Cassette deck with QUADRUPLE-SPEED dubbing! - Realistic SCT-85
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- Опубликовано: 31 янв 2021
- Don't you wish you could copy cassette tapes four times as fast as normal? You can do it with the Realistic/Optimus/Memorex SCT-85! Its 4-track dubbing copies both sides of the tape simultaneously.
#cassette #RetroTech 
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"I have this tape that came with the 1992 Lincoln Continental" he states like it's completely a normal item to own.
I mean you don't have a box of these laying around?
Doug Demuro enters the chat
Oh my, that Lincoln tape's side two. Saxophone _and_ DX7. It's like early 90s in a box!
I expected cheesy, but this is somehow much worse than I could have imagined.
almost nobody believes me 1997 GM S10 had a tape.. too
The 90s where all music included sax because President Clinton played sax!
I like the irony of the "If you wanna enjoy it, you gotta pay for it!" argument, cos, if I'm correct in thinking, having bought a pre-recorded medium, I've paid for it, and can enjoy it with personal copies wherever I like, because I paid for it... :P
TIL that copying a tape is as bad as showing up to someone's house with a gun and demanding money
"Is it live, or is it Memorex?"
.
(squeak... squeak...)
.
... It's Memorex
0:10 The record industry "dinosaurs" have changed very little in 30 years...
I remember how the record industry tried to implement DRM on digital formats, such as DAT, Minidisc, and later, recordable CDs.
wma with DRM
It was HELL
I recall that one of the things they did was implement SCMS into pretty much every digital format
DAT, Minidisc, DCC, and CD
Interestingly enough it turns out some of the devices I have don't seem to care about SCMS (i have a device which lets me copy WAV and FLAC files to any format, and it doesn't add SCMS to the signal, I know as my minidisc decks would let me make as many copies of copies of that recording as i wished)
@@pineappleroad I'm curious as to the make and model of that deck.
... while at the same time imposing a tax on all blank media (the private copy levy) one has to pay in order to legally exercise their right to copy! This is a perfect case of double dipping. Scum that they are.
@@lesrogers7310
The Minidisc decks that I have are a Sony MDS-JB940 and a Sony MDS-JB930
(there is a glitch that occurs on the 940 if you try to make a copy of a copy of an origianl that doesn't have SCMS using this deck, if this deck was used to make the copy of the original, in my experement the original was a flac file played back through a DAB radio thingy that can also play lossless files from a USB drive and which also has Coax and Optical outputs, I don't know what happens when you use a different deck to make the copy of the original and then use this deck to make the copy of the copy, I haven't tried it yet
the glitch is where it says that it cannot make a copy, but it will then decide that it can make a copy)
'get a car, get a truck, get an suv....' 4xtimes dubbing synchro
This is one of the few types of content I can watch these days. No mention of how f-ed up everything outside is, no stupid flashy useless gadgets with a 2-month lifespan, no fetishistic transitor-sniffing audiophile nonsense. Interesting stuff.
And no bloody Arduino or 3D printers.
No "Jason 'JJ' Cruz" insisting every capacitor needs to be replaced...
@@frankowalker4662 If you detest these topics so much, why bring them up in the comments?
@@andreasu.3546 It's not that I detest them, as such, it's just they are near Impossible to avoid. )
transistor sniffing audiophile nonsense?
Man that Pioneer sugar jingle was one heck of a toe tapper!
WOW. In all my time with mixed tapes, high speed dubbing and so on, I never had ANY idea that something like this existed.
Okay, at THIS point they surely could have given you autoreverse...
🤣🤣✌
On the playback deck it would not be that tough, just remove the record head and add spindle and pinchroller for the other direction ...
War tatsächlich auch das erste, an was ich denken musste!
@@tarstarkusz Yes I agree with you. But not just the material, also engineer that would have to design it ... and they were using off the shelf mechanism, the only thing that they changed was the heads ...
