I like the idea of cassettes. They are cheap and analog, and there’s a culture of sharing and trading them. I like the sound of tape saturation and hysteresis.
They feel much more approachable than vinyls. I dislike snobbery.
So I bought a cassette player
It’s a Sony TCM-459V and it’s only a bit noisy and wobbly. It can record too.
After listening to all of my tapes (not very many, see picture), A side and B side, I can safely say that I like cassettes.
Maintenance
The manual says that the innards need cleaning (rubbing alcohol + q-tip) after every 10 hours of operation. I don’t think this unit has ever been cleaned.
The belts might also need changing since they apparently go bad after a while.
Tapes catch on fire
I read on the internet that peoples’ tapes have spontaneously combusted. This is a thing to avoid.
