Detailed look at the 1983 Sharp RT-350 Autoreverse cassette deck
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- The RT-350 was Sharp's top-of-the-line cassette deck for the years 1983 and 1984, and their very first Autoreverse deck. Let's take a closer look!
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This video was recorded in a new set that is still work in progress. The lighting and the sound quality will be better in the next video :)
I've searched on youtube for a video of the Sharp Sg 222 BLACK FACE stereo which came out in 1985-86 .I guess no one has any again.But i do see the Sharp Sg220 model .
Where is your part 2 of Sharp RT-350?.
I owed this exact deck wayyy back when I was 12yrs old... I got from a friend's father who had a real nice system along with this. He admired that I had an interest in electronics being I was so young; and told me if i could fix it, I could have it. It was the same bad belt issue, but I was able to make it work by "helping" the gear along so it would reverse without hanging up. Man, once i hooked this up and played Kenny G (which was at the time, was a chrome O2 tape) I thought this had the most amazing sound, playing it over and over. I loved the Auto search and fast reverse this deck had. It eventually dies, and a few years later I had searched for a new deck at all the stereo shops and Macy's stores while Christmas shopping with my parents. I quickly realized this sharp RT350 had features my parents could never afford to replace at that time ! I settled for a JVC TD-W330 which was not even close to this!
Absolutely wonderful. I love learning about cassette decks that an odd feachers or just look interesting. Do keep up the good work!!
Nice! Good old Sharp made in Japan.
technics had some fancy looking autoreverse dbx decks back in the 80s... with direction lights and tape type leds on the door, and very good sound thanks to mx head and dbx nr.
I have a deck with "Quick reverse" and it uses an optical sensor to detect the leader of the tape and instantly changes direction. I think this might have a similar thing? I know if you shine a bright torch at the tape door you can sometimes trick it into reversing! Great video dude. Keep em coming.
This deck doesn't have an optical sensor for a quick reverse that detects the leader tape. I think I once had a JVC deck with such a system. As I said in the video, this Sharp deck reverses when it detects a longer period of silence. So it can happen that it reverses in the middle of the tape if there is nothing recorded there.
I have a realistic branded Aiwa cassette deck which also has the quick reverse feature and it's optical also... As soon as it picks up the leader tape it will switch sides, interestingly enough, when playing a tape that was recorded on it and it reversed at the end of the tape halfway through a song, during playback it will switch sides keeping the beat! Pretty amazing!
I also have a pioneer 5 cassette tape changer that seems to also have some sort of quick reverse function although I don't know if it's optical? I haven't used it for some time and it's in storage at the moment but I still remember how it reversed without waiting for the end of the tape. But it only does it if the tape has been playing for a while, the first time that I noticed it, I reversed the tape to see it will do it again because there's no mention of that feature on the unit but I couldn't replicate it, I later found out that it needs to be playing for a few minutes before the end of the tape for it to happen whereas the optical system on the Realistic always worked no matter where it was on the tape...
But this type of quick reverse function is interesting! I wonder how it works?
One feature that would have been great on home hifi cassette decks would have been Blank Skip! I had it on my Kenwood car cassette deck and if there's no signal for 4 seconds it goes searching for the next track! I don't know why it didn't make it into home Hifi but it's a very useful feature...
I had this deck in the 80s. My deck had a problem with suddenly appearing loud blubbing sound in one channel, I have searched long time for the reason and found out that the thin cables soldered at the autoreverse head going through a small hole caused the problem. I replaced the wires with some ultrathin cables i had and that solved the problem. Perhaps the same with your deck...
I had a buzzing sound on my old Pioneer deck. I once stumbled across the same problem at an online forum about cassette decks. Turns out it was the problem with dirty contacts of the automatic tape selector switches. I bought some contacts cleaner and gave them a good wash. All the buzz has gone since then and the sound is crystal clear.
I like the design. It's very "80s"
Yes, indeed. I actually do quite like the design.
Seems to be pretty well-featured by 1983 standards, so not too bad I guess. I wonder if there would've been other matching components to go with it as it looks a little lonely by itself.
I believe Optonica was the high-end audio arm of Sharp Electronics, much like Panasonic had Technics.
This cassette deck would have certainly been part of a tower system originally, and that's probably the reason why it has these uniform plain buttons. All other components in the system would have very likely had a very similar design.
Optonica indeed was the hifi-only brand of Sharp. But it seems to me the priority on Optonica products were fancy high-tech features and not so much the audio quality. So I wouldn't call that brand high-end either.
Nice piece of electronics from the old days
You should see the Sharp series of stereos from that time frame .Luckily i still have a rare and virtually impossible model SHARPSG 222 BLACK FACE STEREO.cassette .turntable ,radio.With boxes with12" subwoofer 6" mid range speakers and pizzo tweeters.200watts rms .You may find the earlier model sharp sg 220.
