*Update:* The BA-823s are all gone, but eBay seller "dsings14u" has several new old stock BA-806s for sale. That model has a mono amplifier, but the cassette decks in it are still stereo, so with the line output mod I showed, you can get stereo out of it.
it fits in with the equipment, all it needs is the line at the bottom of the frame and it would be a vhs tape playing. its nostalgic in a way to see this quality.
@@paulstubbs7678 Really? There are very odd selections but at some point, even Paul McCartney's Let Them In, no less, is played. It plays for like 8-9 seconds, does everything under 10 seconds go under the radar?
I love how you've managed to save and share so many of those radio station jingles and stuff. It oddly makes me really nostalgic despite not ever really listening to the radio. Every time you use one to show off hardware it makes me smile.
Thank you for never saying "all right, guys" or "ok, guys" or "all right" or "ok" at the beginning of every take like basically every other youtuber in the world does.
I do tend to start a scene by saying "so" or "now". But in my defense, my videos are entirely unscripted, and it's a challenge to operate a video camera, operate a piece of equipment you're demonstrating, think of what to say about it, and actually say it, all at the same time.
@@vwestlife Please never change the way you do them. You ALWAYS respect continutity. And I can't tell your videos are unscripted, because there is never a "uhm"
Wow! What an awesome find! Your so lucky! By the way, I bought the "Pyle PT-649D Dual Cassette Deck" & have had it for about a month. I absolutely love it! Does what it's supposed to do & sounds just fine doing it! The company must've seen your video on why new machines sound like crap & fixed the problem. 👍🏻
"Finally, the satisfaction of using a VCR combined with the enjoyment of listening to an audio cassette!" - marketing, if this was sold as a consumer unit
I suppose specialty music venues, stores, etc might not have wanted mediocre sound quality even for “just” background music. Especially given the nice specs, adjustability of motors, and remote controls. Nice ceramic adjustment tool btw.
Yep! I think so too! However, your comment made me imagine some smaller businesses running their background music off of consumer tape decks and tapes bought from a record shop, like how I've seen some businesses around me run their digital signages off of consumer TVs and/or PCs, and that one time I went to a restaurant that ran their background music off of a Spotify account on the free plan with all the adverts in between songs.
@@kbhasi Spotify free plan - margins are tight for restaurants right now. Some are still recovering from C-Vid and worker shortages. Gotta economize where they can!😉 I certainly remember restaurants and stores back in my "yoof" just running a local radio station for their on-site background tunes.
@@lawrenceh1405 Yep, I remember that a KFC at the ground floor of the same building as a private school I attended played something like Class 95 FM or Power 98 FM (prior to their format split years later) through their speakers. It's been years since I've visited that particular location, but I think they shut off their music system some years ago and uninstalled it (but probably left the ceiling speakers installed). (Edit: they remodelled a few years ago from what I can tell looking at photos on Google Maps, and probably had turned off their music system) Besides that, I've been to some other small businesses that play radio over the music system.
I have heard of TOA, my primary school had a portable meeting amplifier with a cassette deck in it that was made by TOA. It was mostly used in the music room for students to practice their singing, it was also used at some school assemblies. I've also seen TOA outdoor horn speakers in various places.
This is cool, I like it. I remember when I worked retail back in the 1990s we had a sound system with a single well auto-reverse cassette deck and we only played the company tape when we knew the "big boss" was coming for a visit, otherwise we played our own music tapes.
I have both an XLR cable and an adapter to make this work it's called wire cutters and wire strippers. It is actually quite common for XLR to be terminated in screw terminals or euro blocks for for installed equipment. for wires or fork terminals. That's quite an interesting machine!
The second song sure sounds a lot like Starship's "We built this city" A song that I have loathed since I first heard it on the radio on the schoolbus in highschool.
Sounds nice, and seems to be working perfectly. We had TOA wall amplifiers in several of our large meeting rooms at NASA (GSFC), when I worked there years ago. Nothing fancy, but reliable, and completely usable gear.
TOA was a brand name I used to see frequently on PA horn speakers back when I was a kid. I remember seeing amplifiers with the same brand name also within public address audio systems. It was almost a fetish I had in my younger days trying to discover anything audio tech related in every place my parents dragged me to, from supermarkets and shops to auditoriums and theatres. TOA featured quite often in these little expeditions.
the reason for the screw terminals on the microphone is that this thing would have been installed in booth and the leads would have gone to a wall terminal that ran to a microphone XLR input in the floor of the auditorium or something like that
Cool ! It would be fun to have one of these, wire it into the PA system, and play cassette tapes of Mall Musak for that real true 1970s department store sound ! :-)
if a tape deck met the q specs of a (japanese) car manufacturer, you can be sure the design is mature, reliable and working under extreme conditions, e.g. after bad handling during car assembly. Car manufacturers use to claim $$$ compensations if a line has to be halted or cars sorted to a rework track "due to parts failure". and such equipment has to work at least for 3 years when used for daily commute, either in the alaska or south of italy, without causing warranty claims above a defined threshold... otherwise the carstereo manufacturer will have to pay compensations the car company as well.