@@tarstarkusz That, and autoreverse decks are godawful in terms of alignment (or rather keeping them aligned). The ones that spin the heads around are even worse than the ones with stationary 4 track heads in that regard
For being a realistic deck, that sounds really good. Especially the 4x speed dubbing
That brought back a lot of memories. I bought the Memorex version over here in UK from Tandy when I was about 16. Not a top end model, but I had to save up to buy it and I loved it. It felt like 'proper' hifi. Great to see one in action again, thanks for the video.
In the early 80s we had a neighborhood mail/copy store that was way ahed of its time. And thay had this pull out drawer with a commercial grade high speed cassette copy machine. I had a copy made just to watch it in action. it took less than a minute for whole the side! It amazed me
When I was in about the first grade my aunt got a hold of a video tape on VHS that her and my parents watched a long with one of my teachers, and according to what my aunt said she was able to use a machine that copied the video tape in just a matter of minutes. I wonder what versions of this technology were available for copying video tapes?
I'd love to see a video about a machine like that.
@@BlaBla-pf8mf Cassette Master I think has a video about such a machine and if I remember correctly he had to do some restoration before demonstrating it. As a little side note, a few years after my aunt had that tape copied it got recorded over by accident when my grandpa and I were troubleshooting his new VCR he had just gotten for Christmas. My aunt was mad about it and according to her she had to get help from someone to copy the tape using this special machine. The unit that Cassette Master demoed was just for standard cassettes.
My church had one of those for copying sermons. I remember copying a friends cassette with music on it, but the copied cassette was in mono and very hissy.
@@jeffk7734 Didn't find the vid at first look but Cassette Master has hundreds of videos going back 14 years, so I'll have to do a more thorough search.
And if you don't match your tape sizes exactly, you're going to have a very long leader on the B side since you're not pulling it out, rewinding it to the beginning before starting again.
Exactly what I was thinking, and likely to be the biggest drawback of the device.
True. Copying the reverse side at the same time also means that side two wouldn't start at the beginning of the tape but rather part way in wherever side one ended and runs to the end of side two if using a longer tape.
well if you were using this to make a lot of copies (demos and stuff) you would be using the exact same brand tape as the original, and all would line up.
Ya but if you always listen to side a first and then stop it and flip to the other side it wouldn't really matter
I was gonna say, the only practical benefit to this device is if you match tape sizes.
Like you have a garage band and want to run off copies on custom length tape. Or if you’re into splicing.
My uncle had a very similar Realistic tape deck, but his was silver. He used to make tape copies for my family of songs he recorded off MTV or a local radio station!
Man, that ending commercial really makes me want to get a car, get a truck, or an SUV now
Any chance of a full recording of the instrumental side of the Lincoln Continental tape?
It would be worth it just to see Ford lay claim to an obscure content match.
I'm next in line for this!
please upload it if you can, vwestlife!
I want that as well. I got hooked on Oldsmobile after hearing their song here.
@@efertheredfish2 What do you mean, I have Infinity speakers at home?
Wow & flutter specs may not be particularly great, but them being accurate not just when new but after 30 years with no maintenance work, not even new belts, is really remarkable. I'm impressed.
I loved when you pulled out the actual Radioshack catalog! Didn't realize anyone still had those in physical form, but it's cool to see.
That's a lousy frequency response for 200.00 in 89. Great video. Thanks. Still have many cataloged from RS . I go through them once in a while.
I see VWestlife, I'm clicking on it. Never been disappointed. Absolute quality as always.
The music you choose to avoid the RUclips copywrite is so non-sequitur , its awesome!
i really appreciate your channel not bombarding me to like subscribe and support you on patreon, a rarity these days
The UL number on the rear shows 723L, which is a Sanyo Fisher product. Sure looks like an 80s Sanyo deck.
Indeed, looks a lot like the Sanyo RD-W 566H I've lying around.
I knew it. The doors look similar to my RD-W41a
That level meter could use a couple more LEDs...