Radio Shack had an almost identical unit, the SCT-80. Different button layout but same transport.
The transport is most likely an off-the-shelf component that Sharp bought from a company such as Sankyo.
Wieder mal ein witziger Zufall. Ich habe gestern ein RT-300 aus dem Keller geholt und hatte mir überlegt, ein Video damit zu machen. Teilweise gibt's zwischen den Decks sogar Ähnlichkeiten. VU-Meter ist genauso "großzügig", Deck hat kein Autoreverse und die Tasten für die Laufwerksfunktionen sind anders angeordnet. Sehr gutes und interessantes Video, wie immer! Danke!
Das RT-300 ist das direkte Vorgängermodell des RT-350. Es wurde weiterverkauft, als das RT-350 herauskam, und dann 1985 zusammen mit den meisten anderen Einzeldecks zu Gunsten von Doppelcassettendecks vom Markt genommen.
You mentioned that it needs new belts. Thank you for opening it up. How much disassembly do you think would be necessary to change the belts?
You need to take the mechanism out of the deck, and then to replace the capstan belt you need to take the back plate off the mechanism. The counter belt should be easily accessible from the front, not sure about the third belt which is for the auto stop. That might be a bit more difficult. I wasn't able to find a service manual online, so good luck!
A nice looking unit, but that row of controls is a pain to use in the dark, like in the set of a bar. You always hit the wrong one!
Indeed this deck is very unintuitive, but to be fair most cassette decks are difficult to operate in the dark.
@@DrCassette my old pioneer ctf600 has piano keys, that is a sweet on, you just can count your play with a sweep of your index finger. But my other decks? Tiny little controls indeed, you always hit the wrong one :')
Putting the tape selector switch on the back of the unit seems like a somewhat odd choice. That sounds rather inconvenient if you were to often switch between those early metal tapes and other types.
I have never seen a metal cassette without the indicator holes, so there can not have been many of those. I don't think putting the switch onto the back was a bad choice.
i just started now to see your videos that i find quite interesting, and when starting to watch this video i notrice that the power button and eject are just like a pioneer´s deck (ct-520)almost all made of plastic from 82 or 3 ,that after some years of well manufactured decks ,they release this series that the front panel is all plastic ,but has i never used it to record that i owned better ones and older ,just recentelly i was amazed by mistake `cause i press the record key by mistake while listening to a cd and had just changed the belts,when listening to the cassette it sounded good, real good ,this with no equalizers or other effects, but i wonder if you remenber the ACIKO decks ,that my father bought one and it came recentelly to my hand ,it´s a 70´s deck a horizontal one but with nice design and looking simple but not flashing this because i searched the net ,and only found a portable stereo radio cassette player or what now they call boombox but maybe also from the 70´s, i´m getting out of the reason i started to coment about this video and already seen 2 others , i remenbered a brand that i used to record cassettes on a deck from a entire component system from scheneider this very good looking and was bought from a german military airforce at NATO service but this in portugal ,with a big neighborhood inside the city where i live, normally they when returning to germany ,sold their electronic devices very cheap and at the time what we had available in stores was very limited ,that was the source of my early 80´s components wich were a bit higher quality that i was used to see for sale in stores, i at the time also bought a very nice midi system from 1979 from phillips with a very good recording deck and diferent from other systems i saw earlier or later from this brand, later through a friend of mine from Holland he said to me that this phillips series was very popular they called it F series that after a year or two i bought a kept system never used from a father of a friend of mine from the same series but with standart size, till today it works this two systems from phillips all made in brushed aluminium very good looking(for the time).All this because i notice that you repair lot´s of decks from several brands that are unusual to see like telefunken, that it was sold in a store of furniture but at the time for incredible high prices in my town, also remenber using decks from crown that sounded real good ,this recording wise that i also notice that all over europe people bought pre-recorded cassettes to hear in very high-end decks,like if it was the main reason to have a deck wich where i live cassettes ,pre-recorded ones were expensive real bad looking ,well recorded but not very resistant tapes on those cassettes and when buying a good deck was to record cassettes ,and with the same amount of money buying records, wich were recorded into cassettes of higher quality and the record was kept the better it could be ,i even had friends who recorded the lp into a cassette and then they protect at the maximum the record so it could be maintained with no static or dust ,and only listen to the cassette recorded from.i would like if possible for you to talk about this brands i refer to, thanks for this great videos ,regards
I had a Sony deck same features except it had ferochrime. I can't go back to a deck without proper bias adjustment etc as when I recorded on my Sony you could hear sibilance on certain tapes...
I had an excellent 3 head Denon deck in 89'
I once had it.
Hello Dr Cassette, I know that you come from Lower Saxony. I wanted to ask if they could recommend flea markets near Wilhelmshaven, as I will be on holiday there in summer.
