Greeting, I went to a known trusted record store, a small shop. They sell new and old Records, CDs, and cassettes. They also have a selection of vinyl record players, and there was 3 cassette decks one of them was a double deck JVC. The owner showed me a Denon DRR-M30 (120 US dollars) (Made in China but a Japanese brand) it has a drawer eject mechanism for cassettes, and it can record and has dolby B. I am new to cassette, I only used them when I was 8-11 years old. I bought a Mystik (Mulann B-1000) by Record the masters recently and I like the sound for listening, I dont know any better, however the recording does have hiss. Is the Denon DRR-M30 worth it for 120$ (USD) ? is it a step up from the portable tape recorder (Mulann B-100 by RTM)? When I record a tape on Mulann B-1000 I get a hiss noise. Will I get it with the Danon? The danon was made in the years 2000. Will it be a Tanashin like mechanism? or is it one of the good ones or better ones? I want this for recording, and for listening. I dont listen to many tapes, and dont record too much either. but wanted a step of from the Mulann, but if it is not that good I will wait for better thing. I assume it is repaired/refurbished, and it looked in great condition but I will ask to be sure. Specs: https://www.cnet.com/products/denon-drr-m30-cassette-deck/ Mechanics interiors found online: https://imgur.com/a/uD5hU Youtuber video showcase:
Hiss is an inherited part of tape moving over the heads, so you will always get some hiss. You can use Dolby to reduce the hiss. A good deck will have lower hiss and if you are using good quality low noise cassettes recorded from a low noise source, you will get even lower hiss. I am not a fan of draw loading units, it’s difficult to get in and clean inside. Rotating heads are a problem too as they go out of alignment easier. If you want something good that will record well, you need to find a unit that will allow you to calibrate and optimise any cassette you find to use. The unit you are looking at here will have been calibrated and optimise for a particular cassette and anything else you find and use which does not meet that spec will not record as well as can be. But saying all of that, just go and ask if you can use the unit. Make a few recordings, play a few cassettes both pre-recorded and the ones you make if you like what you hear buy it and if not look for something else.
$120 sounds expensive for this type of deck. For that price I would expect a years guarantee from a shop that I would be confident would be around to honour it. There are three three of these "Buy it now" on eBay.co.uk at the moment ranging from £50 to £65. The last one to actually sell went for £45. Something to be aware of it that the deck doesn't have manual recording level, so can't be optimised for making recordings. Earlier ones like the drr-m6.5 ? which I have do. Although these decks can be used standalone, where they make most sense is as part of a mini-system, espcially as one remote can be used to operate all units. At £59 someone got a good but fair deal on this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Denon-UD...=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 p.s. I just realised that all this is from a U.K. perspective. Mini-systems were really common in the U.K. twenty years ago. Techmoan made a video about them and his "Time Machine" film analogy is spot on.
Thank you TooCool4, it does seem that it would be difficult to cleanup and maintenan. I suppose we recognise a rotating head by the auto reverse function? Longman, I suppose yes it could be expensive. I am in Canada. I wonder if it is that price because it is great condition. Although I love how small it is in size, maybe it is not necessarily the best. It would have to be tested to be sure.
In addition to having a decent deck, the very next thing that affects the quality of cassette recording is the condition of the head. If it is worn out or even coated with oxide/fungus from the tape, recording quality is lost. Any residual oxide coating could be cleaned with some means like alcohol dipped cloth, but there is no cure for worn out head other than replacing it with the same spec head, which is nearly impossible now. From the very first time we start playing or recording a cassette in a brand new deck, the head starts wearing out! In a single cassette deck, the same head is used up for all its playing as well as recording time. If the owner is knowledgeable, one will not use the recording deck for playing cassettes in a double cassette deck, thereby potentially increasing the chance of leaving a good head in the recording deck. The condition of head can be visually seen in a conventional deck, whereas that may not be possible in such drawer type mechanism. Also it is a good idea to clean the head before every recording, which is not possible in drawer type. So if recording is your main concern, look for the condition of the recording head in a second hand unit (Unless it is a 3 head deck, Play & Record head are the same). A heavily used (I mean, used for playing cassette) stereo by all chance will be having a worn out head.
If he had the entire Denon System it might be an ok deal but with just the tape deck I'd pass. The industry sold tape decks by the millions and there's a ton still out there, you might need to replace the belt which can take minutes or a few hours but something like a nice JVC or AIWA for $10-20 USD might be a better way to go. Throw in a new belt, see if you like it and then think about the next purchase. I'm not sure when tape decks jumped the shark but I'd say around 1992, there are exceptions but I don't have much from after that and I don't think any are stunners or stand-outs. Japanese Companies built the best stuff in Japan and used off-shore manufacturing for the mid-level stuff, it is interesting that Denon off-shored that unit, now I feel really bad for leaving one curbside in Tokyo last year, the Japanese Units might be kind of rare.
