here's something that was a very common
site in the 1980s and 1990s
a dual cassette deck these allowed you
to make copies of cassette tapes for
your own personal use
despite the fact that the music industry
and electronics
manufacturers couldn't agree on whether
or not it was actually legal for you to
do so
"it's perfectly legal for the American
consumer to make
a copy of a piece of pre-recorded music
for his or her personal non-commercial use"
"you enjoy it, you want to enjoy it,
you want to listen to it, you ought to
pay for it. The fact that it's taking
place in your home is irrelevant
robbery takes place in your home -- that
doesn't make it good"
this deck is a Realistic SCT-85
from 1989 it was also sold by Radio
Shack
under the Optimus and Memorex brands
and at first glance it looks pretty
basic and non-descript
it's only when you look closer you
notice that it says
4-track dubbing and it has switch
settings for
4-track high speed dubbing and looking in
the 1990 Radio Shack catalog
here's the listing for it and we notice
it says "4-track high-speed synchro
dubbing
copies your personal tapes four times
faster"
so whereas most other dual cassette
decks only have
high speed dubbing which copies your
tapes twice as fast as normal
this one has quadruple speed dubbing. But
instead of running the tape four times
as fast which would yield very poor
audio quality
it achieves that feat by using a
4-track head
which copies both sides of the tape at
the same time
this part of the head copies the tape
going in the forward direction
while this part simultaneously copies it
going in the reverse direction
some decks use these four track heads
for auto reverse playback
but in this deck it's purely for this
four track dubbing
feature it does not have auto reverse
and although this four
track dubbing system was a rare feature
the SCT-85 was not the only deck to have
it
the Realistic Modulaire 2250 boombox
also featured four track dubbing as well
as the AD-WX180
and several other models from Aiwa which
had what they called the
ALL-TRAC recording system so let's try out
this quadruple speed dubbing feature
I have this tape that came with the 1992
Lincoln Continental
on side one they talk about all the
different features of the car
and on side two they have music so here's
side one
I'll give you a little sample of what
that sounds like
"the remainder of this presentation
covers the many features offered by
Lincoln Continental
they're listed on the cassette label and
for your listening pleasure
there's a selection of instrumental
music on the reverse side of this
cassette"
and here's a sample of some of the music
on side two
gotta love that Yamaha DX-7 harmonica
sound
to do the dubbing I'll put side one of
the Lincoln tape
in this deck and since this deck was
also sold as a Memorex
I'll use a Memorex tape to record onto so
I'll put this tape in to make our
dubbing
I'll engage the dubbing mode and the
four track high speed dubbing
I'll press record on this side... it's not
going yet -- it only starts
when I hit play on this side
and now we're doing our four track high
speed dubbing
we only hear the forward side of the
tape; it does not play
both sides simultaneously although it is
copying both sides
simultaneously. OK, I think that's
enough
so I'll disengage the dubbing mode, I'll
rewind this
tape that I copied it onto so we can
hear what the forward side
sounds like: "this displays
information on oil pressure, battery
voltage,
engine coolant temperature, and fuel
level"
and if we turn it over we should hear
that music
on the other side
so this is our four track quadruple
speed dubbing copy
of the Lincoln Continental tape and now
I'll give you some direct hookup
comparisons
of what the original tape sounds like
versus what our quadruple speed dubbing
copy of it sounds like
"the bar graph indicates the approximate
level of remaining fuel
while the digital gauge states the
approximate amount in gallons
or liters if the metric readout is
selected" ... "the bar
graph indicates the approximate level of
remaining fuel
while the digital gauge states the
approximate amount in gallons
or liters if the metric readout is
selected"
to check if this thing actually does
copy tapes in
four times the normal speed
I have this tape here "90 Minutes with
Arthur Fiedler"
so with this quadruple speed dubbing
this should take
only around 22-1/2 minutes to
copy
because it'll be copying it twice the
normal speed
and it'll be copying both sides at the
same time
so it's 10 o'clock right now. I'm going to
put this tape in here
and put in a 90 minute blank tape
and I have it all set to go for high
speed
4-track dubbing
and here we go -- started at
10 o'clock and 50 seconds
and we're dubbing the tape... yeah, it's a
little squeaky
so at around 10:23 it should be done
copying. OK, that's
it -- it just stopped on the playback side
and even though the blank tape I was
recording it onto
still has a little bit left you can see
it did stop
so we'll end up with a little bit of
blank tape
on the end of that but not much, and it is
10:23
just as I expected so it did copy
this tape
four times as fast, if it recorded both
