A friend of mine picked a Sony TC-651 reel to reel the other day.. Now he's offering it to me at a very reasonable price compared to two that sold on eBay... $192.00-$127.00...

I really don't know much about Sony reels... So is this TC-651 a decent machine... Is it worth buying, keeping or just throwing on eBay to make some cash...


But the real question.... Is he really a friend... Or not.... Hahahaha........



Thanks, Brent

Hi Brent:)
I wouldn't buy it, that's a lemon.. ....
Sony TC-640, 645, 650, 651, 730, 750 is all sour:(
People buy them for the looks without knowing what's inside..
Will do a good job as a boat anchor or a door stop.. sorry..

Sony made many good models but not 651...

Thanks alot Vintage TX...


I almost wasted $30.00....




Thanks again, Brent

You welcome Brent, find something else instead.:)

Whoa, wait a minute... I OWNED a TC651, this exact unit. Mine worked great!

The only problem I ever had with it, was it started dropping out of play, occasionally. Found some heat-deformed relay snubbers on one of the boards inside, replaced all the snubbers (120 ohm resistors in series with .22uf caps, IIRC, there were like 10 or 12 of them on that board, which all got replaced), and it worked great after that.

I sold it to a guy who works for Delta Air Lines- he's actually using that monster as a backup recorder for corporate meeting minutes recording. He's had it for a couple years; AFAIK it's still slugging away...

As for sound- mine sounded pretty darn good. Not as good as a good Wollensak or Tandberg, but as good as most of the Akai X-series units I've heard...

I suspect a lot of the transport problems people experienced with these (dropping out of various modes in the middle of doing something) is related to these snubbers going bad. Given how EASY it was to change them all, I don't understand why this problem isn't rectified, posthaste, on these things...

Regards,
Gordon.