We built this cassette deck… we built this cassette deck with Ten™️ components! As always, top notch job showcasing new old stock at its finest. Robust thing, huh?
Used plenty of TOA gear in the 90s at church mostly. Seemed high quality and designed to last. Though looking at one of the other commenters this may have declined in recent years
True, have two of them.. they were the old "A" series models MK-II or something like that and they have a really good sound quality and are built like a tank and almost never powered down. But newer models were good also but it sounds tinny to me.
The only achilles heel of that unit is the Sanyo STK4151 Hybrid audio amp they're known for failure. Finding a real one can be a chore as most of the ones you'll find online are counterfeit. You'll probably be ok for intermittent home use though. They were very common place and pretty much every manufacturer used them back in the day. I replaced a ton of STK modules in CRT projection TVs as they were used as convergence amplifiers.
@@rwdplz1 Yeah they made a series of multi rail voltage regulators too some specifically for VCRs. I remember one on an early 80s Hitachi VCR (linear power supply) the heat sink on the VR got so hot in normal operation you could practically fry an egg on it.
STK's have a bad reputation of breaking, but it is because equipment manufacturers push them to their limits of power supply voltages (or put them on a tiny heatsink). One time a friend came with a Technichs compact stereo and he broke the STK, and it was obvioisly pushed to the limits. When I put a new one, I rewired the power transformer to a less voltage output winding, and he has never again been able to break the STK again (but he also didn't notice the slightly less output power).
Thank you for another informative and entertaining review. What a find! I still have over 500 cassettes, mostly recorded with Dolby C on Maxell chrome and TDK metal tapes in the 80's-90's mostly with a Yamaha KX-650 3 head deck (1990 vintage) that died years ago, and to which I listen now, on the Yamaha's JVC KD-VR320 (1985 vintage) predecessor, which I'd passed on to my then-girlfriend (before we married). I was so pleased to hear the opening bars of your test tape thinking it must be from Kitchener -Waterloo, Ontario, home of the world's second-largest annual Oktoberfest. Canada's 'polka king', Walter Ostanek, who often visits from St. Catherines (near Niagara Falls), frequently performs that song. He's our equivalent of Frankie Yankovic. I enjoy your posts. Cheers.
The NOS gear is always amazing to see. I'd love to know the story behind how this one was "forgotten". I worked in a grocery store that used consumer gear for store music, and it was horrible when would it would flake out. It was in a locked office, and we'd have to listen to the same song on repeat for an entire shift, which is basically torture.
They turned the worst song from the 80s and managed to make it worse. I'd prefer the MIDI version someone would have embedded on their Geocities website.
I thought the name sounded familiar, and then I realized two old amps I found in the trash container at work a few months back were also made by TOA - their VP-1120. A real pair of lead weights they were for sure to drag home, not sure if they were used by the Luxor company at the end before they closed up shop here in my town, or if the amps belonged to some other company’s audio system that moved in after. (I work at a company in the old Luxor building)
@@csstp yup, there isn’t much left to indicate Luxor was here in the building anymore except the name - Luxorcenter, the guard building where you had to sign in and that had the video surveillance was just torn down a few months ago, I was allowed to dig through what was left in the old guard room. Took home the intercom with two reel-to-reel era answering machines, and a old coaxial video crt monitor etc. :)
In the country where i live (Malaysia), my college also uses equipment made by TOA for public announcements as well as for the audio system in the auditorium. Apparently my college isn’t the only one that uses TOA products, it is also widely used in schools, community centres and malls. Even my local train station uses them as well. It proves that Japanese made products are trusted for it’s reliability for years to come.
Actually the TOA in South East Asia are not always made in Japan. All their entry level products were (and still are) made in Indonesia. I knew one of the TOA factory owners in Indonesia. Too bad he passed away last year :(
The last of the Japanese audio companies? All the 'HiFi' ones seem to have closed down with their brands being taken up by various crap suppliers who have no hope in generating a good name for themselves.
I used to have a pair of loudspeakers made by Toa! Very common in Cuba in theaters and open stages and mostly professional audio! I had a pair of toa horn speaker you could hear from haft a mile away! Very reliable japanese audio brand!! Great video by the way!!
@@DavidSusiloUnscripted they’re a high end electronics company, they’re meant for businesses and religious organizations, our synagogue used their speakers and recording equipment for events!
@@jamesslick4790 yeah, it wasn’t a consumer brand, they were made for B2B, but they made really good sound equipment! I wish there was more ways to buy their products, because they don’t sell directly online! You have to get a vendor contract with the company, because their stuff cost about thousands of dollars!
