@@paulstubbs7678 Really? There are very odd selections but at some point, even Paul McCartney's Let Them In, no less, is played. It plays for like 8-9 seconds, does everything under 10 seconds go under the radar?
*Update:* The BA-823s are all gone, but eBay seller "dsings14u" has several new old stock BA-806s for sale. That model has a mono amplifier, but the cassette decks in it are still stereo, so with the line output mod I showed, you can get stereo out of it.
it fits in with the equipment, all it needs is the line at the bottom of the frame and it would be a vhs tape playing. its nostalgic in a way to see this quality.
Thank you for never saying "all right, guys" or "ok, guys" or "all right" or "ok" at the beginning of every take like basically every other youtuber in the world does.
I do tend to start a scene by saying "so" or "now". But in my defense, my videos are entirely unscripted, and it's a challenge to operate a video camera, operate a piece of equipment you're demonstrating, think of what to say about it, and actually say it, all at the same time.
@@vwestlife Please never change the way you do them. You ALWAYS respect continutity. And I can't tell your videos are unscripted, because there is never a "uhm"
I love how you've managed to save and share so many of those radio station jingles and stuff. It oddly makes me really nostalgic despite not ever really listening to the radio. Every time you use one to show off hardware it makes me smile.
"Finally, the satisfaction of using a VCR combined with the enjoyment of listening to an audio cassette!" - marketing, if this was sold as a consumer unit
Wow! What an awesome find! Your so lucky! By the way, I bought the "Pyle PT-649D Dual Cassette Deck" & have had it for about a month. I absolutely love it! Does what it's supposed to do & sounds just fine doing it! The company must've seen your video on why new machines sound like crap & fixed the problem. 👍🏻
I have heard of TOA, my primary school had a portable meeting amplifier with a cassette deck in it that was made by TOA. It was mostly used in the music room for students to practice their singing, it was also used at some school assemblies. I've also seen TOA outdoor horn speakers in various places.
Sounds nice, and seems to be working perfectly. We had TOA wall amplifiers in several of our large meeting rooms at NASA (GSFC), when I worked there years ago. Nothing fancy, but reliable, and completely usable gear.
I have both an XLR cable and an adapter to make this work it's called wire cutters and wire strippers. It is actually quite common for XLR to be terminated in screw terminals or euro blocks for for installed equipment. for wires or fork terminals. That's quite an interesting machine!
I especially liked the nod to “You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile” at 19:14, specifically the “who cares what they’re wearing on Main Street or Seville row” lyric in the original.
We built this cassette deck… we built this cassette deck with Ten™️ components! As always, top notch job showcasing new old stock at its finest. Robust thing, huh?
I suppose specialty music venues, stores, etc might not have wanted mediocre sound quality even for “just” background music. Especially given the nice specs, adjustability of motors, and remote controls. Nice ceramic adjustment tool btw.
Yep! I think so too! However, your comment made me imagine some smaller businesses running their background music off of consumer tape decks and tapes bought from a record shop, like how I've seen some businesses around me run their digital signages off of consumer TVs and/or PCs, and that one time I went to a restaurant that ran their background music off of a Spotify account on the free plan with all the adverts in between songs.
@@kbhasi Spotify free plan - margins are tight for restaurants right now. Some are still recovering from C-Vid and worker shortages. Gotta economize where they can!😉 I certainly remember restaurants and stores back in my "yoof" just running a local radio station for their on-site background tunes.
@@lawrenceh1405 Yep, I remember that a KFC at the ground floor of the same building as a private school I attended played something like Class 95 FM or Power 98 FM (prior to their format split years later) through their speakers. It's been years since I've visited that particular location, but I think they shut off their music system some years ago and uninstalled it (but probably left the ceiling speakers installed). (Edit: they remodelled a few years ago from what I can tell looking at photos on Google Maps, and probably had turned off their music system) Besides that, I've been to some other small businesses that play radio over the music system.
TOA was a brand name I used to see frequently on PA horn speakers back when I was a kid. I remember seeing amplifiers with the same brand name also within public address audio systems. It was almost a fetish I had in my younger days trying to discover anything audio tech related in every place my parents dragged me to, from supermarkets and shops to auditoriums and theatres. TOA featured quite often in these little expeditions.
This is cool, I like it. I remember when I worked retail back in the 1990s we had a sound system with a single well auto-reverse cassette deck and we only played the company tape when we knew the "big boss" was coming for a visit, otherwise we played our own music tapes.
