r/CassetteDecks

Vinyl, Streaming, CD, FLAC... Tapes... why? did you ever ask yourself that question?

Dunno why but today I said, time to wake up the Luxman. I went directly for one of my original tapes, still plays ok, sounds.... okish.. then I realized, the only reason I still have a tape deck is because nostalgia, I wanted to play my old mix tapes, my radio recordings.

What are your reasons for coming back to such a format in 2026?

Do you buy new releases? I've tried, but most of them are just a gimmick, bad quality, just for showing, and I had enough, no more.

Hey y’all,

I’m already deep into old hardware and physical media, I listen to vinyl, CDs, and iPods, and I’m also a vintage Apple collector, so thankfully I already have some experience repairing old electronics.

Recently I picked up a Panasonic Stereo Cassette Deck 619 and I absolutely love it already. I bought some cheap blank tapes from China and recorded my first mixtape. 😄
I definitely want to upgrade to some CrO2 or metal tapes in the future though.

I got the deck fairly cheap because the right channel was mostly dead due to an oxidized potentiometer. I opened it up yesterday evening and managed to fix it with some contact cleaner. I attached a few pictures of the internals since there’s almost nothing about this model online except for a few similar units that thankfully seem to share the same internals.

The device is a pain to open tough because the mainboard is connected with a ton of soldered wires, so I could only lift it up just enough to squeeze the contact cleaner straw inside.

But now I’ve got a fully working deck, my Sony WM-B39 Walkman arrives soon and the setup looks amazing next to my Apple PowerCD 😁

Any tips for a newcomer?

Hi All,

I’m wondering if someone can give me a heads up on what might be going on here. I’ve taken two of these portable units and mucked them all up to achieve a really crude sound on sound effect. My issue is that my left hand play deck (the one doing the recording, and not the playing) keeps eating the tape at the spot I’ve circled below.

I feel pretty confident in opening it up and fussing around I just am not sure what the fix might be here. I have video of what happens as well if that’s at all helpful.

need someone to explain why this has 6 headphone jacks. sharp RD-664AV1 cassette recorder

so today my cassette deck started to have this wobble and the volume just tanks, not only that it sounds like there is something in there. is there a way I can fix this?