Regarding the song guessing: I was getting vibes of New York / Lady Is A Tramp & We Built This City On Rock & Roll. Just saying! Plus it looked like no belts were required - so long lasting and robust too! A very nice device indeed! Quality sound, components and performance it seems!📼
Surprisingly great quality - the line out mod is superb too. Really impressive stuff. As for the songs - pretty sure we've got New York New York and We Built This City soundalikes.
Nice unit. Though one can't help wondering if it's much of a step up from a front loading dual auto reverse deck, which had the advantage of easier access for head cleaning - arguably the number one maintenance task on a tape deck. But TOA made good kit, even if the mechs weren't technically their own. NEAL were another making solid industrial audio units.
If I was in a store and they started playing that e-i-e-i-o song, I would leave my cart of frozen goods right where I was and would leave! 🤣 That's awesome you were able to find something NIB like that! Thank you for having it on, the logic was interesting
Cool video! A company where I worked remodeled a conference room and replaced the AV stuff, I got to keep the amplifier which was a TOA product. It looked very similar to this, very well built, and had a modular system where you could plug in various cards for different types of inputs (microphone, line in, phone).
Polka music.......lol. I got a whole bunch of Cech Polka records (not in English) from an estate auction. I use them when demonstrating turntables, since they rarely hit RU-vid copyright.
Never have this one before. This one was a background music system like Muzak, Seeburg, 3M and others, and it was made for industrial use like the Califone and Audiotronics for their cassette recorders and cassette players for educational, school and classroom use.
While you were demonstrating the playback order AND how it would "toss" to the other deck when one tape is ejected, My thought was "Hey, you could run a low budget radio station with this..." Then you said it! LOL.
Excellent equipment with solid performance! Even though the slot loading cassette decks may seem low end, when done correctly and with quality components, it sounds as good as those new CD things. Nice find, always cool to get it complete. I’m sure that even with daily usage, it’ll still work without a problem!
This looks like a system I had in my Suoermarket in the 90s or before ...we would get a new tape every week with plenty of ADs and annoying background music ...but we were specifically told not to use our own tapes ..when store store was open.....these things were well used and took a lot of damage only really lasting 6 months or less...ahh the good old days..
My guess is that employees weren't allowed to load in their own cassettes and had to use those provided by the chain because of corporate policies and/or the music having been licenced.
Wow, the "radio gets results" jingle at 13:13 unlocked a long-dormant memory. One of our local stations played that jingle every day for years in the late 90s/early 2000s. I had completely forgotten about that.
I work/worked on a lot of TOA equipment for repairs. they are very rugged. their later series of conventional loading cassette decks and their cd players (yes they made cd players) were just rebadged units built for them by Tascam.
Both decks seem to be running a bit fast. Here's the original track: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eKu-utWOans.html&ab_channel=ColorsInMotion-Topic
I can’t say I’ve ever seen another cassette deck that loaded tapes the same way a car’s tape player does; this is a first for me. That alternate playback sequence feature is really slick. Couple that with another unit or two and you’d have a pretty varied radio station playlist sans the computer. I’d be tempted to get one just for that purpose, since I have boxes of tapes that are just collecting dust after being digitized. At least then I’d be able to put them to good use again.
I did too, so with a keen eye and the pause button I managed to identify the album from the tape and here's the vinyl version (timecoded link goes straight to the song, E. I. O. Polka): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wv1Qz_qpQ0M.html You can thank me after you're finished polka dancing. ❤🪗
That is a really upbeat rendition of "Old McDonald Had a Farm"! :-) Open the door and let him in, and Closing Time are also quite appropriate for opening and closing of a business. Nice touch.
DOLBY was and still is only good for recording but playing it back is best with Dolby turned off on most average decks because Dolby does add more treble while recording but playing it back with Dolby On will mask the upper tone as if you turn the treble down ..If it is a high end type like Revox or expensive Nakaimichi ,Dolby does work properly with the Dolby On in playback mode
I am very surprised that after 30 years sitting in a box that it worked! I used to do a lot of work with TOA products back in the 90's thru the early 2000's. Mostly mixer/amp units. The biggest problems I ran into were the muting relays would get oxidized and created lots of intermittent issues. Easily fixed with a business card and some Deoxid. They made some good products. I have a whole bunch of TOA modules kicking around that would plug in the back. Thanks for the video!
I've heard of them as I have a few of their wireless microphones, one is from the mid/early 80's, all are decently built and the oldest of them gets 30hrs of battery life from 3 x AAA (no 9V batteries here!), even the slightly later system only uses 1 x AA for 10hrs which is pretty good, plus the older receivers can be powered by the mains or DC. You need to get the TOA MR-8T, an 8! track compact cassette recorded, doubt they sold many so must be pretty rare. TOA are generally regarded as a quality manufacturer making pretty bullet proof audio installation gear, so not surprised this still works fine, they even once made an impressive large digital mixing console the ix-9000.