Good rule of thumb about the quality. Under 12 segments pr. chanel, indicates that it's a cheaply made, less good sounding deck.
and the -inf LEDs are hardwired to +Vcc
@@runepedersenDK And then there's decks that don't have a level meter at all and still sound decent, like the one in my Sony XO-5 "Casseiver" (Tape+Tuner+Amp in one)
Nice Pioneer Sugar commercial. I grew up in Croswell Michigan which had one of the sugar factories, opened in 1906, and produces more than 1.25 million tons of sugar per year. I graduated from Crowell-Lexington High School, the Pioneers.
15:16 Classical Music you never knew had lyrics :)
LOL, I burst out laughing to the lincoln tape when the DX7 synth came in, so cheesey! Laughed when you noted it! sounds even more utter 80s cheese with the sax. The pioneer sugar tune sounds really 80s too, love it! That deck is pretty awesome, I have a Tascam 202 Mk5 and a Tascam 424 Mk3 4 track, still use them both
I somehow feel the need to buy a new car, or truck, or SUV.
+1
А want to hear a full version of this gem.
+1
I want to listen full version too.
Why my ear hear the SUV to LS SWAP instead
or this new vegetable peeler
A lincoln navigator would be nice.
'Get a car, get a truck, get an SUV' ... that lit up my late night with a smile. Always love your videos especially if it comes to these rare neat devices. Common back then, rare nowadays.
If I remember right, the RIAA lost the home taping argument, in the early 80s. But they get their panties in a twist, again, when DAT decks hit the scene.
Low-range tape deck from late 80-s - early 90-s. Which has a Dolby chip made in Japan, japan motors, soft tape start mechanisms and looks pretty nice. And it still works and has it's original belts since 1989! May we get this quality on modern stuff, please? Also, Thank you, VWestlife, for another great video.
Enjoyed this, as always. Never heard of a 4 speed dubbing cassette deck before or Pioneer sugar for that matter 😉 Cheers 🍻
That Pioneer sugar remark was a bit salty if you ask me! 🤣
Being able to copy both sides of the tape at once has some interesting implications. For example, if you drilled holes in the tape's shell in just the right spot, you could make your own tapes for the Coleco Adam tape drive, for example. Just dub one of the pre-recorded hard-sectored tapes. You can't do this on a normal deck because it uses all four tracks in parallel.
It's sad that it doesn't actually run the tape at 4x. It's obviously that the music would sound badly, but I'm curious how good could it possibly copy a ZX Spectrum or a C64 tape. By what magnitude a loading error probability would grow :) ?
On the other hand, kudos to Realistic for calling their method 4-track dubbing, because this is exactly what it does, as it copies 4 tracks at the same time. Kind of a "realistic" name.
Wow the Pioneer Sugar ad, they played the hell out of that jingle on the radio growing up here in Grand Rapids! I think they still might be using that same jingle, I barely listen to the radio anymore.
I was aware that some mass duplicators offered dubbing of both sides at the same time, but I was unaware of home units that utilize this technology. I'm not a fan of high speed dubbing , as it sacrifices high end frequency response (as mentioned in the specs). Regardless, interesting find.
Some decks did okay high speed dubbing. The worst kind would be, as always, late 80s/early 90s cheapo boomboxes. I mean...I had one that was TERRIBLE (a lot of volume loss and a ton of extra hiss as loud as wind on a microphone), even when dubbed at normal speed. I think it was a Radialva unit.
My head for the rest of the week: 15:18
Haha, mine too
Blast from the past !! First deck I bought with my own money just with Optimus name
Who needs Don Ho's Greatest hits when you got 90 minutes with Arthur Fedler!! 😆 This channel never gets old
4 Track Dubbing is awesome. This would have been great to make a Dub of a 4 Track "Portastudio" recording. Or copying Datasettes in one go :P
One side would be reversed, though.
A wonderful start to February.
this seems like a great utility for copying two tapes onto one 90-minute cassette, cause then you can just fast foward to the next album instead of turning the cassette and rewinding. although it seems like both a both a pro and a con since you still have to wind the tape to get to your album
God I love these videos. Where else will I find an informative video on an obscure media player featuring music included with the 1992 Lincoln Continental?
