I love hearing about dumpster and yardsale finds. When I was done with it, wow and flutter was. It does have an idler wheel which requires a major tear down to replace, but the performance is so good, I like it anyway. It is a 3 head direct drive single capstan deck. I recently found a Denon DR-F6 at a garage sale which I like very much. Not sure if the pinchrollers are still available, I bought spares a couple of years ago just in case for mine. You can buy one on E-Bay for around $50 and it has gorgeous fake rosewood side panels. I like the performance of the Pioneer decks but the idler wheel goes bad all the time and can be a real pain to change in some models.Īkai GXF 90 is a wonderful 3 head deck with direct drive capstan.ĭenon DRM-44HX is the best sounding, most reliable cassette deck I have ever worked on or owned, bar none. Akai parts are horrible to get and the wait can be months! I bought some MP 336204 rollers which are smaller OD and small shaft, and it took 4 months to get them! Lucky I ordred 6 of them! I have found that TEAC part number 5800891200 works to replace the rollers that have smaller shaft diameters. sometimes the shaft must be carefully pressed out to get the roller out, then pressed back in carefully so as not to distort the metal arm. You will also have to remove the original pinchroller from it's metal arm and replace it with the new roller. Often you can get the outer diameter right but the shaft diameter is wrong. There are a few generic replacements available from but sizes are limited. The main thing you have to worry about on a vintage deck is the pinchrollers will usually need to be replaced and except for Nakamichi and maybe Teac, the original parts are unavailable. It doesn't have to 'think about it.' Have fun in the hunt, pictures below. Beats the Sony cold and press and record. Give me a good reel to reel or cassette deck any day. They put too much crap on the damned thing!! I would not put up with this crap, but most my friends use these bloody CD's Any one of us here could design a better CDR. It was a royal pain in the a** just to 'program it to dub' Stupid stupid stupid design. Damned Sony CDR will dub the whole CD but the directions suck and I don't want to mess with it. The specs are good enough I used both to record CD stuff to cassette back to CD. To bad TEAC put a brush motor in it But for a 25 year old deck its good to go for now. Ended up it had a sticky 'record button' and its a go Plays great too. Bought a newer 460, a model I was not familiar with,non working on the 'Bay cheap for its capstan. Someday I will find a capstain and its ready. Have a second that has a bent capstain so the speed is off. So far this Teac is the only one I have seen with a motor like older turntables, its syncronous with no brushes!!! It gets noisy, you can take it apart, clean and oil it and you are good to go! Cleaned mine up with new belts and it sounds great. Everything else is easy to service by removing the bottom panel's eight screws Only one of the tape counter belts is a problem. Unlike newer TEACs, this one is easy to get at the drive belts and the rewind belt. They can be a pain to replace!! Especially if you are like me, I have large hands. One of the problems with any older cassette are belts. You got a lot of nice choices here from the posts Here's my two cents.

Akai 726d tapedeck