#tape deck

Technics M205 cassette player and some of my cassettes.

Yay😂….

and I brought something “new” with me:

the

PHILIPS NC2234 Full Auto Stop

Cassette Recorder

It’s a classic mono tape recorder for usual Compact Cassettes from the late 70s to the early 80s.

But though it’s all in all quite basic, it contains one or another little feature, that didn’t used to be so basic back in the day (or let’s say, that wasn’t included in every device you would call a “classic tape recorder from 1980”).

For the classic features, it has a built in microphone, one big internal speaker (because it’s mono), the typical big buttons for play, pause, record etc.. , a counter, a handle to carry it around, the ability to run it on batteries (6 C-cells) or by cable, and the Auto Stop function.

Special features (in my opinion) would be the “Tone Regulation” (turning button right above the identical volume regulator) and the numerous different connection sockets all around it. Not because there are some at all, but more because of their kind and number!

Typical for an European device of that time would possibly be one or two five poled “Din-Sockets” for headphones or a microphone etc… .But this one doesn’t have a single one of those! In fact is has (beside the plug in for the electricity cable) two regular 3.5 mm Headphone sockets (like in- and output), a little slimmer remote socket (I don’t know how this is actually called) and on the other side it has a single two poled “Din-Socket” for an external speaker.

Sadly the 3.5mm sockets don’t really work, like the output (“phones”) doesn’t work at all and the input (“mic”) works so far, that I was able to record from a plugged in radio, but the quality was so terrible that you couldn’t understand a single word (but the recording mechanism itself works pretty good, because the recordings I’ve made with the built in microphone were actually pretty good and in fact way better than with other devices that I’ve used before this one). The “remote”-socket was the only thing I wasn’t able to test, because I have absolutely no idea what exactly type of plug this is for. But the two poled “Din-Socket” on the other side works perfectly! I’ve connected my Sony headphones via some adapters (Din to Cinch and Cinch to 3.5mm) with it and it works great. Like it sounds way better than from the internal speaker (obviously: cause modern Headphones vs 45yo mono speaker 😂).

Oh and beside all of that technical stuff, I just love it’s absolutely sleek and timeless design, that I think was typical for all early Philips tape decks and recorders (like since the late 60s).

So in conclusion, it’s a (nearly) fully working cassette recorder that is actually still usable for listening to music or voice recording via the built in microphone, but more useless for external recordings!

I gave it a second life by putting it on it’s own little table in my kitchen, where it could just stand around and look beautiful most of the time, but also entertain me with music once in a while.