I actually have the 90 minute record of Authur Fiedler.
Radio Shack gave away lots of Arthur Fiedler cassettes.
@@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 My copy is actually a record that I found at a flea market a few months ago.
Never going to hear the William Tell Overture the same way again.
Thanks. :(
When I was young, I got a hand-me-down walkman where the auto-reverse was a little bit broken. It would play the tape in reverse, but it wouldn't switch to the side B tracks. So it just ended up playing side A backwards. Being a kid, and not too bothered with things like having to flip a tape when I wanted to play the other side, I was intrigued by this unique ability to play tapes backwards. Couldn't be happier that it never worked "properly".
Great for backmasking music like Electric Light Orchestra.
Your audio samples sound so good on this machine! I enjoy your videos. Thanks!
Please record and upload the full instumental track from that car tape. Please!
Nice deck even without a remote control. You would have killed me with a Rick-roll end screen!
Great quality recording quality with the noise reduction and that good quality tape. Wonderful video!!!
Great video as always! Thanks for having subtitles available.
Realistic stuff that I own still works fine and getting onto 50 years old.lol
that is really neat for something thats 32 years old and the fact its got that feature is neat. i miss having a cassette deck , years ago i had one that had high speed dubbing i forgot the make but ive seen some at a local flea market and going for reasonable prices. including a Pioneer reciever sx1250. some time im gonna look at some of the dealers things and have some nice vintage audio equipment
A snowy day and VWestlife! Perfect!
You typically don't rob from your own home, though.
Love these retro videos.
Even as a teenager, I preferred and saved my money for components with less features, rings and bells but therefore ones with better sound and durability.
I have a 1982 Realistic tape deck which still has the original belts. They may not have built the best sounding decks, but they must have insisted on some quality rubber. lol
Wow wished I had this in the 90s , great video 👊
I own a SCT-57, they must not have ever sold very many of these, I never see these for sale on eBay. I see another one called the SCT-56. I don't even know why I've got the 57 instead of the 56, except to say that there was some feature(s), I liked on the 57 better. I remember standing in the Radio Shack the requesting the manual for each, and deciding on the 57. When I look at the catalog from that time, I cannot see a difference that is listed in the catalog itself. You now have me desiring the unit you just showed us for 4x dubbing, even though I may rarely or possibly never use it!
If I remember correctly it was finally decided that copy an analog tape was fine, as long as it was for personal use. In fact, I think it was also decided at the same time, that making a copy of a CD you owned as long as you did not sell that copy and that it only used it for personal use was fine also. This personal copy was referred to as a backup copy.
I always thought that the Realstic branding was just superb. What better name could you hope for on HiFi components.
This Lincoln tape which came with a car remembered me at something interesting i never though about:
I once bought a Mitsubishi Lancer (around 2000).... there was a (music only) CD with it, but the car came with a casette car stereo, find the problem xD
This is such a fascinating device and video. As you astutely point out, Vwestlife, it really only is any good for copying one C-90 to another. It would be completely useless for commercial tapes which were of variable length, and probably of limited use for someone who wanted to do serious duplication work. So it's sort of fulfilling a need that no-one had back then. The business of putting two albums on one C-90 makes me SO nostalgic!
I didn't know that model existed! I had the Realistic SCT-74 (at 13:32 ) which I think I bought on sale for around $100-120 in the summer of 1988. For a budget deck it made excellent copies at regular speed. I used it when I worked in radio for editing and dubbing my DJ airchecks. But it only lasted me for about 5 years before it suddenly quit working. And the Radio Shack HD 60 cassette was made by Maxell in the 1990's. IIRC its a rebranded Maxell UDII.
I love those colorful memorex tapes
Thank goodness you played the entire sugar song.
The quality is extremely good. I would have been happy.
This is the first device I've seen on a consumer level that copies both sides of a cassette simultaneously
I saw your video the Teac LP-R 550 USB all in one stereo system nice job Kevin.
After 2 hours of shoveling snow, it's nice to sit back and watch a VWestlife video!
