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Cassette Changers...for the cassette tape enthusiast who has everything!

uxwbill

uxwbill

Lurking in the Shadows
I came to know of those a while back and finally stumbled across a decent Compact Cassette changer from Pioneer (a Pioneer CT-M55R from early 1991 to be exact).



(you can click the picture to see a bigger version with better clarity, but things still look a little "frosted" for some reason)

As found, it wouldn't engage the playback heads and the tape speed was off by what sounded like a large amount. I fixed both problems and now it's working quite well. The failure of the tape heads to engage the tape was caused by a sticking solenoid, while the speed was off (low) by about 10 Hz. The mechanism seems to be pretty decently designed and looks to be serviceable if the need should ever arise (as I'm sure it will). I was rather surprised to find this unit capable of recording, as it seems like the majority of it use would be the playback of many cassettes one right after the after. Yet it does record, and it will record one tape right after the other.

Sound quality is pretty good, better than I'd have expected. This unit definitely does not "go out of its way" to make poorly prepared tapes sound good. Well produced and duplicated tapes sound excellent, poor ones don't sound very good at all. (In particular, I noticed that some of my pre-recorded tapes must have been mistracked somewhat when they were recorded, and those recorded especially "hot" tended to sound much worse than they do on other machines.)

I let it spend several hours tonight doing a recording across multiple new normal bias Maxwell UR90 tapes. It did a good job, and while I don't normally like the effects of Dolby C type noise reduction, this unit did a good job with it. I would use Dolby C if it always sounded as good as it did on this machine. Recording and playback speeds were rock stable and the unit must be aligned fairly well, as I took the tapes recorded with it and played them on another Dolby C capable machine with good results.

Video coverage (for those interested) including the unit in operation with the cover off, is here.

So...my questions to the AK community...who else has a cassette changer? If you have one, what do you think of it? Comments would be very much appreciated.
 
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I just love them! I picked up a mint Pioneer CTM-6R at the thrift for $25. I gave it to my brother. I also have the CTM-5R that I purchased back in the 90's. I have a large collection of tapes, so their great for playing back books on tape, old time radio shows. I have quite a few of the Inner Sanctum, Lights Out and Suspense that I play around Halloween. I also play back some talk radio tapes with famous people and music mix tapes.
 
uxwbill said:
....So...my questions to the AK community...who else has a cassette changer? If you have one, what do you think of it? Comments would be very much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Somewhere in my family - this strange contraption still lives :

attachment.php


Looking at it working is quite fun, inside much more :)

it has a build in amp delivering 2 x 15watt's - so giving it 2 deacent loudspeakers, you'll get a funny little system.
 
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And you may have the only extant example which still works well at all. Philips spent a ton of guilders on repairs under warranty on them.
 
I have a Pioneer CT-WM70R that works except it also has a single cassette player on the right side as well. Deck 1 holds 6 cassettes and deck 2 holds 1 cassette. Deck 1 has a slight squeek when it reverses directions
 
Perhaps you could take the microfiche (sp?) to your local library. Maybe they could make you copies from the film of the service manual you found?

Just a thought....

Dave
 
I had a Sony changer, looked like it operated on the carousel CD changer idea. Paid $15, sold it for $60.
 
Just how does the changer work? I assume it can't shuffle songs. Does it play one whole cassette, both sides, and then move to the next one?
 
Schanz said:
Just how does the changer work? I assume it can't shuffle songs. Does it play one whole cassette, both sides, and then move to the next one?
Click to expand...
I've got a video linked in the initial post that shows the mechanical workings of the unit if you want to see that.

The unit definitely can play both sides of a cassette and move on to the next, or it can play one side only and then move on to the next tape. This is determined with a front panel switch. It will also record in the same fashion.

If you want it to play or record on cassettes one right after the other, you have to press the "RELAY" button to enable this mode. There is also a "rewind all" button that engages the relay mode and rewinds each tape one right after the other.

