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Michael A. Terrell

wrote:

I've recently been resurrecting some of my old Audio cassette recorders. They are all high quality machines and work very well, but I know (particularly in the case of the Teac), which is about 40 years old, that every one of them could probably benefit from a touch up alignment.

A few months back I went searching for an alignment tape. I found used, and/or what claims to be NOS, and Chinese new, but none of these are anything that I'd be willing to put any faith in. When I last looked there was a company which still makes these and there is also apparently something "hand made" by some individual on what he claims to be "professional equipment". However the cost for both of these is exorbitant. And I don't know anything about either of these sources.

Other than those choices there is nothing out there that I would want to use. These alignment tapes used to be available from manufacturers like Sony and Nakamichi, and they were relatively inexpensive but unfortunately those have not been manufactured for many years.

The problem is without doing a reproduce alignment first there is no way to to properly align a machine.

I was discussing this with a friend recently and he came up with an idea. They make, or used to make anyway these adapters in the shape of an audio cassette tape. They were mostly used in vehicles who's radios only had a cassette unit I think. The adapter had a tape "head" of sorts and it had a cable coming out of the top of the adapter that had either two RCA males or a 3.5mm stereo plug on the end. You could plug this end into the output of an IPOD or whatever and the adapter's head would induce a signal onto the cassette players head. I guess this unit must have employed the NAB characteristic curve because the ones I've heard always sounded pretty good to me.

I can probably dig up a couple of these around here, feed signals from my generator into it but I know that these adapters were never very expensive so I have to question the wisdom of attempting this. So I was wondering if perhaps a high quality version of anything like this was ever made for alignment purposes? That would totally eliminate the concerns with used tape of stretching and high frequency roll off.

I would appreciate any thoughts pertaining to any of this, especially in trying to use one of these run of the mill adapters, or any other high quality version, if such a thing is or was ever available, for my purpose. Most of my 70's music is on either records or cassettes, (and reel to reel for that matter, but that's another story), and my service van has a 1990 Delco radio that has seen service in 5 vans already and it has a cassette player in it as well.

So I admit it, I'm a dinosaur. And most of you guys that have been on this group for as long as I have already know that. And although I can no longer hear much above 8KHZ anymore, if you can appreciate it I just want to know that it's there. I just like to transfer my music to cassette and be able to listen to it wherever. Thanks Lenny

I doubt that those cheap adapters are even close to being in
alignment. All they are, is a plastic shell, a tape head and a cord.
They work by magnetically coupling the signal between the heads, and
that doesn't require precision.

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.