If you are wondering what that noise is during the test, the track I used was from RUclips audio library and someone filed a claim after 2 years so I had RUclips ai remove the claimed sounds which was the drum machine basically.
Nice. Easy repair. Not a bad system for somone just getting into audio. I picked up 3 dual TTs today. Looking forward to getting them sorted. 1209, 2 x 1214's. 4 pole 1214 is a decent little table.
I was working on my son's Technics SL-3350 when I got the notification of this video and took a break. The grease has dried up and needs cleaning and re lubed. Problem is finding a home for these low end units. (cassette deck)
Well, I had an Akai deck which I purchased in 1980 or '81. It had all of the then existing tape biases, along with a manual bias control. The great thing about the deck was that it had a built-in mic/line mixer. So, with playback from another deck, I could lay one track on top of the other several times and thereby put together a band demo tape. I still have the deck, and with new belts, it still works just fine. I used metal tapes for the recordings. The only strange thing about the Akai, for its price point, it did not have solenoid operated mechanism controls. I actually had to push down keys, as if I were in the early '70s. This was a three head model, and you have my regrets regarding your opinion of Akai tape decks. I believe the higher-end models were just as good as any other decks produced by the Japanese in 80-81. The demo tapes were definitely High Fidelity thanks to the metal tape technology. The metal tapes were expensive.
I had an AKAI GX-75, high-end model and beside weighting 10 kg, it was over-engineered. Aligning the tape transport was a nightmare and I was never able to get decent sound out of it. Sold and bought a TOTL AIWA which is still my main deck and it is definitely better. I agree with Dave, Akai was not a top brand even if they made product which looked high end. They were more in the league of the likes of Sansui or Onkio.
@@enricoself2256 The lo-fi is usually an alignment problem. I was a repair tech back in the early '80s while in college and worked on all makes and models of cassette decks. I had many decks come in with misaligned heads. Your Akai could have been restored to hi-fi with some adjustment. I did not see much difference among cassette decks from the mid-to-late seventies through the early eighties. Perceptions are subjective, of course.
@@Amp497 I have spent a great deal of time trying to align the tape path of the AKAI GX-75 but it was beyond my skills and tools: tape guides are not attached to the heads and adjusted independently, the erase head is fixed while the rec/pb head has a three pivot points adjustment.You need first to aloign the tape guides (and that would need a proper alignment tool) and then you align the head to the tape with a set of specific test tapes (both full track tapes and stereo test tape). Way too complex. Also maybe a couple of caps in the power supply were in need of a replacement as I could hear a bit of hum. So I guess I'm biased against AKAI; but when I hear praise of their glass GX heads I think amorphous heads are much better.
@@enricoself2256 Mine has the glass heads. They work very well. Yes, you need all of the right equipment to align the heads. You might want to spend the money to have it done. The hum could be coming from a variety of sources including the power supply.
Would be a shame to see that broken for parts, even to fix something better. I have several cassette motors salvaged from decks that were beyond repair, mainly Technics and Sony. Not sure what shipping from the UK would cost but I'd be happy to discuss if you were interested. I don't usually take on cassette decks so the chances I'll use them are slim.
I owned a HX-A1 in the mid-80s. Mine had Dolby B & C though. It was an ok, basic deck. Any cassette deck without bias adjustment is useless for recording in my opinion.
Thank you for a good informative video. I’ve purchased Akai cs 732d deck recently. It doesn’t look that cheap. Need to swap belts to get it started. It’s not rewinding tape. But I think I need a new head. One of the channels sounds funky. Is there any idea where I can get a replacement head for this unit?
On the recording test ... Left Channel is lower than Right and more muffled. Might be dirty heads or pinch-roller. Anyway, cheap tape transport from mid 80s with "soft touch" control, surely better than tape decks sold today, but nothing special. The 3 kHz tone was breathing, symptom of unven tape transport. Agreed, a good parts donor deck.
