Top 10 vintage cassette decks


Howdy folks!

Would like to add an excellent vintage cassette deck to my setup. Luxman PD444  and Victor TT-101 make up my vintage vinyl setup. It would be cool to include a badass old timer cassette deck don't ya think. Also researching 70's, 80's R2R's. There's another thread on that one. Anyway, I appreciate your knowledge and experience with a killer top ten vintage cassette deck. Bam!

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Just under the Aiwa f990, are  both the f770 and f660 models.  I’ve had the f770 for 38 years now, still going....the f660bis my back up. excellent 3 head decks. I sold my f990 a few years ago for top money, I was broke...these Aiwa decks could give nakamichi a run for their money and were way ahead of their time. Very futuristic looking decks. 

I use a JVC KD-A77 3 head deck it made great sounding tapes that I still listen to just put new belts still works great .

Nak CR-7A, out performed everything else in its class. Bought one new, and still have it. Every now and then I pop in a tape I made 25 years ago and still sounds great. Glad I never got rid of all my cassettes, have 100's

Many companies produced great cassette decks, most claimed big Nak killers, few did it though, some of the top ones came out late when cassette was dying and sported Dolby S. Many also never made it outside Japan so not well known, all were amazing piece of engineering and could demonstrate what the cassette was capable of, you cannot go wrong with any of these,

Nakamichi-ZX9, CR7, Dragon

Luxman/Alpine-K05/AL95 (same deck)

Revox-B215, B710

Pioneer-CT95, CT-A1

Sony-TC-K777ESII, TCK-A7ES 

Tandberg-TCD3014

Akai-GX-F95

Technics-RS9900

Teac-Z7000

Regret selling my TCK990ES (K555ES in Japan).

 

 

 

 

Back in the day I owned the Nak CX9. Could not afford the Dragon at the time. The Dragon was the ultimate deck.