This wouldn't impress much in 1989, except value for money. Tells you just how bad modern decks became.

@@F40PH-2CAT Especially since today's decks are basically the same design, so it's not like they have any new problems to deal with. They're just cheaping out to a (literal) fault.

for sure

Compared to MP3 the sound may seem OK. When compared to an LP the tapes sounded noisy and lacked high range even with the latest version of Dolby noise reduction and "metal" tapes. I mainly made tapes for car use. My last deck was a Pioneer CT-6R.

Yes, and those were some interesting tapes he played.

I hate to be a "dick" lol, but if you watched his video he went through the radio shack catalog pointing out the 3 deck line up. Yes a Dolby and auto reverse model was available.

@@glennjones6574 lol. YUP! I had to edit my comment. :)

Everything uses cheap annoying wall warts now

Believe it or not there's a switched outlet on the back of my AudioSource AMP 100. I don't use it, since the (rather large) toroidal transformer already whines and it's gotta be pushing some of that back into the mains power. I put that amp on the other side of an isolation transformer even though it doesn't make the whine any less audible. This is some off the shelf black box from Parts Express ten years ago, too. Hardly anything in it other than the transformer and the heatsink for the transistors.

@The Vinyl Disguise I don't think it's really targeted at any particular device right now, but you can use that output to switch a much bigger relay and turn your entire rack of gear on if you wanted.

same here. I have an optimus 10 band eq from the 90's too and it still works great in fact all of my stereo equipment is almost 30 years old and all of it still works great

But does it transform and roll out?

You had me at "1991" and "Cavalier." I owned a '94 Cavvie 2-door once, that car was VERY good to me. Bought it from 2nd owner (1st owner was actually that stereotypical Little Old Lady) at 77k for $400, and I got t-boned by a Corolla at 236k, still on the original clutch when it went to the junkyard. (After the Corolla hit me, he got rear-ended by a Jetta... The only car not requiring a wrecker was my Cavalier!) Only left me stranded ONCE, when the fuel pump failed. I'd get another one in a heartbeat if I could find one. I told a friend of mine once that I was going to grab an office chair for free on the side of the road, and he said, "you won't get that to fit in this car." Five minutes later, he had to move the passenger seat up two clicks, and the office chair was upside-down in the backseat. (My butt is currently planted in that same office chair sixteen or seventeen years later!) And Brett - are you talking about the Optimus 10-band EQ with separate EQ for each channel, the "IMX Expander," and the tiny-dot LED spectrum analyzer? I had one of those too, I loved it. Unfortunately I fell on hard times and lost the contents of my storage unit years ago, that EQ was in storage at the time. 😢

SCP = Stereo Cassette Player

SCP-31 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f5umhMSUtZPKdKM.html

Ikr? This almost feels like a video from TheVolgun when the model names are all said lmao

I'll be honest, if there's a joke about "SCP" I don't get it. 🙂 I have no problem with having an easily understood model number prefix, it makes it easy to tell if you have a Stereo Cassette Recorder or Stereo Cassette Player, or even a basic Cassette Tape Recorder. As someone who also repaired electronics back when these models were new, I appreciate the quality and value (bang for the buck) that Radio Shack provided. I miss it.

@@bobblum5973 SCP is a user-submitted Lovecraftian short story website. The website is designed to look like the user is logging onto a secret government agency's website with the format of each story being written like entries in a catalog of monsters and mysterious items or locations. Each story is titled like "SCP-42", so the name of this cassette player is quite funny, as if it has some hidden horror to it. If you were wondering, the SCP in this case stands for "Secure, Contain, Protect". It's quite good! If you like Lovecraftian horror, SCP is good reading.

For anyone wondering why that happened, the 12V AC is RMS (Root Mean Squared). The smoothing capacitors will charge to the peak voltage which you get by multiplying by the square root of 2 i.e. 1.41. So once it is rectified and filtered 12V AC becomes almost 17v DC. The transformer manufacturer will also allow for the voltage dropping on load so the off load voltages were even higher,

The voltage goes up by a factor of sqrt(2) = 1.414…

@@MacPhantom Minus the drop of the bridge rectifier, i.e. always 2 diodes in series - around 1.6 volts for two silicon diodes.

