As a rule I work hard to ignore this guys $4000 machines that have never sold for more than 1K on TM but this is just a piss-take www.trademe.co.nz/electronics-photography/home-audio/cassette-decks/listing-3047263653.htm?rsqid=9fb33dc73c01493da9c8805b9eba20a2-002

Ridiculous price on a mediocre machine and his too and fro-ing with the "extras"

There was some pisstakery with a Nak 680ZX too, different seller but in a similar vein.

Wow, all his prices are over the top!
(Maybe TOP could be an anagram for Too Over Priced)

I see in another listing he has a "3 HEAD - SONY TC-K 770 ES" for starting $1,615.00, BIN $50 more.

I see that model is from 1991-2, and has a remote, but from his interior shots the build quality is far less than within a Sony TC-K333ESX I have here, just offline because I wanted to check the head azimuth settings & etc. - that has internal copper divisions splitting the interior in three.
(TC-K333ES is also TC-K700ES). The slightly lesser bought from new I still use, have set up in the rack, is a Sony TC-RX80ES. Easy bias adjustment, auto reverse, 2-head deck.

Then again he has a couple of Tascam 32 RTR 2-track machines starting at $2,385 ...
I accumulated 2-3 of these in various condition maybe 10-12 years ago, sold one good one for $200 or so or less, still have spares from the other(s?).
The idea of charging $315 for the fluorescent meter sub assembly is just nuts.

One thing that I do feel happy about saving was the pair of canned magnetic head signal step-up transformers, which albeit with a specific turns ratio that I can't recall, struck me as maybe being useful in an MC step-up context, and I do have a couple of MC carts needing new styli.
Sold a Supex step-up switch box when I returned to MM because I needed the cash, hoping I might be able to return to MC another day.

The astonishing thing was IMO with high end cassette decks is that they were able to about equal or better the specs of the like of Tascam 32 at 15" per second, at 1 7/8" per second, in frequency response, wow, flutter, distortion figures (at least on metal tape).

I don't use mine that often, but still have irreplaceable music from non-commercial radio shows, student like bfm or LPFM community stations like kfm.
Plus what I'd recorded from LP (MC cart days) or library CDs to also use in the Walkman I also had at the time...

The SN ratio can be pretty good on metal tape - to with guests visibly drop in a cassette, turn the volume up, walk away... they are expecting hiss, and when tremendous sound comes out some 15 secs later out of inky black silence, (OK, metal tape, maybe Dolby C but not always) it's a surprise!

Good metal tapes on a good machine can sound fantastic but back in the day I was poor so was limited to high bias/Type II tapes.

On a Nak, without NR the could sound almost as good as a metal.

I never got into the total black silence thing that many tapers craved.
I was never bothered with tape hiss, even on an all-tube system.

To these ears music from a totally silent background has a slightly un-natural quality to it, especially with classical music where the background is as much a living, breathing thing as the musicians.