4-track cassette heads

[famous beagle]

Just out of curiousity. Could be a stupid question, but oh well ... I've asked stupider.

You always hear about the conditions of the heads on R2Rs, but you rarely do when it comes to cassette 4-tracks. Why is that?

Do they ever get to the point of needing replacing? And if so ... are they even available? I imagine it would probably make more sense to just buy another machine, huh?

 

[cjacek]

No, not a stupid question at all.

Here's my take on this whole thing: Cassette deck heads, even running at double speed, as is the case with many portastudios, still move at a snails pace vs open reel machines. This in turn increases life of a head (but then you already knew that). When you consider that a typical good reel to reel deck head has several thousand of hours of life, running at 15ips then increase that amount by several times for a cassette based recorder. You're then looking at 15, 20 or more thousand of hours of head life, of actual recording. Now, this may be less or more mind you but still.... The motors, lights and electronics would probably fail faster than the heads on those things and I doubt you'd wear out the heads in your lifetime. Also, cassette based units do not have a very high frequency content so head wear will not impact your sound as much. It's a good bet that if a 4 track cassette still works, then there's still plenty of life left in heads. If heads were actually worn out then I'd be surprised if the machine worked at all or looked good. Then there's also the notion that a majority of people don't use those things that much and move on to something else... I'd bet that actual use on cassette based units is fairly low but many are not well kept and tossed in a closet. That's just my 2c.

 

[Tim Gillett]

Sure do wear out. Although because of the slower speeds (as Daniel says) maybe not as quick as with R/R heads running 15ips tape.

I saw plenty of high speed cassette duplicator heads worn right through so the gap opened up. But these cassette machines were running 15 or 30ips or faster. The Talking Book players I used to service for the blind got a real hammering too and would sometimes wear the head out totally.
I replaced a lot of cassette heads, or relapped existing ones. Still do but these days the demand has dropped off hugely.

The other problem with cassette heads is the felt pressure pad located in the cassette housing. It's a compromise and results in accellerated and less than ideal head wear. To my knowledge only Nakamichi made cassette machines which did away with the pressure pad but they never made a 4 tracker. Pity.

The head is sort of the heart of the machine whether reel to reel or cassette and is often neglected when it comes to service and alignment.
Easy to buy an MRL. Harder to replace or relap and properly align a worn head.

These days I'm not sure what new heads would be available for 4 track cassette machines. Maybe Teac/Tascam heads would still be available but I wouldnt bet on it. Probably there's NOS around somewhere but finding it might be the problem. Maybe others can chime in on this.

cheers Tim

 

[famous beagle]

Thanks for the info y'all. I don't anticipate having problems with mine, but I just wondered why you never heard much about it.