the first autoreverse casette or r2r

[jan_stevns]

Just curious - in the tapeworld -

what was the first autoreverse casette deck to hit the market
i would think r2r's where earlier for obvious reasons .. but who came first ?

 

[audiojones]

Reel to reel machines had auto reverse long before cassettes were even available. The earliest that I've ever seen was an Ampex machine in the late 50's or early 60's, but there may have been another before that. Teac had them at least as far back as '65, maybe earlier.

 

[dkelley]

yea, autoreverse was way nicer on R2R than cassette - flipping a R2R tape is somewhat more work ;-)

the need for it created the engineering to do it. They also performed great.

cassettes on the other hand... there aren't too many autoreverse cassette units that perform really really well reliably on both sides of the tape all the time.

 

[Lapis]

yea, autoreverse was way nicer on R2R than cassette - flipping a R2R tape is somewhat more work ;-)

the need for it created the engineering to do it. They also performed great.

cassettes on the other hand... there aren't too many autoreverse cassette units that perform really really well reliably on both sides of the tape all the time.

Cause most r2r recorders do not use the rotating head which drifts azimuth away. Cassette recorders most of them use rotating heads.

 

[sanlanman]

If I recall correctly the first good cassete deck by Akia that I bought in about 1976 had auto reverse. I think it was a GXC75D, I was a chrome finish table top model with neat mixer board sliders for L/R volumn on playback and record.

 

[sanlanman]

yep GXC-75D

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q...FCB4457742FD298FDF7073F334457115BCB3F&first=1

It was a TOTL deck in its day.

 

[audiojones]

Actually Sony was very successful with it's "Roto Bi-Lateral" rotating head scheme on their reel to reel recorders (and on their cassette decks too). I have a Sony TC-758 that uses this system and it is extremely reliable with no azimuth issues at all. In fact I have had a few other Sony open reel machines that used this system and they were quite reliable and had no azimuth issues in forward or reverse record and play modes.

Of course having discrete heads for reverse operation is probably the most reliable way to do reverse, but then you need six heads and switching circuitry which gets expensive and has other potential problems.

The least reliable / repeatable reversing design I have come across is the Akai method that has the head mounted on a sliding pole that is moved to the other two tracks by a solenoid for reverse playback. Some of them seem to have azimuth issues due to the landing position of the head when the solenoid pulls in.

 

[sanlanman]

Actually Sony was very successful with it's "Roto Bi-Lateral" rotating head scheme on their reel to reel recorders (and on their cassette decks too). I have a Sony TC-758 that uses this system and it is extremely reliable with no azimuth issues at all. In fact I have had a few other Sony open reel machines that used this system and it was quite reliable and had no azimuth issues in forward or reverse record and play modes.

Of course having discrete heads for reverse operation is probably the most reliable way to do reverse, but then you need six heads and switching circuitry which gets expensive and has other potential problems.

The least reliable / repeatable reversing design I have come across is the Akai method that has the head mounted on a sliding pole that is moved to the other two tracks by a solenoid for reverse playback. Some of them seem to have azimuth issues due to the landing position of the head when the solenoid pulls in.

Hmmm, maybe on the Akai reel to reels, but I never had any such problem with the heads on the GXC-75D cassette deck.

 

[audiojones]

Hmmm, maybe on the Akai reel to reels, but I never had any such problem with the heads on the GXC-75D cassette deck.

Ya, I meant their older "bottom of the line" auto-reverse 7" open reel machines which often had issues with the reverse playback azimuth. Never had any experience with an Akai cassette deck, dunno how they work / sound.