Reel to reel

Uberwaltz, I had a friend who had a big beautiful Sony reel. The only thing I remember was the big multicolored buttons, and it's silent running.

It's not about whether or not it's state of the art, but whether or not you can get parts, and someone to work on it. Without those two things, I wouldn't recommend any deck.

I recall being in a large sale room that was devoted to nothing but reels. They had models of each major brand: Sony, AKAI, Pioneer, Crown and others; they had 10 and 7 inch models.  I bought a 7 inch AKAI that played cassettes, 8 tracks, and reel.

Sony TC 377 must be a good deck, they're still selling them.

Orpheus.

No idea if it is a good deck but atm it’s good enough.

I really like the simplicity of it and it has similar controls to my old Akai cassette deck. Hard switches not soft touch controls.

Very solid feeling.

If I had one criticism it would be its relatively low output to my amp, but I think that is likely fairly common issue in most vintage tape decks.

If I had one criticism it would be its relatively low output to my amp, but I think that is likely fairly common issue in most vintage tape decks.

Consumer decks (including cassette) are set to a 1.0 volt output generally. There was an expectation to be used with a preamp. Pro decks are a bit different and have a lot more output.

About what I though Ralph.
My Akai cassette has approx same.
However my Nakamichi 582 seems like it has a lot more output and this was just a consumer deck.

Maybe Nakamichi did things a little differently?

They didn't. But the output is set by a trimmer control and it may have been set up to be a little hotter.