That is a very clever solution. I like it.
Wow. That Pioneer Sugar ad 😳
3:15 - Me: Hello DX7!
3:20 - VWestlive: Gotta love that Yamaha DX7 Harmonica sound.
Me: [Claps]
Hmm... that immediately reminds of of the harmonica intro of Karma Chameleon. Now I gotta check...
4:14 To save on both time and on extraneous rewinding, you could’ve played side 2 first on the newly recorded tape. Just a thought.
I agree with you.
11:06 well at least you have a spare erase head if the one on the right goes bad. Thank you so much Radioshack! So considerate!
All things considered (and we all know what that means for this kind of deck), I'm actually quite impressed.
The Pioneer Sugar song!
The face of that machine looks nearly identical to the Kenwood cassette deck I bought new in 1987, although it didn't even have 2X hi-speed dubbing. After looking at some fuzzy old photos, while there are several differences, the overall form is the same. Have no idea about the mechanism inside and I junked that machine about 20 years ago anyway.
Thanks for the video, Kevin.
I want this so much
The RIAA was against DAT and Minidisk because it was Digital and made perfect copies. Analog tape was imperfect. Napster came along and changed things with MP3 and sidestepping any industry rollout. Digital audio happened anyway.
Amazing feature
Same mecha used on the bottom of the line JVC. Looks pretty basic, but its actually pretty good, very reliable, under normal use, belts rarely need to be changed. It is wat cheaper than the mid70s equivalente, still get better numbers, This mecha looks like a piano key hitachi from early 80s (similar to ones using in commodore datassette) but with logic control. If something is used for data storage, appart from being cheap facing to a home computer market, it most be stable.
I had that boom box at 2:15 - had totally forgotten about it... lawlz... thanks for the memory|
A complimentary tape of yacht rock to go with your land yacht!
More like Smooth Jazz.
I really 👍 like stuff 👍 like this. Looks so 1980's. I used to have a stereo with this very piece of equipment, although the brand name was different. Mine didn't have quadruple-speed recording, 👍 like yours does. It was a double cassette deck, but it didn't have quadruple-speed recording. It took me 👍 listening to this 📹 video, to 👌 know exactly what that meant. The tape doesn't actually 🏃 run at quadruple-speed, which I thought it would have. I have it half right (I think). The tape 🏃 runs at double-speed, but it's also recording on the opposite side, simultaneously. All without having to turn the tapes over. 👍 Like 2 jobs in 1. I'm on the hunt for a 👍 good 80's stereo. I think I bought mine at Costco, in 1988. I don't remember the price, but I'm guessing around $199.99. I 👍 lived in Anchorage, Alaska at the time, with my parents, since I was still going to 🏫 school at the time. Even my parents here in Arizona had a nice stereo. I graduated, and came to Casa Grande, Arizona. They were only renting the stereo. It was very nice, although I vaguely remember it's brand name, or features. I can't tell ya if it had a dual cassette deck, or if it recorded at double-speed (I 👌 knew that most of these weren't quadruple-speed cassette recorders). I 👌 knew the cabinet was wood (probably particleboard), with woodgrain veneer, 👍 like mine did. The front 🚪 door on it was glass (so was mine). These stereos usually had wheels on them. Too 👎 bad I had to sell my stereo when I came to Arizona. I would have bought it from my parents, but they ended ☝ up getting rid of it, because they couldn't make the rental payments. I'd certainly have taken over them. Your friend, Jeff.
That was the first dual cassette deck I ever bought. I got it for $120.00 in 1990. It wasn't a bad deck
I have a Sanyo deck which is virtually identical to this unit except for the 4 track recording. The mech is the same. As you say, looks like Tanashin but with minor refinements. That small pinch roller is a dead giveaway!
Great video as always! Is there a way you could copy the instrumental side of that Lincoln Continental tape to digital? Gotta love that DX7!
I believe the portable Sony CFS-W600 boombox has 4-track dub capability - Deck B can certainly erase and record both sides of a tape at once if the function is selected (high speed - both sides) on the front.
