Portable cassette players today

natehorn · 2023-05-02T12:56:41.125Z

CCMP:

There’s a curious/sadistic part of me that would love to see Teenage Engineering make a £1500 walkman.

Screenshot 2023-05-02 at 13.56.12508×322 49 KB

obscurerobot · 2023-05-02T13:16:34.297Z

CCMP:

There’s a curious/sadistic part of me that would love to see Teenage Engineering make a £1500 walkman.

That’s roughly what the high end decks cost, back in the '80s. Adjusting for inflation, that should be something like half a million modern global credits today.

Stone262 · 2023-05-02T13:27:22.771Z

CCMP:

There’s a curious/sadistic part of me that would love to see Teenage Engineering make a £1500 walkman.

Would definitely be curious. As well as playback, I’d like to see it have built in stereo mic, 4 tracks, and do double duty as a portable mini analogue tape delay like that trex replicator pedal from a few years back. That’d be worth 1500 of your local buying units.

darenager · 2023-05-02T13:30:59.206Z

Techmoan got you covered

circuitghost · 2023-05-02T13:46:22.664Z

Thanks gonna check out the Walkman reviews. If there’s one with a rechargeable battery that I can find properly serviced, that’d be my option. If I got the spare kidney for it still.

MichaalHell · 2023-05-02T14:57:15.612Z

i snagged on of these a couple of years ago… theyre not the Walkman experience but still pretty cool and pretty cheap as well.

it has a internal mic, tone control, speed control and runs on battery as well, so really good for that Ambient field recording type of vibe.

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darenager · 2023-05-03T22:02:32.729Z

Found this

NINM Lab

IT’S REAL Bluetooth Speaker + Cassette Player Combo | NINM Lab

Thinking out of the old box, the romantic combination of Analogue with digital technology produces the IT'S REAL Bluetooth Cassette Player Combo consisting of the bluetooth 5.0 music transmitter tape, cassette player, and speaker. With the combo, you...

Price: HKD 1180

bwo · 2023-05-03T22:48:06.486Z

image600×731 44.6 KB

something like the wm-ex190 is a decent option and a cheap price… you don’t really need to look beyond type 1 for modern tapes and 90s-2000s era players likely don’t even need servicing for sometime still. It will certainly sound better than any modern player.

My personally opinion its not really worth getting caught up in high end portable players they aren’t really gonna be as nice as a good home deck anyways… sure do look nice though.

fmw · 2023-05-03T23:08:19.921Z

there’s a guy in Singapore 3D printing replacement battery cages for the D6 - they are otherwise an unobtainium item if you’ve scored one with a now-dead ni-cad battery pack.

these were one of my favourite loan-items from the media store when I was at university

pmags · 2025-06-30T15:31:19.858Z

Arise Zombie thread!

Just saw this and I’m already jonesing for one:

Liliputing – 28 Jun 25

Maxell MXCP-P100 is a portable cassette player with modern features like...

Maxell MXCP-P100 is a portable cassette player with modern features like Bluetooth and USB-C

Est. reading time: 2 minutes

No recording and other limitations but if they’re cheap as chips you better believe I’m going to be rocking my old high school mix tapes over bluetooth! My kids are gonna be so embarrassed…

papertiger · 2025-06-30T15:47:49.588Z

pmags:

you better believe I’m going to be rocking my old high school mix tapes over bluetooth! My kids are gonna be so embarrassed…

I’ll see you and raise you recordings of a certain parent’s college radio show!

Nils · 2025-06-30T16:08:46.835Z

The comments section in that link was merciless…

I bought a few 80s Sony walkmen 3-4 years ago. They’re pieces of engineering art, but as much as I loved them, the ones that did work stopped working after a while. I couldn’t find anyone who could fix them.

If you want a quality player, there are people specializing in refurbishing old decks (fullsize, not portable).

m0ld · 2025-06-30T16:17:30.288Z

I assume this uses the same shitty tape mechanism that all the modern ones use? Or by some miracle have they made their own/ sourced a better one? Not trying to be a downer at all - just cautious because I’ve seen so many poor experiences with modern tape players.

BlankFlag · 2025-06-30T16:21:27.726Z

The Cassette thread Other Gear

“The MXCP-P100 offers stereo playback and a brass flywheel to keep things steady, which Maxell claims delivers “high sound quality.” But let’s be real—this isn’t an audiophile’s dream. Built on a Tanashin cassette mechanism, it’s reliable but not the stuff of vintage Sony lore. There’s no Dolby noise reduction, so you’ll get that classic tape hiss and crackle—flaws that, for many, are the whole point. “The brass flywheel keeps rotations smooth for great sound,” Maxell says, but it’s more about charm than crystal-clear fidelity.”

shigginpit · 2025-06-30T16:26:57.076Z

Someone in the other thread pointed out that the Maxell is not scheduled for a North America release so you’d have to purchase it through an importer and unfortunately that jacks up the price.

m0ld · 2025-06-30T16:28:50.884Z

BlankFlag:

Built on a Tanashin cassette mechanism, it’s reliable but not the stuff of vintage Sony lore.

Looking into things a bit further, I can’t find anything concrete but lots of forum threads indicate Tanashin themselves stopped manufacturing them some time ago. I’m guessing it’s one of the knockoff mechanisms.

shigginpit:

Someone in the other thread pointed out that the Maxell is not scheduled for a North America release so you’d have to purchase it through an importer and unfortunately that jacks up the price.

Just saw that. Bummer.

BlankFlag · 2025-06-30T16:30:42.668Z

I know I say it often, but I just hope the popularity grows enough for a new mechanism to be made that’s dope. A modern tascam four track would be a delightful. Then I’ll start praying to the gods for a new ipod.

Catastrophone · 2025-07-01T06:50:04.853Z

Cassette deck technology has been forgotten: today, no one is capable of producing anything like it , neither for home recording nor portable use. The few new products available on the market are just junk. Even if someone were to invest in creating a high-quality cassette deck today, it would probably be too expensive and therefore unmarketable. The only option is to turn to the past and in fact, the market for vintage decks is very active. I recommend this forum:
https://www.tapeheads.net/
You can find great advice there on buying and maintaining vintage decks.

schoolbabyboy · 2025-07-01T14:12:47.730Z

my patience with old decks is starting to wane. i got a nice, worked on dual well sony deck from the only place in town with a repair guy on staff and one of the two decks started playing tapes poorly. yes theres many ways to service this and yes that would be the way to go.

at this point i just want to buy something new so i can get a new products life span out of it, not constantly reviving a ghost.

BlankFlag · 2025-07-01T14:28:40.242Z

Same.