I think a bit later than that. This Technics uses the same head technology that was developed for DAT. https://www.cassettedeck.org/technics/rs-az7 However, the most interesting thing is probably the "Similar" section at the bottom which shows other decks from companies like Sony from the 1996 to 1998 time period. The Sonys were countering Technics fancy head with Dolby S. That wasn't introduced until 1989 so you won't find it on many decks. A question I'm sure that different people will have different opinions on, is whether it is better to buy a newer deck which is likely to have had far less use than an older one. In the 1980s a colleague bought a Nakamichi as the only source in his HiFi. He was adamant that he didn't need or want a turntable as cassettes did everything he wanted. If that deck is still around it will have had a lot of use. By the 1990s I'm sure that many people got a cassette deck in their new system simply because they always had one or it was bundled in with the other equipment. In a similar way I have a cheap Technics record deck that I bought from a friend. He had never used it as he only had CDs but it came as part of the Technics midi system he wanted. Interestingly my similar Denon cassette deck is Made in Korea. You can almost tell the age of a unit from where it was made.
If you were heavy into tape decks and used Metal Tapes I can see a head issue but most of my heads I look at in the shop look pretty good, I do run into the dust bin problem once in a while where everything is coated but I never see worn/grooved heads. I feel like this Denon Deck is better for the guy trying to complete the whole system, most of these were sold as all-in-ones and for some reason it got seperated. I have no problem with newer decks, I just think they should be priced around $10-20 USD and for that price around here I can find a better late 80's deck, which will most likely need a belt but have a few more features.
Mister X, you are most likely right, it would be a better deal if it came in complete kit. It would cost more too I gather but it would be worth it.
Metal cassettes don't wear the heads any quicker than other types of cassettes, I pretty much exclusively use metal cassettes.
I did both head wear and dirt (tape) accumulation tests, our main client was 3M but we had another Japanese Company we worked with that 3M had close ties with, I can't remember who it was. The tests were done according to a pre-written spec report defining just about everything. We didn't use normal tape deck heads, we used a block of metal with three or four metals mixed in it that was carefully measured before and after with an optical comparator. Our comparator had a pre-digital camera to take lots of photos for the finished reports. I don't think we used pancakes, I think we had a giant loop through the lab that would run the tape for a week or two continously, obviously time and consistant speed were important. Depending on the tape or study, I'd stop the equipment and take photos and measurements of wear and dirt (tape) accumulation on the block. I'm pretty sure the specs had a pre-defined amount of acceptable wear listed that applied to all formulations, I'm not sure if this was a 3M or industry standard, the spec sheet looked generic but at the end of the day I saw very little, if any wear on our block. The bigger issue was the dirt (tape) left behind. If the manufacturer used these specs, you shouldn't see much, if any wear, I'm sure they balanced the forumulation enough so they didn't have the sand-paper blend, but we always considered metal to be the most abrasive even if it was minimal, if any. Like I said, most of my tape decks heads look perfectly fine; you'd have to run an abrasive tape over one for weeks to begin to see wear from my experience. I also got into VHS and 8mm data tapes, unfortunately it was mid to late 90's and most of this media was on it's way out. One of my other jobs was maintaning Otari Tape Loading Machines, beautiful equipment but they required constant attention, I was always happy if I could keep one running most of the day, with four going it was a full time job clearing jams and adjusting the dozens of little air-cylinders each one had. I just did a job for a retired 3M Engineer that used to set up the media production plants world-wide. He said all of the media started on a wide roll and then was slit down to size for the product, VHS, 8mm, audio cassette, etc. He also said at the big 3M plant in Wahpeton Minnesota (closed in 2008) had one guy, working full time, sharpening the slitters for the metal-tape formulations. Unfortunately through the years, I never got to see inside any of the plants, they had mucho security but they looked impressive from the outside.
I have 25+ boomboxes and 10+ cassette decks as part of midi systems. All of them have head wear, with visible groove/shaved off head, except on the NIBs! Surely, I collected these recently and these must have been run for years by its owners, few hours every other day. So the duration of use is that matters, (to be measured in Months or Years!), possibly undetected in a test running for a week as you did. The only exception that I see is the AKAI glass heads on my Reel to Reel deck and one Akai boombox. A visible groove is not there. Even then, the boombox has traces of coating deposit on its glass head after say 10+ hours of use. On the note about VHS, it is time to dust my Sharp HiFi VCR and do some audio recordings to see its sound quality!