I am indeed from Lower Saxony, but from the southern part of it. I have never been to Wilhelmshaven, so I can't help you. Sorry.
Könnte das Problem mit dem Oszillieren auf dem rechten Kanal ein dreckiger Rec/Play-Schalter sein? Hatte ich mal mit einem Pioneer.
Nein, der Rec-/Play-Schalter ist in diesem Deck bereits elektronisch ausgeführt. Da ist nicht mal mehr ein Relais. Ich hatte vermutet, es könnten die Schleifkontakte im rotierenden Autoreverse-Kopf sein, hatte den Kopfmechanismus schon mit Tuner 600 geflutet, aber das hat das Problem auch nicht gelöst. Keine Ahnung, was das ist...
Es sind tatsächlich keine schleifkontakte in diesem autoreverse Tonkopf, sondern fest angelötete litzen. Ich hatte wohl das gleiche fehlerbild und diese damals ausgetauscht. Dazu den Kopf von dem drehmechanismus abschrauben und man kommt an die Litzen. Das hat für eine Weile das Problem gelöst. :)
Nice deck
That autoreverse function seems usefull but I wonder if it can be turned off. I quite like the design allthough the buttons should have had icons on them.
The Autoreverse function indeed can be turned off. That's what the second button (counting from the left) does. Icons on the buttons would have made it much easier to operate the deck.
My Pioneer CT-W604RS has while in reverse search...if nothing is found in 15 seconds, it will automatically go to full reverse mode...as in..if you were half way thru the tape...and it was the last song on that side..and you hit reverse search..and nothing was there it would go to full reverse after 15 seconds, and go all the way to the end of the tape.
this brand has you said had some inovations but the average material they sold wasn´t that good ,but there was optonica that made some higher quality devices but expensive at the time compared with other brands, just recentelly i saw for the first time some videos on youtube from turntanbles and cassette decks from sharp that were a bit ahead for it´s time, regards
Bei 5:50, nämlich dass manchmal das Audio weggeht und man nur noch ein lautes Motorgeräusch hört, kenne ich von Walkmans mit Schwächen Batterien, wo der Verstärker während dem Abspielen wohl nicht mehr genug Strom bekommt, weil der Motor quasi alles "aufbraucht"
Das hast du glaube ich missverstanden. Mit "motorboating sound" meine ich, dass der Verstärker niederfrequent zu schwingen anfängt. Das kann bei Walkmans mit schwachen Batterien allerdings auch vorkommen, wenn der Verstärker nicht mehr stabil läuft.
Wenn man dann beim Walkman beispielsweise noch mehr Last auf den Motor gegeben hat, spirch versucht, den Wickeldorn anzuhalten, wird das ganze lauter bzw. tritt früher auf. Aber ja, das hatte ich wohl falsch verstanden, aber ähnlich dürfte es sich dennoch anhören
Ja, den Effekt kenne ich.
Dr Cassette refuses to heal a cassette deck because it’s not worth much...pretty unethical. 😂
How is the Auto reverse done? 4 track head or "flippy" head?
It's the typical flippy head setup. 4 track heads as far as I know can only be found in cassette players. In cassette recorders, if you put in a stationary 4 track head you'd need two erase heads on either side. In the flippy head setup the erase head turns along with the rec/play head over to the other side.
@@DrCassette seems logical. Even though I think some Nakamichi decks had 4 track heads
@@TheRailroad99 Yes, but that is Nakamichi. They had a lot of creative and technically superb solutions. You can't expect that on a Sharp cassette deck :D
DrCassette Do you know a way of disabling the rotation of the "flippy" heads, while maintaing their audio output? They are so problematic, getting stuck in partial rotation etc.
I have a sharp rt 320 H Cassette deck, with a 4track head. It can only record on one side, so there is only one erase head. But autoreverse doesn't work, so only use one side
Greetings from Germany
RT-350 would go well with GX-300. Both have Dolby NR B and C.
If a cassette deck doesn't have bias adjustment, it is useless.
See well I don't completely disagree with that statement I will say that Its not so much as useless as it is just limited. As in what tapes they can use. Now just because its a fixed bias deck should not automatically make it a bad or useless deck. For instance nakimechi made a more than a few fixed bias deck as well as pioneer, sony, technics, and jvc. Really as long as the owners manual list what kind of tapes the deck is bias to whether that be a tdk sa a maxell ud or (even) a jvc me than your fine.
Back in the day, us tweekers would set the internal bias and rec sensitivity pots for our preferred tape.
If you play back cassettes, but don't record anything, then the bias adjustment is completely useless.
@@JacobFrey Perhaps I should rephrase that and say completely useless for recording on. Semi-useless?
@@redrobbosworkshop Problem is that I used all sorts of brands back in the day and today as well. Not going to dig into the deck every time I want to switch tape types.
It is not that bad I seen far more worst