I previously mentioned that I purchased a refurbished Sony cassette deck from eBay that was so far from spec I had to return it. I decided to go for a deck that I could refurbish myself as I lost confidence in eBay sellers. I figured I could not do worse if the deck was not too far gone.
Here now are measurements for a Sony TC-WA8ESA dual cassette deck. This is from the ES line, however it is a late 90s ES, so it is rather light and does not compare to the best Sony made (generally overseas exclusives anyways). More, it's a two-head dual deck, which means there will be compromises. However, it was one of the better decks Sony sold at the end of the cassette era and was not cheap. Had some good bells and whistles including Dolby S and HX Pro. Retail was $550 from 1997-1999. About $1000 today if you can believe it. There were only two models that were more expensive at the time and they were quite a leap price-wise.
I cleaned out and replaced the melted belts, replaced a couple of broken gears, replaced a couple of pinch rollers, recapped where needed, added dynamat anti-resonance/sound deadener to the inside cover (it feels and sounds much more expensive when you tap it), and aligned it. Tests performed using ABEX test tapes. I must say the layout of the circuit board is so notably well-done. Everything is so thoughtfully placed and well-marked on the underside. This made recapping it almost fun. Sony's engineers were the absolute best and I was super impressed.
Compartments A & B:
Meets spec. In your face eBay "refurbisher." W&F is relatively stable, especially compared to the Realistic. Measurements for reverse play were a little worse. That seems to be the price you pay for these dual head dual decks. Digital archiving should be done using the best compartment and one side at a time.
N&D: 1kHz ABEX test tone that was recorded and normalized to -10dB.
Compartment A, left and right channels:
Compartment B, left and right channels:
Compartment A is closer to the power supply so perhaps the hash is from that. I'll fiddle with it some more...
...OK, a little better. A, right. These things are so finicky that you can't expect perfect repeatable results.
Below are the typical results and those of the Realistic next to it. The numbers are very comparable, though how the decks reach them is very different, so it's not apples to apples. This seems to be the upper middle class, with better THD separating the great decks, not SINAD, though not by a whole lot. (My Nak got to -72dB). It should go without saying that there is more to a cassette deck than this.
Channel matching and azimuth (12.5kHz tone ABEX test tape), A & B compartments:
As seems to be typical here, you can choose near-perfect azimuth at 12.5kHz or near perfect channel balance at 1kHz. This was deemed a good compromise.
Compartment B, TDK SA-X90 (Type II), -20dB, no Dolby. I could fine tune it more but I wanted to move along and this is already quite good.
Dolby B, C, S (-20dB). I think those little bumps around 400Hz can be smoothed out. I'll discuss them later.
Auto level. Note that the unit has to be calibrated for it so here the left channel will be a bit off. Dolby off and Dolby B. Here we can see how we must negotiate with the cassette for more gain. But really not to bad, -3dB at 20kHz. This looks like a good tape.
Finally, the unit has auto-calibration. Let's see if it helps. Auto level, Dolby off.
Yes, it smooths it out a tiny bit! The original, manual -20dB measurements should benefit from this.
Finally, auto calibration, level and Dolby S (the works):
-1dB at 16kHz and ease of use. Obviously, the bias of the left channel needs to be adjusted better. I just have to decide whether or not I am going to use auto level to see if its worth the time to adjust it. I'd need to check out my other tapes in order to make a decision.
In the end, I think this is a nice deck! In comparison to the higher-end Nakamichi RX-505 here you sacrifice a little W&F and THD but gain the convenience of automatic tape bias and level adjustment. Plus you get Dolby S and HX Pro, which may afford you less noise!
I'm also refurbishing a Pioneer CT-W650R, which looks comparable so far. Stay tuned.