sides
you can see it's at the end of side one
so
I'll turn off the dubbing mode and start side
two
and we should hear the second side of
the tape playing
yeah it's a squeaky tape but it's from
the '70s
and indeed "The Entertainer" is the first
song
on the second side of the tape so it did
copy
both sides of the tape
the one disadvantage of copying both
sides of the tape at the same time
is that whereas copying the second side
would naturally
wind it back to the beginning of the
first side when it reaches the end
in this case because it only required
one pass of the entire tape to copy both
sides
it's now at the end of side one and
you'll need to rewind it to get back to
the beginning
this is a pretty basic deck with
mechanical piano key controls
but it does have Dolby B and C noise
reduction
and support for playback and recording
of chrome and metal tapes
as far as how well this thing records
normally
here's a test recording I made on this
Radio Shack High Definition
Type II high bias advanced cobalt ferric
tape
using Dolby C noise reduction
like I said this deck does not have auto
reverse
but it does have what the manual calls
continuous play
that's where you can put in two tapes
and press play on both of them
and when the first tape reaches the end
it will automatically start playing the
next tape
one odd thing is that the playback-only
deck also has an erase head although
it's not used for anything
the manual calls it a dummy head. Also
you cannot press
play when there's no tape in the deck
there's a little sensor here which
detects when the tape is inserted and
then
allows you to press the button but you
notice it still did not
move the tape heads up into position
because the power is not turned on yet
when I apply power
you'll see that it actually has a motor
assisted mechanism
which smoothly engages the heads so that
makes it a little bit more advanced than
you might expect
however there is no auto stop for
rewinding or
fast forwarding there's only auto stop
for
playback with this tension trigger here
on the back it has
line input and output jacks as well as
microphone inputs
which is a feature that was starting to
disappear from tape decks around this
time in the late 1980s
it was custom manufactured in China for
Radio Shack
and it has a date code of January 1989
the listed specifications are not very
impressive
especially in regards to frequency
response but they're typical for an
entry-level cassette deck of this era
the wow and flutter is rated at 0.15
percent WRMS
and that is accurate according to my
test tape
the left side deck is measuring around
0.12% to 0.13%
WRMS and the right side recording deck
is actually slightly better
coming in around 0.11%
WRMS. I was wondering who actually
manufactured this for Radio Shack
and unfortunately looking inside doesn't
really give us any clues
because the circuit board says Realistic
right on it
along with the model number SCT-85
and I don't know if this CAD means
anything other than they used computer
aided design
to create the layout of the circuit
board. The mechanisms look like they are
made by
Tanashin except the flywheels are quite
a bit larger than what they're using
these days
and the motors were made by Mabuchi
the belts are all original
and still good. I did not need to replace
any of them
and the Dolby noise reduction chip was
made by Sony
as for why this four track quadruple
speed dubbing feature never really
became
popular I can think of several reasons
first is simply the extra expense
you can see in the original catalog that
a very similar model
with all the same features except
without the four track dubbing
cost $20 less and if you also
didn't need Dolby C
noise reduction you can get this model
for $50 less. Also the ability
to copy both sides of the tape at the
same time
is not really as convenient as it might
sound
because most music albums, at least back
when this was introduced
were around 40 to 45 minutes in length
so a very popular thing to do was to
take a 90 minute blank tape
and put one entire album on each side of
the tape
such as this one which has Graham
Parker's "Squeezing Out Sparks"
on the A side and the J. Geils Band
"Freeze Frame"
album on the B side. But if you use this
4-track dubbing feature, instead of one
complete album
on each side of the tape you would end
up with only half of each album
on each side of the tape and by 1992
when this model was discontinued instead
of copying music
onto cassettes from other cassettes most
people were copying music onto cassettes
from CDs. Also this model may not be the
most reliable
because this is actually the second one
of these that I purchased
with the intention of making this video
about it. The first one had hardly any
audio coming out of one of the channels
even after cleaning the heads and the
record/playback switch
and adjusting the playback level
calibration trimmers so I ended up
sending that one back
and getting this one instead which
thankfully is in fully working condition
nonetheless I enjoy trying out audio
equipment with
rare and unusual features and this
certainly falls into that category