How much was a really top-end cassette deck back in 1975? Read on.
May 13, 2010 1 Comment Friday, May 14th, 2010, Netcast 1090
It was 1975 and I see an ad for the Marantz 5120 Stereo Cassette Deck in one of the audio magazines. Not only is this machine a beauty, but it has a ton of lights, and two volume level meters –left & right channel - that also light up. But wait there's more. Each one has an LED peak overload indicator! (They're so new the ad has to explain that LED stands for special "Light Emiting Diodes.")To add to the professional look, the side panels are walnut wood veneer. Other top-of-the-line features include: Dolby NR, Bias/Eq Selector, Limiter (in case you didn’t feel like riding the volume controls yourself / Left and Right Mic inputs with volume sliders / Left and Right Line Audio inputs, Master Level / and state-of-the-art Ferrite Heads. There was a "panpot system" for mixing mic and music too. It even had servo control for total shut off. Cheap tape machines back then would not disengage the heads when you shut the machine off. You had to make sure you pushed "stop" before turning off the power. That could deform the tape where it touched the recording/playback heads, not a good thing. The cost of this beauty some 35 years ago was $330! But it was a Marantz, which was really about as high tech as you could get in the consumer market. Leo recalls buying the same unit so you know it must have been top notch!
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Reader Comments (1)
I bought a similar model made by Teac in 1977 and remember that one of the features I liked most was the sliding volume controls, not unlike the transporter controls from Star Trek, the original series!