TomB19
Active Member
Imo, top quality sound reproduction is not possible using cassette without bias adjustments and a calibration tone generator.
When I worked on a service bench, we used to replace tape heads with jobber parts, where the oem part is nla. We took some pretty modest machines, put one of our two types of generic head in it and they always sounded better. I'm trying to think about the difference and I think they were electrically the same but different mounts. We had an inductance meter and I think they tested as the same inductance and had the same gap. All from memory. I don't see how A jobber head could possibly sound better, unless the systems were designed pretty modestly. There is no way a generic head would sound as good in a top deck from the 80s.
Older decks would wear out quickly when using chrome tape because early heads were so soft. By the late 1970s, that was mostly figured out but metal tape was the new abrasive format causing chrome capable heads to wear quickly.
I used to check them by scratching them with my fingernail. If it would catch on a ridge, the head was gone. Sometimes they were so bad, it was obvious at a glance.
I seem to recall akai was the first company with a glass head that was pretty wear resistant. My second deck was an akai and I loved it until I got a pretty amazing sony es deck in the mid 80s. That sony was supplemented with a used hk cd491 that was amazing but it was the era of cd by then and it was under enjoyed. Both decks in their original boxes in my basement, right now
When I worked on a service bench, we used to replace tape heads with jobber parts, where the oem part is nla. We took some pretty modest machines, put one of our two types of generic head in it and they always sounded better. I'm trying to think about the difference and I think they were electrically the same but different mounts. We had an inductance meter and I think they tested as the same inductance and had the same gap. All from memory. I don't see how A jobber head could possibly sound better, unless the systems were designed pretty modestly. There is no way a generic head would sound as good in a top deck from the 80s.
Older decks would wear out quickly when using chrome tape because early heads were so soft. By the late 1970s, that was mostly figured out but metal tape was the new abrasive format causing chrome capable heads to wear quickly.
I used to check them by scratching them with my fingernail. If it would catch on a ridge, the head was gone. Sometimes they were so bad, it was obvious at a glance.
I seem to recall akai was the first company with a glass head that was pretty wear resistant. My second deck was an akai and I loved it until I got a pretty amazing sony es deck in the mid 80s. That sony was supplemented with a used hk cd491 that was amazing but it was the era of cd by then and it was under enjoyed. Both decks in their original boxes in my basement, right now
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