[DMcMahon]

Tonight have been checking out a recent acquisition, a mid 1970's Telefunken magnetophon C 2200 stereo cassette deck.

It is quite large and heavy, feels really sturdy and looks well engineered. Overall condition looks good with a few minor scuff marks.

Opened it up to remove trapped dust from the faces of the VU meters, all 4 drive belts are good and tape transport all works well.

Got it fairly cheap and it was supposed to be fully working. Playback of existing recordings works well when listening from headphones. Spec'd for headphone impedance of 400 ohms but works well on my 32 ohm headphones.

Microphone recording works well, but there is noticeable hum in the background, will try different microphone to see if different. So far only checked left channel as do not have stereo microphone.

Line recording is not good. The left channel is really strong and results in bad distortion even with a very low record level setting (both on playback of the recording and monitoring the record signal before recording). I was using unattenuated phono to DIN cable, later I will try attenuated cable to see if this helps.

The right channel is the complete opposite, a very weak distorted record signal even at maximum record level setting.

Automatic (ALC) recording fared no better.

So plenty more to do, I was hoping that for once "fully working" actually meant that.

David