As far as the logic and its capabilities goes, it does have a random playback mode. I haven't determined the "granularity" of the random operation (if it would play a randomly selected whole tape, just the next song to come up on the tape or if it would choose and then seek through the tape until it finds the gap between songs and go from there). The logic is capable of detecting silence between songs, but there would be seek time delay involved if the unit is programmed to find something other than simply the next song to come up when the tape is started.

There is also a capability to "scan" the tapes like a CD changer would. I haven't pressed that button yet, so I don't know exactly what it does. Pioneer's CD changers can either play a brief selection from one track on a disc or (if you press the SCAN button again), play a brief selection from each track on a disc before going to the next one. Presumably this unit does something similar (probably only on a "brief sample from the whole tape" basis).

If you didn't mind waiting for the tape to wind and your songs were all separated by a silent passage, the unit could shuffle songs. I don't think Pioneer made it possible for the unit to do this.

Pioneer did make a variant of this machine with a single cassette mechanism alongside the changer, yet I doubt it would switch to and play from the single well while seeking through the tapes in the changer for another song. While there is a "control in" and "control out" set of connectors, I doubt that Pioneer programmed this thing to cue another tape in a different machine for low delay playback as some CD changers can do.
 
jan_stevns said:
Somewhere in my family - this strange contraption still lives :
Click to expand...
That is a neat looking machine, and I'll bet it is fun to see it in action, slinging the cassettes around. :thmbsp: It probably is something of a wonder that it still works! In which direction do the tapes move through?

(Guessing: tapes are loaded from the stack above the player and ejected through the "curved" pathway, where they might fall on the stack to be played again?)
 
Actually from the picture it looks like the machine even flips the tape around! Can't really play both sides of one tape in direct succession though I guess.
 
Ragnar_AT said:
Actually from the picture it looks like the machine even flips the tape around! Can't really play both sides of one tape in direct succession though I guess.
Click to expand...

Correct - it's not an autoreverse deck - only plays from left to right , at the end the tape is pushed out to the right, into the "elevator thingie" and yes, it flips side, when it drops down.
 
I have 3 of these beasties. One is a Norelco playback only, one is a Philips recorder, and the third is branded Ampex. But they're all the same chassis. Mine have rotary controls instead of what look like sliders in the picture above.

The machines came with 2 cassette loading "guides." One is a plastic box you'd stack 6 tapes in - it'd play one side of each tape, then slide the used tapes into a storage spot to the right of the tape mechanism. The other guide is the one pictured here which pushes the tapes around onto the stack so the other sides play.
 
jan_stevns said:
Somewhere in my family - this strange contraption still lives :

attachment.php


Looking at it working is quite fun, inside much more :)

it has a build in amp delivering 2 x 15watt's - so giving it 2 deacent loudspeakers, you'll get a funny little system.
Click to expand...
no. Actually I think that one that you posted a picture of is a model above the one that we owned.
 
I have the pioneer 77r changer. Back when I played cassettes in the car, I could hook a wire between the 77 and my 100 pioneer changer and it would shuffle the songs and record them on the 6 cassettes then I would have a new mix all the time for the car. I sold the pioneer changers at McDuff electronics back in the day and we had a transparent model that we could show the customers how it worked, the main reason we did it was to sell them an extended warrantee because it looked so complex. I bought mine at a pawnshop about 15 years ago.
 
I own a Pioneer 66 now and have had several of them in the past. I owned the Sony Carousel model and sold it recently. 35 years ago I had a Denon 10 or 12 cassette changer.
 
Cassette Music Server of Sorts:

I have a Sony MTL-10 that holds up to 10 Cassettes in a loadable tray.It has all the controls such as Music/Song search as well as FF and REW.Each Tape has a lighted # on the front door panel and you push all or whatever ones you want to play and it's done automatically for you.Found it last year and it was FREE! Seems to work perfectly as well as sounds great.......:):thmbsp:
 

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