I always thought that my AKAI reel to reel was just OK (compared to my Pioneer RT707) It sounds decent but nothing to knock your socks off.....sometimes people get AKAI mixed up with AIWA, the latter being a better brand IMHO.
im impressed with how u run your audio into the camera i could here the stereo sound seperation from the music anyway curious to how much you want for the amp and tuner including shipping to 45810
You're a very smart technician, but you often make dumb comments about Akai tape decks. The GX glass heads made their units last longer and easier to clean. I've owned three Akai reel to reel decks that perform like new after 40 years. The were not cheaply made. The better
And hear someone who really doesn't understand about the glass heads that Akai used. That's okay I was once naive too and I've got an akai with glass heads. It's nothing to write home about. The head longevity is nothing considering the damage it does to tapes. They also don't have that great a frequency response. If you ever compare a glass head deck with a standard head deck you will understand. They were ferrite heads setting glass and ferrite had the poorest response of all of the heads. it's okay to be ignorant though and have your head in the sand I have many friends that have their head in the sand over other issues. I know lots of people that are engineers as well and I know people from the recording business and they all have the same opinion of akai glass heads they are shit. On a new tape they might be okay for a while put an older tape in one that's starting to deteriorate and see how fast those glass heads tear the oxide off the base. Now I know you're going to say well that's just the sticky shed syndrome and yes it is but those same tapes play perfect without sticking to everything on a conventional metalhead deck put them on a glass head deck and the tape will actually stick to the smooth surface and that's part of the problem. Now you're going to blame that on the tape and yes the tape is the problem but if you have a tape that you are trying to recover the content from you can't control the condition of that tape. Even baking the tape doesn't help if you play it on a glass head deck there's a good chance you're going to destroy the tape. I have been in the audio video archive business now since the mid 80s I have about 12 real-to-reel machines one of them is in akai with glass heads and that's the one that does not get used ever because I've damaged more tapes, clients tapes before I realized that the problem was the tape deck.
I'm sorry but you are wrong to think the the Akai decks with the glass heads ruin tapes and lack full frequency response. I have tapes of all brands that were recorded with an Akai GX280D and Akai GX265D for more than 40 years with no shedding and they have not lost high frequencies. That goes the same for old prerecorded Ampex and Bel Canto tapes. However Sony and Radio Shack sold some newer backcoated so called premium tapes that did not age well and would become sticky and screeched in playback. Fortunately, I never bought many of those. Now, if you don't believe me or think I'm hard of hearing, I'd be happy to send you one of those old tapes to play on your best non Akai deck and hear for yourself using only flat response studio headphones like Sony MDRs.
@@richardwestfall7535 Fact, ferrite heads did not have the best frequency. The various alloys that were developed by various manufactures had superior frequency response. Listen to some real decks and hear what you are missing. That's OK though I used to think that the glass heads were the best thing since sliced bread. I bought into the bullshit like everyone else that was suckered in and I thought it sounded great. Untill I listened to a few Sony and Teac decks and then the glass heads didn't sound that good anymore.
Hey, I've worked in several sound studios through the years listening to Ampex pro units through studio monitors and pro headphones and I know what full frequency sounds like. Today, it's fairly easy to know how well your tape deck is performing doing an A-B test compared to a digital source. Recording with my GX265D at 7.5 ips speed, even a trained ear would have a difficult time telling the difference from the source other than normal tape signal to noise ratio inherent to tape. These days it's a moot issue as to whether tape sounds as good as digital. I use my deck for playback of a tape collection and they all sound pretty damn good even in comparison to CD's and streaming music services.
None because i hate cassettes period. Always have. As to decks I own that i like, JVC tdv1010 and Technics rsm275. Both of these are about as stable as I have heard but as i have previously stated i am not a fan of cassettes. I only used them for a few years as a way of making mixed tapes for the car. Once dat recordable CD and minidisk rolled out i completely abandoned cassette tapes. I only hang onto a few old decks to play some old tapes and to transfer other people's tapes to CD. Same with reel to reel. I have a nice teac 3340 with 10" reels but it is more of a display piece.