Wonder if the voltage is slightly higher at your location and thus why both decks were a bit fast? (and now I wonder if 'good' decks regulate the motor voltage? Turning on a space heater on the same circuit might affect sound quality lol!)
@@vwestlife Thanks! I went and learned something. "A.N.T" from TapeheadsDOTnet wrote: DC servo motors work on a very simple idea - the effective resistance of the motor's windings is dependant on the rotational speed. The "DC servo" circuit contains a resistive bridge that "measures" the winding's resistance and keeps it constant (and thus keeps constant the rotational speed) by adjusting the voltage on the motor. If, say the load on the motor is increased, the circuit would increase the voltage on the motor to keep the speed stable. Very simple and pretty efficient idea. However it suffers from several drawbacks - 1) The circuit needs to take into account the temperature changes as these affect both the circuit and the motor's windings. That is why there is usually a thermistor and several diodes. However this compensation can not be ideal and DC servo motors would drift with temperature. Not much, usually inside the same 0.5%. 2) The DC servo circuit is a negative feedback circuit and as such has a finite regulation capabilities, meaning that an increase in the load always would result in a drop in the speed, though a small one. 3) (Most important one for us, as we usually deal with old and worn motors.) The DC servo relies upon the resistance of the windings + the contact resistance of the brushes and the commutator. Worn motors suffer from variations and drop-outs of that contact resistance which affects the speed stability, both instantaneous and long-term, increasing W&F and speed drift in time and with temperature.
Most amazing cassette deck I've ever seen or heard. It can't record but that's no problem.... Therefore it just sounds really great. Thanks for your video. 👍 If they'd make a deck like this brand new that would have some extra functions for consumer market I think it would sell like a high speed train. Let's contact TOA Japan if it still exists and tell them to manufacture this type of decks with the same quality again. It should be possible??
Quick...someone tell TechMoan...Few other trivial things to mention...the good...i also have a Compaq Deskpro...not sure if it's EN though...Pentium III 800 MHz...the bad...that first jingle of childrens music was torture on my ears...and the ugly...no a beautiful piece of 90's new old stock Japanese cassette deck perfection...i'm envious...though i already have 3 decks...and many other portables
(SHHH!! Don't tell them the SECRET!!) 😉 Seriously, tho... I've become a big fan of TOA's D-line over the past year or so. They marketed these as "Electronic Music Mixers" with a couple of expansions such as the D-4E expander for the main unit, the D-4. But it was the D-3 that really grabbed me. You get, in 1U, a 4 stereo or mono input per channel, an AUX send/return, direct outs per channel, and great, thoughtful interface design. I snagged one last year, put it in as the summer for this shortwave-driven setup I'm planning to (hopefully!) use live as part of my rig. To make a long story short, it was pure serendipity. For live electronic performance, these are so easy to work with sonically that I dove back into eBay and snarfed two more for summing duties with 3-channel insert matrix voodoo that lets you drop these effortlessly into eight mono mixer channels. Oh yeah...these things also do NOT need an insert Y; they're designed so that all you need are a bunch of bog-standard 1/4" TRS cables. The signal return is set up automatically in the unit, and it works with any standard channel insert. That's not a TOA product this time...but something from another installed audio firm: Biamp. The Advantage AM is what I'm on here. It has only ONE flaw, and that's the fact that powering it requires proprietary rules to be followed... either you have the base-level mixer and it supplies DC to the AM via the main 27V supply, or you can hunt down an Advantage 12V supply as the power source for using the AM alone. Or in my case, you use one Advantage 12V supply to feed DC to two AMs, or maybe a single AM that sends the DC from one device to another 12V-only Advantage unit. Oh...did I mention that each AUX send on these also has its own insert?.Yeah, you can go nuts with the AMs. Damn shame that there's no present-day equivalent devices on this level...plus Biamp likes to kick "legacy" gear to the curb and pretend it never existed. Which, of course, is pretty annoying until you stumble across full instructions AND schematics for every Advantage-series device, all bundled up for DL on Biamp's site. Nifty! Fact is, there's a PILE of "contractor audio" gear out there...brands like Symetrix, Rane, et al have serious latent mojo factors. My studio has a bunch, from Biamp's MI days spring reverbs, to dynamics control of all sorts from Symetrix, Rane for EQs and parallel FX work, and even some proto-gear like cut EQs and notch filters from Rauland (a precursor to Biamp, in fact)...and my beloved spectral masking noise gen from Muzak itself! Contractor audio...if you know what you're looking for/at, it's ALL got massive "abuse potential".
