Dave

There is one dual deck they made that was a sort of low end commercial product that surprized me. Not the same as the rest of their line. But maybe I got a bad one.

In the 70's, I had an Onkyo tape deck that was surprisingly good. I also had a Pioneer RT-909 reel-to-reel (which I still own) but the Onkyo beat it hands down. That's no small feat considering the tape speed and other disadvantages inherent in cassette tape. But the clutches eventually wore out, and in this regard, the Pioneer is the one that wins. You can still get parts for it, whereas the Onkyo has long been in the trash bin.

But one thing I learned form the Onkyo was how important bias adjustment was. When I'm looking for a cassette deck these days, I look for a good transport and heads, and I want a three head deck so I can monitor the actual recording. But just as important as all that, I want a bias knob that is variable, not just a setting for tape type. That is very important for good recordings, since it allows me to set the bias for individual tapes.

With a bias knob, I can get good tapes to be as crisp and clean as possible. And even cheap iron-oxide tapes can be made to sound pretty good. You don't ever expect to hear cymbals at all on a cheap iron tape, but with a bias adjustment, you'd be surprised what you can get 'em to sound like.

So that's my little blurb on tapes for my first post here. I'm running a Sony KA1ESA cassette deck these days, which is not extremely expensive and has all the right features. If anyone needs a good cassette deck for less than a grand, that's one I can recommend.