Yeah parts donor indeed. These low end Akai and Sanyo cassette decks are great to rob parts from. It's not that they don't work sometimes but they are not usually good quality record units, and have above normal wow and flutter specs and no frills or attractive looks. Cheers! 🍻
The HXA1 is a total POS! I have a HX-1C and it is way more complicated, full logic control, fluoroscan meters, and weighs 4.0 Kg or 8.8 pounds and you can not see the bare chassis with the lid off, and I thought it was a POS! ******** I agree, it is a motor donor.**********
Perhaps it's just me, but I hate seeing that hardboard / particle board on hi-fi compnents. Screams cheap and nasty. Akai used to use that stuff on a lot of their equipment.
I didn't like Akai tape decks at all. I much preferred the Sony. In the budget range they were quite good up to the TC377. The TC399 was crap. Form there on I only stocked models like the TC766-2 and brands like Teac, Revox. One of my staff used to say that Akai was Scottish and used to call it Akai the noo. A very bad joke but he was 17 years old.
you have an admiral patience with all that fiddly mechanical stuff it is an inspiration.
If you are wondering what that noise is during the test, the track I used was from RUclips audio library and someone filed a claim after 2 years so I had RUclips ai remove the claimed sounds which was the drum machine basically.
Nice. Easy repair. Not a bad system for somone just getting into audio. I picked up 3 dual TTs today. Looking forward to getting them sorted. 1209, 2 x 1214's. 4 pole 1214 is a decent little table.
I was working on my son's Technics SL-3350 when I got the notification of this video and took a break. The grease has dried up and needs cleaning and re lubed. Problem is finding a home for these low end units. (cassette deck)
Well, I had an Akai deck which I purchased in 1980 or '81. It had all of the then existing tape biases, along with a manual bias control. The great thing about the deck was that it had a built-in mic/line mixer. So, with playback from another deck, I could lay one track on top of the other several times and thereby put together a band demo tape. I still have the deck, and with new belts, it still works just fine. I used metal tapes for the recordings. The only strange thing about the Akai, for its price point, it did not have solenoid operated mechanism controls. I actually had to push down keys, as if I were in the early '70s. This was a three head model, and you have my regrets regarding your opinion of Akai tape decks. I believe the higher-end models were just as good as any other decks produced by the Japanese in 80-81. The demo tapes were definitely High Fidelity thanks to the metal tape technology. The metal tapes were expensive.
I had an AKAI GX-75, high-end model and beside weighting 10 kg, it was over-engineered. Aligning the tape transport was a nightmare and I was never able to get decent sound out of it. Sold and bought a TOTL AIWA which is still my main deck and it is definitely better. I agree with Dave, Akai was not a top brand even if they made product which looked high end. They were more in the league of the likes of Sansui or Onkio.
@@enricoself2256 The lo-fi is usually an alignment problem. I was a repair tech back in the early '80s while in college and worked on all makes and models of cassette decks. I had many decks come in with misaligned heads. Your Akai could have been restored to hi-fi with some adjustment. I did not see much difference among cassette decks from the mid-to-late seventies through the early eighties. Perceptions are subjective, of course.
@@Amp497 I have spent a great deal of time trying to align the tape path of the AKAI GX-75 but it was beyond my skills and tools: tape guides are not attached to the heads and adjusted independently, the erase head is fixed while the rec/pb head has a three pivot points adjustment.You need first to aloign the tape guides (and that would need a proper alignment tool) and then you align the head to the tape with a set of specific test tapes (both full track tapes and stereo test tape). Way too complex. Also maybe a couple of caps in the power supply were in need of a replacement as I could hear a bit of hum. So I guess I'm biased against AKAI; but when I hear praise of their glass GX heads I think amorphous heads are much better.
@@enricoself2256 Mine has the glass heads. They work very well. Yes, you need all of the right equipment to align the heads. You might want to spend the money to have it done. The hum could be coming from a variety of sources including the power supply.
It hums because it doesn't know the words. 😁
Would be a shame to see that broken for parts, even to fix something better. I have several cassette motors salvaged from decks that were beyond repair, mainly Technics and Sony. Not sure what shipping from the UK would cost but I'd be happy to discuss if you were interested. I don't usually take on cassette decks so the chances I'll use them are slim.
