Marantz SD4050 Twin Cassette Deck

Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, cassette tapes were the most popular music platform. They were cheap and portable. Contrary to popular belief, I never had issues with naff sounding tapes that got chewed up in a cassette deck. My dad was an audiophile, who overhauled his gear every few years and he gave me his old Denon cassette deck, which was a high end model at the time. As long as I cleaned and de-magnetised the tape-heads regularly, my cassettes had a good shelf life and sounded more or less as good as cds. However, eventually, cds became the most popular music platform of choice and cassette-based music all but vanished.Fast forward 25-30 years and although downloads and streamed music the dominant platforms, vinyl has enjoyed a resurgence and the signs are that cassettes might just be on the comeback.I found a box of old cassettes in the attic, along with an old Walkman and I listened to a few of them for a bit of nostalgia. I was amazed at how good they sounded, so I decided to hunt down an old cassette deck. Suffice to say, I spotted a Marantz 4050 deck in the corner of a charity shop for £20 and nabbed it. I cleaned it up inside and out, used rubbing alcohol on the tape-heads, hooked it up to a Sony soundbase and played Magnum'a 'Wings of Heaven' album on it. It sounded absolutely unbelievable. The music sounded full, balanced and fresh with the warmth of analogue sound that my ears had totally forgotten about.Since then, I've recorded cds and streamed music onto blank cassettes using Dolby B on the deck and they sound great.If you're into old AV tech, you can't go wrong with decks like this. They were top end at the time and built to last. No need to spend vast sums of cash for a good deck though, unless it's a Nakamichi Dragon or something.You can grab a fantastic Marantz deck or something of similar quality for between £20-30 if you where to look. The 4050 model I have is excellent.Get your retro on!