Hi! I'm 16 and tomorrow gonna turn 17 (I live in Poland but it's going to be 8th of January) and I'm new to cassettes but I really like em! I don't know if it's a good idea to post all those questions in here cause there's a lot of posts already about them but I find some stuff interesting and undiscovered. If you'll ask my deck is Philips FW-362/34 and as you can see the deck 2 (the one on right side) is opened cause the plastic of housing felt apart when my cassette stuck in it after rewinding to end of a tape but now when I got it off I can manage to simply take off cassette with my fingers when the rewinding ends, okay but how to make cassettes and cassette deck perform better? How I can achieve better quality sound? Do I need to get an amazing deck for this purpose? Can cleaning cassette deck (inside of it, things like rollers etc.) improve sound? I really enjoy the natural, analog sound of cassettes but I want to make them sound a bit better. Is this even a good idea to buy old used prerecorded type 1 cassettes from my favorite artists and listen to them - isn't it better idea to record from other medium/for example from AUX (3.5 mm) cable (from a phone or computer) or CD on cassette deck and create a mixtape myself? How can I then erase songs that are recorded on old tapes and then record on them to avoid buying new cassettes? How I can take care of cassettes themselves, I heard about lubricating them but I have no idea how to do it and cleaning deck per every 50 hours of play with alcohol or special liquid (I read about cleaning every 50 hours in manuals). Same goes with deck inside, is there something more than just cleaning it with cotton swabs? Should I soak them in rubbing/isopropyl alcohol (I don't have it but I watched people doing it on YouYube) although I heard that isopropyl alcohol is cleaning deck well whilst it can ruin it if it's overused or just because of the nature of this alcohol? Am I right about it? Also, I cleaned my both decks using cotton swabs but dry swabs without any liquid or alcohol and after that I deck 1 plays tapes really well without any problems, only deck 2 is slowing music after some time of listening to tapes and eventually eating them. I really want to know an answer for all those questions. I don't own a boom box, only a cassette/CD deck from early 2000s or late 90s (I have more info about my deck in posts I added before) which also includes 2 separate speakers - CD'a are sounding pretty well on it but cassettes (even though they're really interesting to me) somehow sound kinda like not showing their power off, although I don't know how to record properly tapes on my own, I'm listening just to old 90s tapes which my mom owned before, some of them are prerecorded ones but majority of them are mix tapes made by her - some of them are type II's but most of them are type I's. Also, my deck supports dolby NR (so it's just probably Dolby B NR) and I don't get it. I don't listen to tapes that loud to hear significant hiss so I could say that I don't need it whilst prerecorded tapes have symbol of Dolby which I guess means I should've used Dolby NR but when I'm using it cassettes aren't sounding so loud and great but mostly vocals aren't so vibrant and high anymore and they seem to sound more dull - the cassette still sound good though but not as impressive I could say but for sure it reduces the hiss although I don't hear it because I'm not listening to music very loud. The thing is, I hear more than a hiss from cassette itself - it's just a cassette deck reading a cassette and the deck is giving sound of 'working' (playing a cassette) which makes hiss not a big problem since I hear music itself but this weird sound of cassette deck working..., do you guys think other decks have the same issue even when they're really expensive and good? If I'm correct to have Dolby B working great is to have another device that's reads it correctly. I saw it once at a video by The Walkman Archive on YouTube when he was showing prerecorded cassettes and turning on Dolby B on special encoder/amplifier? I don't know name of this device but it was from a brand called JVC but he told its really rare to find them nowadays. Also, is rewinding back and forth in both directions great idea? I heard it has some benefits if tapes weren't used for a long time. And something weird is happening on deck 2 which includes option of recording (I'm not sure but I think it's 2 head deck) - after listening to tape for some time sound starts to slow down eventually and I need to listen in deck 1 which don't have auto reverse and recording option unlike second deck (by saying deck I mean the place where you're putting your cassette). I have read in other posts a bit about all that stuff but some things just seem interesting to me? Also, does it even have sense to record on tapes on my deck? When I tried it one time from a CD it sounded really bad although I read some stuff about volume having a big impact on recording to tapes and I think I had volume settings to loud so it was very not good quality and not loud and eventually had a lot of hiss because it needed volume to be loud to hear the song. I'm mostly listening to old moms tapes from 90s and they sound alright and some songs even when recorded onto type 1 tapes sound really good! I mean my mom never had a good deck I think but how then it's possible they sound alright on mine still and how she recorded them to sound alright? Maybe I asked questions that were already answered in here but i did and I did some things wrong while making this thread, I apologize but making knowledge about cassettes takes a lot of time for me especially that I knew nothing about them just a few months ago I'll be happy if I'll get an answer because I've been getting really into cassette tapes and I wondered some things about them IMG_0705 (first photo) is showcasing second tape deck inside (it also records while first one don't) IMG_0708 (second photo) is showing first deck inside
Wow loads of questions, i know English is not your first language but you need to break your text into paragraphs. The way you wrote it most people will not read it as it’s too difficult to read. You don’t need the best decks to get better sound, but you need everything to work well to get better sound. From your questions, you have a lot to learn and it will not happen overnight. Just keep reading info on this forum and watch YouTube ect to slowly educate yourself. When you played with Dolby on and it sounded dull, that could be a number of reasons but it's no good me telling you now as it would not make sense to you. Checkout some of Techmoan’s video’s plus read more on Walkman Archive’s website to learn more.