There were good Akai reviewers... The rack systems were junk. Yes . But they made good components
Fantastic videos. What kind of oil are you using for lubrication
I owned a HX-A1 in the mid-80s. Mine had Dolby B & C though. It was an ok, basic deck. Any cassette deck without bias adjustment is useless for recording in my opinion.
Thank you for a good informative video.
I’ve purchased Akai cs 732d deck recently.
It doesn’t look that cheap.
Need to swap belts to get it started.
It’s not rewinding tape.
But I think I need a new head.
One of the channels sounds funky.
Is there any idea where I can get a replacement head for this unit?
Glass were reckoned to be wear free and fantastic . All manufacturers made cheap crap to have a full range of products at most price points .
On the recording test ... Left Channel is lower than Right and more muffled. Might be dirty heads or pinch-roller. Anyway, cheap tape transport from mid 80s with "soft touch" control, surely better than tape decks sold today, but nothing special. The 3 kHz tone was breathing, symptom of unven tape transport. Agreed, a good parts donor deck.
I always thought that my AKAI reel to reel was just OK (compared to my Pioneer RT707) It sounds decent but nothing to knock your socks off.....sometimes people get AKAI mixed up with AIWA, the latter being a better brand IMHO.
Well Aiwa was basically Sony.
Hey the head isn’t raising to mine. What could be causing this? Also it seems the belts are constantly spinning
AKAI DECKS SOUNDS MARVELOUS .AND THEY ARE GREAT UNIT.ITS AN OLD BRAND.
im impressed with how u run your audio into the camera i could here the stereo sound seperation from the music anyway curious to how much you want for the amp and tuner including shipping to 45810
Shipping would be the killer on this one. Easily 150 or more.
I take the line out from the amp and run it through a pad. (Resistor divider network to drop line level to mic level) then right into mic input.
You're a very smart technician, but you often make dumb comments about Akai tape decks. The GX glass heads made their units last longer and easier to clean. I've owned three Akai reel to reel decks that perform like new after 40 years. The were not cheaply made. The better
And hear someone who really doesn't understand about the glass heads that Akai used. That's okay I was once naive too and I've got an akai with glass heads. It's nothing to write home about. The head longevity is nothing considering the damage it does to tapes. They also don't have that great a frequency response. If you ever compare a glass head deck with a standard head deck you will understand. They were ferrite heads setting glass and ferrite had the poorest response of all of the heads. it's okay to be ignorant though and have your head in the sand I have many friends that have their head in the sand over other issues. I know lots of people that are engineers as well and I know people from the recording business and they all have the same opinion of akai glass heads they are shit. On a new tape they might be okay for a while put an older tape in one that's starting to deteriorate and see how fast those glass heads tear the oxide off the base. Now I know you're going to say well that's just the sticky shed syndrome and yes it is but those same tapes play perfect without sticking to everything on a conventional metalhead deck put them on a glass head deck and the tape will actually stick to the smooth surface and that's part of the problem. Now you're going to blame that on the tape and yes the tape is the problem but if you have a tape that you are trying to recover the content from you can't control the condition of that tape. Even baking the tape doesn't help if you play it on a glass head deck there's a good chance you're going to destroy the tape. I have been in the audio video archive business now since the mid 80s I have about 12 real-to-reel machines one of them is in akai with glass heads and that's the one that does not get used ever because I've damaged more tapes, clients tapes before I realized that the problem was the tape deck.
I'm sorry but you are wrong to think the the Akai decks with the glass heads ruin tapes and lack full frequency response. I have tapes of all brands that were
recorded with an Akai GX280D and Akai GX265D for more than 40 years with no shedding and they have not lost high frequencies. That goes the same for old prerecorded Ampex and Bel Canto tapes. However Sony and Radio Shack sold some newer backcoated so called premium tapes that did not age well and would become sticky and screeched in playback. Fortunately, I never bought many of those. Now, if you don't believe me or think I'm hard of hearing, I'd be happy to send you one of those old tapes to play on your best non Akai deck and hear for yourself using only flat response studio headphones like Sony MDRs.
