Sony TC-580
DESCRIPTION: I believe this dates from the mid 70's. A fairly deluxe deck, it's unusual in the fact that it's a three motor, three speed design. It is fully bi-directional, and functions as if it had six heads (more on that later). A good looking machine, it anticipated the trend toward today's black equipment by having a black faceplate with walnut sides.
COMMENTS: This one was found in the choir room at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Charleston, West Virginia. I traded a tuning of the pipe organ worth $225.00 for it, which was a mistake. This one is by far the most unreliable tape deck of any sort I've ever encountered. There are many design flaws which make this an unpleasant machine to work with. It uses Sony's "ESP" system, which listens to the right track of both sides of the tape, and when it hears seven seconds of silence in both directions, it trips the reverse. You'd better hope you have a tape that's recorded on both sides, or it'll try to auto reverse after every track! (Of course, you can turn the auto reverse off.) Then there's the auto reversing mechanism itself, which is hideously complicated, and involves moving the pinch roller from one side of the capstan to the other! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Then there are the electronics. Despite all the fanciness, there's no motion sensing, so woe be unto the person who goes directly from a fast wind mode to play without stopping first. The deck has an emblem which says "Six Head Function"- what this means is that they cheapened the deck by using four heads, and provided monitoring capability by means of complicated and unreliable switching circuits. The playback electronics always sounded lousy, being way too hot (despite their being calibrated and worked on by my trusted technician) and very thin sounding. My opinion: stay clear of this one.
Great to look at but miserable to use, the Sony TC-580 rates in my book as one of Sony's rare outright failures.
