Recent Thrift Store Find: Cassette Deck Changer
At my last trip to a thrift store I can across the most amazing thing, a thing I never dreamed could exist:
A Mitsubishi DT-156 Dual Cassette Deck with 7-Disc Changer!
Decks with two heads are very common--but this isn't what this is. The drawer on the far left pushes out at the press of a button and offers slots to load seven cassettes. I thought at first that these slots were just for storage, but no: once the button is pressed again to close this drawer, any or all of the cassettes can be played, one after the other.
How incredibly improbable is this! Cassettes are so clunky, stand-alone, and have so many moving parts, that a device such as this seems doomed to failure, and soon. A tape that didn't align perfectly over the heads would bring the entire appliance to a halt. Yet here it is.
The unit was only $8, but wouldn't even power up, so I didn't buy it. But now my eyes on are the peeled for another one.
A better design is the Sony's attempt. Instead of pushing each tape to the head, each cassette is placed on a wheel and the wheel itself turns to the head. It seems like a lot less can go wrong with this design, and if there is a problem such as a jammed tape, it seems a lot more likely that it can be fixed.
A Mitsubishi DT-156 Dual Cassette Deck with 7-Disc Changer!
Decks with two heads are very common--but this isn't what this is. The drawer on the far left pushes out at the press of a button and offers slots to load seven cassettes. I thought at first that these slots were just for storage, but no: once the button is pressed again to close this drawer, any or all of the cassettes can be played, one after the other.
How incredibly improbable is this! Cassettes are so clunky, stand-alone, and have so many moving parts, that a device such as this seems doomed to failure, and soon. A tape that didn't align perfectly over the heads would bring the entire appliance to a halt. Yet here it is.
The unit was only $8, but wouldn't even power up, so I didn't buy it. But now my eyes on are the peeled for another one.
A better design is the Sony's attempt. Instead of pushing each tape to the head, each cassette is placed on a wheel and the wheel itself turns to the head. It seems like a lot less can go wrong with this design, and if there is a problem such as a jammed tape, it seems a lot more likely that it can be fixed.