sweetbeats
Reel deep thoughts...
So with a recent bargain acquisition of a 488 mkI in need of repair (that ended up being pretty easy to fix), I’d been watching the market to gauge a reasonable price to ask for the 488 and along came a 688...these have always been a curiousity for me...never seen one in the flesh...certainly the absolute pinnacle of the 8-track cassette “portastudio”...anyway, one came along that appeared to be in good cosmetic shape, with no telltale signs of high-mileage and likely only needing a new capstan belt. It remains to be seen if there are other functional issues, but it arrived yesterday, does appear straight and pretty clean...will clean up nicely to an 8/10 condition I believe, powers up, LCD screens are good, I can hear the capstan motor spinning at proper speed but the capstan shaft does not spin (bad belt) but all other transport functions work...the price was right. Again, we’ll as I test things more deeply, but so far so good. It was well packed. Here it is fresh out of the box:
This thing is a beast. Heavier than you might expect for a cassette machine. And it verily dwarfs the 488. I think of it like the 488 is the regular Imperial cassette 8-track machine, and the 688 is Darth Vader’s cassette 8-track machine:
Hoping to get to opening it up and verifying the capstan issue is the belt and starting in on cleaning it up sometime in the next couple weeks.
This thing is a beast. Heavier than you might expect for a cassette machine. And it verily dwarfs the 488. I think of it like the 488 is the regular Imperial cassette 8-track machine, and the 688 is Darth Vader’s cassette 8-track machine:
Hoping to get to opening it up and verifying the capstan issue is the belt and starting in on cleaning it up sometime in the next couple weeks.