparison, but home made tapes sounded pretty darn good. The wood case and silver face matched well with my Pioneer SX-1250. This was not a top of the line cassette (listed for $400), but was all I could afford back then.

Thanks Steve. This thread makes me want to pull it out of the closet and see if it stills works. It been over a decade or so since I fired it up.