Very cool! Never used one that recorded both sides at the same time..
Really, this is quite an interesting tape deck. The instrumental music on the car demonstration tape reminds me of the song Heartbeats by Jose Gonzales/The Knife.
So it must have 4 play-back amps and 4 record amps. Cool, With some hacks, It could make a half decent addition to a mini studio.You could record 4 tracks on one tape, put that tape in the play side and mix another 4 tracks onto a new tape whilst tape one is playing. Nice.
that is a strange comment, "4 play-back amps and 4 record amps" who thinks of these things?,and it has 8 "likes" too?!
@@vasopel Whenever I look at a piece of tech, I always wonder how else it could be used, apart from it's designed purpose. :) I've made a lot of wierd things over the years. (and broken quite a few. LOL)
@@frankowalker4662 good for you, I like your attitude :-)
although you misunderstood my comment :-(
this cassette player doesn't have "4 play-back amps and 4 record amps" why would you think it does? it's stereo.
the fact that 8 people "liked" your comment is also very puzzling...
@@vasopel For it to transfer both sides of a tape at once, the play-back deck must be able to read and amplify the left and right channels of side one and read and amplify the left and right channels of side two. Then the record-deck must be able to record the left and right channel of side one and record the left and right channel of side two. But it must also keep the channels seperate, otherwise it would either be mono per side, or just a garbled mess. So it must have the 4 PB amps and 4 rec amps. Wow, that was a bit lengthy, sorry. :)
@@frankowalker4662 no..it just transfers the signal from one tape head to the other.
Nice a new video I'm here as always
This cassette deck is very similar to the SCT-87. I had three of them at one time and they did work quite well. The major problem I had with the 87 was after years of use, the heads seemed to go out of alignment and it was very difficult to get it back into alignment.
I never understood why this feature wasn't used more prominently. Same thing with the 3 head systems as it didn't require any additional space in the tapedrive mechanism. Just a different tapehead. This would have made Cassettes even more popular and making them last even longer as a domestic recording medium. But nope...
3-head needs an additional (or modified) head and an extra amp section for that head. This made it expensive.
A feature that I think more tape decks would have needed (which works best with 3 heads, but can also be done with two) is automatic calibration. A well calibrated cassette recording sounds great, and with auto calibration even people who don't understand the tech behind (Bias, EQ) can get the best results.
As many have pointed out here already, you don't have the opportunity to start at each end of the tape. You get a window of audio the length of the source tape. If you record to a longer tape, side B will have a long gap of silence at the beginning. If you record to a shorter tape, you'll cut off the beginning of side B. That's much worse than having to adapt the end of the program on each side.
But I have also wondered why 4-track heads weren't more popular for auto-reverse decks. Seems a much more elegant solution than the solenoid-driven head reversal mechanisms.
Tape heads... what am I missing?
@@TheRailroad99 huh, extra amp section? Damn.... And yes, automatic calibration and azimuth check would have made Cassettes a die-hard dominant format even well into the 2000s and perhaps as a result we'd probably still have factory new Chrome tapes.
@@nickwallette6201 good question. Especially because mechanically its much simpler (and therefore cheaper).
I have heard it did not catch on because it only works for playback only. The flippy head also has the erase head on its carrier.
The 4-track head would need two erase heads, but there is only place for one (as the 3rd opening in a cassette shell is used by the pinch roller). And two erase heads and a 4 track head was most likely too much for the middle space.
Remember auto reverse needs two pinch rollers to switch direction as well so it really is just the middle window for an erase head and a playback/record head.
@@nickwallette6201 Maybe Azimuth precision was the reason? Misaligned 4-track tapehead could have had worse problems as a result or the manufacturing of those required much higher precision than 2 track tapeheads.
Amazing low use that deck must have seen, those heads appear to be in great shape.
If you were making several copies of one tape, having to rewind wouldn't really be an issue, just flip the master tape over and run off the second copy. I remember in high school the band directors having this deck for copying recordings of concerts.
Interesting found! Never seen this before....