Hi everyone! Purchased a used Sony D6C recently and wanted to use it to record vinyls into cassettes so that I can listen to it on walkman. I have some questions which I hope to get the advice of experts here to share their inputs: 1) Recording- turntable comes with built in pre amp Teac TN400BT but not sure if I need to connect this to an external amplifier before recording into D6C 2) Tape Head Alignment- one of the frustrations I experienced in the 80s was recording 12" vinyls from my friend's Sony tape deck only to find it plays with poor sound on my own Walkman and tape deck(dull, no bass and treble). Believed this was due to tape head alignment. To ensure the newly recorded tapes would play well in D6C, other walkman or tape decks, does it mean I have to calibrate the tape head before doing any recording? 3) Old mix tapes from 80s- would doing the alignment result in my old mix tapes sounding poorly on the D6C and other newly acquired devices? 4) Difference between tape head alignment and tape speed calibration using 3000hz test tape. Would both need to be done to Ensure best sound playback or in most instances the tape speed calibration is sufficient? Thanks in advance! Mike
1) It’s best to go through a pre-amp but you don’t have to if you don’t have one. 2) You need the head correctly aligned, I would advise not to do it yourself. If it’s correctly aligned they will play correctly on any deck that is correctly aligned. 3) If your old tapes are off alignment then you will lose the top end on decks that a correctly aligned. If you want to be able to play any tape no matter what the alignment, then you need a tape deck with Azimuth correction. Azimuth correct allows you to move the playback head at will to match the tape. I only know of a few decks with that functionality all Nakamichi. Manual Azimuth Nakamichi CR-7, Cassette Deck 1, DR-1 and auto Azimuth correction Nakamichi Dragon. Of that lot I own the CR-7 and use to own the Cassette Deck 1. Alternatively you could have your D6C aligned to your old cassettes that way all your old cassettes with play fine and all new recording will play fine too but you will not be able to play them in anything else without Azimuth correction. 4) Azimuth and tape speed adjustment are 2 different things again both best left to the professionals to do for you.
Thanks for the advice, I will be cautious in whatever I do! By the way, I chanced upon a discussion on the "Its a Sony" label made by a fellow member here. Just wondering who it is as I would like to get some. Thanks again.
One more thing: since you come from Singapore (Hi!), be wary of old used tapes- most of them will have some kind of mold or degradation by this point. This will affect sound quality, and in some cases cause extra head wear and deposits. In my experience, NOS blanks from dryer climates are far less likely to have problems compared to NOS blanks you find in SG. The best case is to set your recording deck to an azimuth standard (such as the Abex or Teac Azimuth tapes, around 10khz). You would only need such a tape and soundcard scope software to set it, but there can be pitfalls (180 degrees out of phase, head wear). Finally, never use the D6C with a power supply unless you own the 220V original. Very easy to fry.
