Everything you'd expect from a pricey player except price!
Written: Jul 22 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: pitch control! good, handsome unit with plenty of features.
Cons: None as I've experienced
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| poseidon's Full Review: Sony TC WE435 Stereo Dual Cassette Deck Single Dua... |
I’ve not used a cassette deck in years. Well, that’s not exactly true. I use the one in my car all the time – usually to listen to books on tape. However, as far as my home stereo goes, I’ve not used a cassette deck in years. I’ve always relied on my handy-dandy compact disc player or simply the tuner for my music needs.
Then a change came in my life. I was recently hired as a spinning instructor at my health club, and one of the requirements was that I bring my own music to play during the class.
Music from the 1980’s seems to work best in aerobic classes – at least that’s been my experience with spinning and step. A few modern country songs also work well, figuring they’re not awfully twangy and have a fast beat. Country was no problem – that’s about the extent of my compact disc collection. However, all my 1980’s music was on cassette tapes – tapes that I’ve not really listened to since college.
I rattled through my collection, happily digging through my music, enjoying the memories and thinking what songs would work in the routine I was designing. After finalizing the decision, I went over to my stereo and powered up the tape deck. I cleaned the heads and then I started to dub my music.
It must’ve been one of those moments of stupidity that overcomes me every so often, but I spent a few hours working on this tape without checking. After getting the first 50 minutes on the one side, I rewound the tape and played it back, wanting to listen for any possible errors.
I played the tape and it sounded great. Unfortunately, I had an appointment that I had to keep, so I pulled the tape out and decided to play the rest in my car. That’s when I discovered the problem.
The songs were being played back too slowly. I forwarded the tape and found it played that way the entire way through, no matter what song I chose. I even went ahead and rewound the tape totally, starting from the beginning and found the same problem. When I came home, I plugged the tape back into my stereo and it sounded just fine.
Great. My 14-year-old tape deck was fried.
So, I hopped back into the car and drove out to my local Best Buy. I decided I wanted the cheapest deck I could find because I don’t play tapes that often. There was one deck in the store that was under $100.00 – the Sony TC-WE305. It was priced at $99.99. It had your basic features – dual decks for dubbing, Dolby B, and separate motors for each drive.
That was fine, except I was never satisfied with Dolby B. I’d always preferred Dolby C and HX-Pro. However, this tape deck didn’t have that option. I decided to look at the next most expensive model.
For $159.99 there was the Sony TC-WE435. Groan, I know I didn’t want to pay $160 for a tape deck I’d hardly use, and really wondered how important that extra noise-reduction would be. I thought about the class – how loud the music needed to be played, and how that any extra noise on the tape would be annoying when played at the volume required.
I thought some more, and looked over the features of this pricier model. This one had Auto Reverse and continuous play. This one had Dolby C and Dolby HX-Pro. This one had a headphone jack.
This deck had Automatic Recording Level settings. The ARL means that I don’t have to take each compact disc I’m recording off of and checking to make sure the recording level isn’t set too high or low. That limits distortion in the recording.
The player had Auto Music Search. Auto Music Search basically lets you forward to usually the next song in line (or the beginning of the song you’re playing) by searching for blank space on the tape. You can direct the player to search for up to ten blank spaces at a time in either direction.
It came with another neat feature – Fade Control. This is a neat feature because it lets the music fade in as its starting and fade out at the end of the song. While it isn’t the most useful feature in the world, it does make for a snazzier recording of sorts.
This component also had one feature that the tape player at the health club had – Pitch Control. That one feature made the sale.
What’s pitch control? It actually makes the tape play faster or slower. If you remember record players at all with multiple speeds, it’s like taking a 45rpm record and playing it at 33rpm or 72rpm. In other words, you either get a very deep voice at the bottom end of the dial or the chipmunk music at the upper end of the dial. We use pitch control in spinning to get the perfect number of beats per minute out of any given song. If we have to speed up a song a little bit or slow it down a bit, that’s fine.
While I couldn’t record the song at the perfect pitch, I could still play back a questionable song at a different pitch. That means I’m able to use more songs that I originally anticipated. That translated to more tapes being made, which helped justify the cost of the cassette deck.
The instructions were very simple to read. They told me clearly how to operate each one of the various functions of the tape player. They didn’t bog me down in too much jargon, assuming that I have some sort of professional experience with electronics. I commend them on that.
The product itself is rather handsome. It is a black finish that doesn’t look like a cheap piece of plastic. It has a totally digital display, with dual digital time counters and memory presets for each of those counters.
The quality of the recording was top-notch. I played the music back on my car stereo and it sounded just fantastic. I then took the tape to the health club and tried it out on the only system that really mattered to me. It played back great!
The player does come with a one-year warranty against manufacturer defects.
I would definitely recommend the Sony TC-WE435. While most people wouldn’t have much use for the pitch control on the player, it does come in handy for dance, aerobic activity or just plain fun. It is a well-built unit that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
It is also far less expensive than a home stereo compact disc burner.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
poseidon
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 - Top 200 |
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Member: Jeffrey Schwartz
Location: Sunrise, FL, USA
Reviews written: 511
Trusted by: 1098 members
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