Thanks for an answer! It was really helpful and I'm for sure going to educate myself more about those topics
Hi Jakub and welcome to the forum. I see you have too many questions, which is good, but you have written a big brick of text that it's difficult to read as TooCool4 already said. I suggest you to split them in several posts (or at least paragraphs) and post them separately. However, to help you I'll try to edit your message and split the questions so at least they are easy to read. To start with I'd suggest you to read my cassette FAQ (see my below my signature) and these videos: As well as this my guide: http://walkman-archive.com/articles/guide-good-recordings_01.html
Jakub, I reply to some if your questions: All decks produce hiss even when there's no cassette inside, but good ones produce very low hiss and cheap ones a more noticeable. If you want high quality from your cassettes you'll need to save and buy a good 3-head deck sooner or later. It's not expensive but you'll need something between 150-250 euros or so. Yes, to correctly listen to a Dolby-encoded tape you need a dolby decoder... which almost all decks and many walkmans have. If your deck has a dolby button it will serve to both decode and encode when you record on a tape. The JVC external decoder is for a better decoding with no loss of treble, which is something common. As long as you want to enjoy recording your tapes, yes Yes, the record level has great impact in your recordings. Adjusting it properly is a key aspect of a good recording and it will make the difference between a crappy sound or a great sound with no distortion and almost unnoticeable hiss. I made a video about this some time ago: It will give you brief directions on how to proceed, although there's much more if you go into this matter. You'll need a deck with adjustable rec level, of course.
Thank you so much for answering! I actually saw that I made so many questions and they were all split together which made them hard to read although I once again very thankful and happy for receiving answers! Have a nice day
Welcome Jakub Rydzewski, don't worry about asking a lot of questions, tape decks can be one of the most mysterious parts of the audio chain. The best sound is going to come from a tape deck that is used to record sound and then also used to play it back. Some of the nicest tape decks will only sound great if the tape was taped on them. I'd say cleaning is the easiest thing to do and should be part of your routine if you play tapes on a regular basis. You can see darker areas on the rollers of your machine, clean with q-tip or foam pad until there's no more black residue. All-in-one stereos, most boomboxes and a lot of portables (Walkmans, etc) are not considered sonic wonders, the environment their used in usually has so much ambient background noise that hi-fidelity is not possible. Enjoy those for what they were made, portable music but also a style statement. Tweeking with the equipment is half the fun, changing sound levels, cords, types of tape. There's no magic setting for all equipment but basic guidelines, I find that 3/4 volume on the recording chain is a good base to get good sound. For most cassette users Dolby is hard to work with and sounds like a bag over your head. If you do get more into the equipment, it's also fun to mess with these settings and see if you can get even better sound. Now that we can run the music through computers you can look at the wave forms and have a visual guide for getting better sound. Good luck and keep your eyes open for better equipment, flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores usually have old equipment for sale or better yet, older people have this stuff stashed away.
Hi Jakob. I note no-one has specifically advised you about cleaning. You are right to consider isopropyl alcohol but again right to be wary over its ruinous power to particularly soften plastics, stain certain metallic surfaces, and wipe off printing from controls and surrounding areas. Just use 100% in the bottle cap for heads, guides and main rollers, keeping one side of the bud for cleaning and the other dry side for gentle wiping immediately afterwards. Use as many as needs be until no more black or brown residue remains, and don’t mix the 2 bud sides. Don’t contaminate the liquid by dipping the same mucky bud for another wipe. Always use a horizontal movement to avoid scratching your heads. Wait until the surfaces are completely dry before running tapes through, and be especially wary of wetness remaining on the rubber rollers. To clean up general metal and plastic surfaces safely, you can dilute isopropyl by mixing 1 part to 3 parts of pure distilled water from a chemist or large supermarket. I’d strongly advise against buying anything marked as “rubbing alcohol” as this could contain other chemicals and is often classed as “70% alcohol”. To be even safer you can buy dedicated lcd tv spray cleaners containing zero alcohol, but I have to say from experience that the suggested 1:3 dilution has caused me no problems in many years of use. Oh by the way those cassette cleaners are mere toys - and manual is best.
I've got a ton of the cassette cleaners (mostly NOS), they work best for car audio where it can be extremely difficult to access the head and rollers but audiodiplomat is right when you have access do it the q-tip/foam pad way with better results. By the way, that black tar goop that comes off is super hard to clean off of surfaces when it mixes with the IPA, be prepared with lot's of paper towels so you don't drip or touch other surfaces (especially silver-faced stereo equipment).
