Nikko ND-750 - cheap cheap cheapity cheap cheap 

The same mechanism and Dolby chips in decks: KENWOOD KX-770R and TOSHIBA PC-G50R. I had the last one in 2 pieces. When I measured the W&F value, In both cases it was found to be at unexpectedly low levels, 0.035-0.04% WRMS. For non-direct drive this is perfect. I know what I'm saying, I've owned and repaired/service up a lot of cassette decks. Now I have a collection of about 60 pieces of average - top level.

This is nowhere near very cheaply made. Compared to a Nakamichi, of course it is cheap, but compared to an early '90s Technics or Sony, it is all right. It's a nice lower-midrange deck from the '80s. It even has quick-autoreverse with optical leader tape sensor! And real aluminum bezel on the plastic front panel. JVC used all-plastic tape transports even in some of their dual capstan 3-head decks! The head in this one looks suspicious. JVC and Toshiba used to have that arrow on their rotating heads, so good chance this is in fact a transport that they also used. But those are (just as this one) not just any plastic, but fiberglass-reinforced nylon, so very tough. I have some late '70s - early '80s (!) mono Akai AJ-360 boomboxes with transports made of this material, no failures, they only ever needed belt and idler tire replacements, even the ones that were used so much they also needed head and motor replacement. I'm almost positive this all-plastic transport is better than the usual sheet metal base with plastic pegs and tracks injection-molded into it, which always breaks. Please be kind to this poor old deck, and don't tear it down for parts. It's in great cosmetic condition, and has no wear on the head. If you really don't like it, just give it a good belt so it won't have excessive W&F, and sell it for whatever price you can in repaired condition. If you bought it for $50 in non-working ("untested") condition, you can probably sell it for $80-120 in fully working order, but even if you can sell it for only $50 and loose the price of the parts, it is still better to do that than to tear down such a good condition deck. For a lot of people, this is a great deck, because they used much worse in the cassette era. And honestly this is really not bad. If you put a decent belt in it, with those big metal flywheels it will outperform most '90s midrange decks in terms of W&F, and it won't sound worse than those. I personally really like the looks of the front panel as well. If you emphasize in the listing that it has optical quick-autoreverse, that is a big selling point to people who like auto-reverse decks. Also mention the Dolby B/C capability, and the *two* metal flywheels. Some auto-reverse decks has only one metal flywheel, the other is either plastic, or plastic with some sheet metal insert inside as a weight... which is worse than plastic, because a heavy flywheel with no balancing is worse than a light flywheel. No way this is a '90s deck, I assume mid '80s, up to 1987 maybe. Those Toshiba ICs with the old Toshiba logo are a tell-tale sign. They stopped using that logo in 1984. It also has two Toshiba ICs with the new logo, so this was made not too much after the transition. General rule of thumb: never put lubricant on parts that were not lubricated in the factory. Where you put that grease on the reel tables, it is pretty much guaranteed it will crawl into the clutches quite soon. Yikes!