I noticed with a lot of older power bricks that I had I was surprised at a younger age that they may have been listed as 12V DC but they usually read more like 20V after that I became very paranoid about using them with some devices. I was reminded of this a few days ago when I pulled out a 9V DC power adapter that was outputting 16V DC. I don't know if I want to use that with my portable cassette deck it's not like I want to I have to replace something in a $500 Sony recorder.

​@@imark7777777 It's simple. When you have an unregulated (non-stabilized) power supply, either AC or DC that is rated e.g. 12V/500mA, it means that - given the exact primary voltage - there's exactly 12 volts on the output when there's a current draw of exactly half an amp. On no or lower load, the output voltage will be higher; conversely, on higher loads, the voltage is brought down and the transformer saturates. And, of course, if the rating is in ac, it means 12 volts root mean square of the sine wave. When rectified (and filtered), the output voltage is the very amplitude of the sine, minus the drop of the rectifier.

@@JozefBogin that is amazingly the most simple explanation I've ever heard on the subject I finally get it. thanks! So then I think the original adapter would've been 9V 0.6A-1.5A and the adapter I dug out of my collection was for a KOSS 9V 1.2A testing 13.10V open circuit. Would I then be safe combining those two? Unfortunately only voltage and negative polarity are the things marked on the device so I'm going by eBay photos. I have yet to stick an amp meter on it as it was a few orders of magnitude larger than I was expecting.

I have one of those as well, a good, basic small amp. I got it from my brother, who somehow lost some of the knobs, which I replaced with a different set that at least all match. I also have it's big brother, the SA-150.

@@bobblum5973 I was just looking at mine and noticed there is still a sticker on the right hand side that says "Simulated Walnut Grain Finish". Really? Isn't it obvious? Does someone really need this information? Probably someone's job putting these stickers on as it is going down the production line.

@@zulumax1 I think they started doing that as part of a "truth in labeling" law. Like having to say "Walnut Veneer" so people would know it was a thin piece of real wood, but not solid wood for the entire cabinet. Or listing the ingredients in order: "Soup; Chicken; Flavored".

Came to leave the same comment. It was the thermal fuse for sure, they tend to fail by age, even if the transformer is perfectly fine...

@@janosnagyj.9540 Yes

Yes have repaired many of those transformers by simply replacing the thermal fuse or bypassing it and place a small in-line fuse inside for protection.

@@111000100101001 and works perfectly

​@vinil, o melhor presente ! These decks would be happy in Japan with their 100V; it would last a little longer there!

BPC often isn't even all that "C". I don't think the case material and color is the best indicator for quality.

I tested it and it measures around 0.08% to 0.11% WRMS -- better than the factory spec of 0.15%.

​@@vwestlife The factory spec says "wow & flutter: 0.15%" without specifying whether it is DIN or JIS or NAB, so it is unclear to me which standard did they have in mind. In any case, 0.1% WRMS is a very decent number for a cheap machine. You don't need an expensive complicated mechanism to achieve good enough performance. Thank you for the video!

@@ConsumerDV The manual for the SCT-510 lists its wow & flutter as 0.15% WRMS, so the SCP-31's rating is most likely WRMS as well.

Transformer, not motor.

Yes.

Yes -- until 1990, actually.

It’s because we had tons of these 8 track players in the main warehouses. None of the stores wanted them. They were ‘Force Fed’ occasionally to each store randomly until they were finally gone.

Equally surprising you could buy an 8 track cartridge of Wham's 1984 release "Make it Big". I think Techmoan first showed that but I have just verified it on Discogs.

@@MrDuncl That likely was a Record-Club-Only release. Retail store distribution of 8-track tapes essentially ended in 1981-82. Columbia House's Selection of the Month titles were offered as 8-tracks until 1989. RCA/BMG Music Service' s Selection of the Month titles were offered as 8-tracks until 1987 or so. I have a few of these Record-Club-Only 8-tracks.

Keep in mind that the reel-to-reel style cassette I used has been played over 1000 times -- I did a video about that a few months ago. So it's not going to sound as good as a tape that hasn't been so heavily used.

@@vwestlife Oh yeah true, i remember this LAZER cassette from that video. Fair enough then :)

@@vwestlife it’d be cool if you’d upload some audio playback from a “fresher” cassette :-)

Technics RS-M1 would be similar to SCP-31 due to being replayers only, except being allowed to be powered by batteries and DC in alongside with 2 outputs via RCA and headphone output, volume output knob and with RS-M2, FM radio!