I am a music collector and an aspiring composer. In recent years I have wanted to get back to keeping track of new ideas on a portable cassette recorder. I prefer standard cassettes to micro cassettes. As you already know, the number and variety of cassette machines in general has all but disappeared in the recent years of the digital age. I wasn't having any luck finding anything at first.
The first unit that I found about 3 months ago was an RCA walkman recorder that walmart carries online. Using a debit card I was able to go to the store, order it and have them ship it there for me to pick up a week later. Looking forward to testing it out, at home I inserted fresh batteries and followed the instructions. The resulting voice recording I made had absolutely horrendous sound quality. I tried all of the limited settings possible. Hiss, grinding, noise...my voice was certainly unintelligible and barely even audible. I packed it up and took it back to walmart for credit. The only other walkman-size cassette recorder that I've found available was at best buy (a big electronics retail chain in northeast US). It was in-stock at the store and bought one this week. A SONY model with what seemed like good features including variable speeds, mic sensitivity and inputs for headphones, ext mic and AC power. I took it home and tested it out. The results; same as the RCA...absolute garbage, unintelligible sound. The unit was proudly marked; 'Clear Voice' system. What a joke! Peice of chinese-made junk. I took that back to the store also. I was surprised because I had bought a (now discontinued) SONY walkman cassette player a couple of years ago. That is also chinese-made but it sounds great.
Does anyone out there know of a portable walkman-size cassette recorder that is still being made that actually works the way it is supposed to? I had a popular post on this forum last year that described a SONY walkman that I owned in the mid-80s...that made FANTASTIC stereo recordings with an external-wired stereo mic. No speaker. Just headphones and crystal-clear radio included. Japanese made at the absolute PEAK of the quality-analog era. Seems like there is nothing remotely like that being made today by anyone at any price. I don't like digital hard-drive voice recorders. What can I carry and use to tape my music composition ideas on cassettes?