@@richardwestfall7535 Fact, ferrite heads did not have the best frequency. The various alloys that were developed by various manufactures had superior frequency response.
Listen to some real decks and hear what you are missing. That's OK though I used to think that the glass heads were the best thing since sliced bread. I bought into the bullshit like everyone else that was suckered in and I thought it sounded great. Untill I listened to a few Sony and Teac decks and then the glass heads didn't sound that good anymore.
Hey, I've worked in several sound studios through the years listening to Ampex pro units through studio monitors and pro headphones and I know what full frequency sounds like. Today, it's fairly easy to know how well your tape deck is performing doing an A-B test compared to a digital source. Recording with my GX265D at 7.5 ips speed, even a trained ear would have a difficult time telling the difference from the source other than normal tape signal to noise ratio inherent to tape. These days it's a moot issue as to whether tape sounds as good as digital. I use my deck for playback of a tape collection and they all sound pretty damn good even in comparison to CD's and streaming music services.
What kind of heads do you recommend? I remember my sendust heads prior to the gx? I'm no expert, just curious.
I like your honesty about some of this stuff #teamteac
Cool mucisk I like it
It sounds damn good
great vid, what is your most sought after cassette deck? thanks.
None because i hate cassettes period. Always have. As to decks I own that i like, JVC tdv1010 and Technics rsm275. Both of these are about as stable as I have heard but as i have previously stated i am not a fan of cassettes. I only used them for a few years as a way of making mixed tapes for the car. Once dat recordable CD and minidisk rolled out i completely abandoned cassette tapes. I only hang onto a few old decks to play some old tapes and to transfer other people's tapes to CD. Same with reel to reel. I have a nice teac 3340 with 10" reels but it is more of a display piece.
Hello, how can i create a correct speed test tape? I have one Pioneer Tape but i not know if the speed is correct.
Hi, i need to know how to Renove the door to replace the pinch roller, can you help me?
For a cheaply made deck the sound quality seems beyond build quality. Gotta love a Masonite back plate!
Well that motor will find it's way into a higher end deck that comes in for repair some day. Until then it will just sit in my storage unit.
@@12voltvids Yes I know it's a donor unit....just thought it sounded better then build quality would suggest
I am looking for a play/rec head for an Akai. What is the condition of the head?
@@directrix101 looks ok from what i saw.
It's not bad for a basic deck.
Hey Dave , i found the missing belt in your video ! :-)
12VOlltvids AKAI HxA1 cassette deck is cool
Oddly enough Amazon sells 12V 2400RPM CCW motors for $9.00!
Pulls likely from old decks.
Yeah parts donor indeed. These low end Akai and Sanyo cassette decks
are great to rob parts from. It's not that they don't work sometimes but
they are not usually good quality record units, and have above normal wow
and flutter specs and no frills or attractive looks. Cheers! 🍻
The HXA1 is a total POS!
I have a HX-1C and it is way more complicated, full logic control, fluoroscan meters, and weighs 4.0 Kg or 8.8 pounds and you can not see the bare chassis with the lid off, and I thought it was a POS! ******** I agree, it is a motor donor.**********
Sir can u make a video on running display, that is on your table behind , how it's made
I did, years ago when I received it. I also had to repair it once and there is a video on that too.
@@12voltvids thanks for your reply ,I will search n watch
got a working one here
Perhaps it's just me, but I hate seeing that hardboard / particle board on hi-fi compnents. Screams cheap and nasty. Akai used to use that stuff on a lot of their equipment.
It was cheap. That's why they used it. So did Lloyd's.
I didn't like Akai tape decks at all. I much preferred the Sony. In the budget range they were quite good up to the TC377. The TC399 was crap.
Form there on I only stocked models like the TC766-2 and brands like Teac, Revox.
One of my staff used to say that Akai was Scottish and used to call it Akai the noo. A very bad joke but he was 17 years old.
really easy fix
Typical cheap deck, motor power switch and the leds and the heads if there not to worn not keen on the denon dr-m07 i have ,a nothing special deck
I like your style cheap crap -the BEAN counters work over time at Akai --