In the country where i live (Malaysia), my college also uses equipment made by TOA for public announcements as well as for the audio system in the auditorium. Apparently my college isn’t the only one that uses TOA products, it is also widely used in schools, community centres and malls. Even my local train station uses them as well. It proves that Japanese made products are trusted for it’s reliability for years to come.
Actually the TOA in South East Asia are not always made in Japan. All their entry level products were (and still are) made in Indonesia. I knew one of the TOA factory owners in Indonesia. Too bad he passed away last year :(
The last of the Japanese audio companies? All the 'HiFi' ones seem to have closed down with their brands being taken up by various crap suppliers who have no hope in generating a good name for themselves.
I am very surprised that after 30 years sitting in a box that it worked! I used to do a lot of work with TOA products back in the 90's thru the early 2000's. Mostly mixer/amp units. The biggest problems I ran into were the muting relays would get oxidized and created lots of intermittent issues. Easily fixed with a business card and some Deoxid. They made some good products. I have a whole bunch of TOA modules kicking around that would plug in the back. Thanks for the video!
The second song sure sounds a lot like Starship's "We built this city" A song that I have loathed since I first heard it on the radio on the schoolbus in highschool.
I used to have a pair of loudspeakers made by Toa! Very common in Cuba in theaters and open stages and mostly professional audio! I had a pair of toa horn speaker you could hear from haft a mile away! Very reliable japanese audio brand!! Great video by the way!!
Used plenty of TOA gear in the 90s at church mostly. Seemed high quality and designed to last. Though looking at one of the other commenters this may have declined in recent years
True, have two of them.. they were the old "A" series models MK-II or something like that and they have a really good sound quality and are built like a tank and almost never powered down. But newer models were good also but it sounds tinny to me.
What a wonderful music team, I feel like a child watching your videos and remembering my adolescence, here to Argentina the shipping costs a small fortune, with the inflation that my country suffers
Wow, the "radio gets results" jingle at 13:13 unlocked a long-dormant memory. One of our local stations played that jingle every day for years in the late 90s/early 2000s. I had completely forgotten about that.
Thank you for another informative and entertaining review. What a find! I still have over 500 cassettes, mostly recorded with Dolby C on Maxell chrome and TDK metal tapes in the 80's-90's mostly with a Yamaha KX-650 3 head deck (1990 vintage) that died years ago, and to which I listen now, on the Yamaha's JVC KD-VR320 (1985 vintage) predecessor, which I'd passed on to my then-girlfriend (before we married). I was so pleased to hear the opening bars of your test tape thinking it must be from Kitchener -Waterloo, Ontario, home of the world's second-largest annual Oktoberfest. Canada's 'polka king', Walter Ostanek, who often visits from St. Catherines (near Niagara Falls), frequently performs that song. He's our equivalent of Frankie Yankovic. I enjoy your posts. Cheers.
@@DavidSusiloUnscripted they’re a high end electronics company, they’re meant for businesses and religious organizations, our synagogue used their speakers and recording equipment for events!
@@jamesslick4790 yeah, it wasn’t a consumer brand, they were made for B2B, but they made really good sound equipment! I wish there was more ways to buy their products, because they don’t sell directly online! You have to get a vendor contract with the company, because their stuff cost about thousands of dollars!
That is a really upbeat rendition of "Old McDonald Had a Farm"! :-) Open the door and let him in, and Closing Time are also quite appropriate for opening and closing of a business. Nice touch.
Cool video! A company where I worked remodeled a conference room and replaced the AV stuff, I got to keep the amplifier which was a TOA product. It looked very similar to this, very well built, and had a modular system where you could plug in various cards for different types of inputs (microphone, line in, phone).
the reason for the screw terminals on the microphone is that this thing would have been installed in booth and the leads would have gone to a wall terminal that ran to a microphone XLR input in the floor of the auditorium or something like that
The NOS gear is always amazing to see. I'd love to know the story behind how this one was "forgotten". I worked in a grocery store that used consumer gear for store music, and it was horrible when would it would flake out. It was in a locked office, and we'd have to listen to the same song on repeat for an entire shift, which is basically torture.
Surprisingly great quality - the line out mod is superb too. Really impressive stuff. As for the songs - pretty sure we've got New York New York and We Built This City soundalikes.
Never have this one before. This one was a background music system like Muzak, Seeburg, 3M and others, and it was made for industrial use like the Califone and Audiotronics for their cassette recorders and cassette players for educational, school and classroom use.
I thought the name sounded familiar, and then I realized two old amps I found in the trash container at work a few months back were also made by TOA - their VP-1120. A real pair of lead weights they were for sure to drag home, not sure if they were used by the Luxor company at the end before they closed up shop here in my town, or if the amps belonged to some other company’s audio system that moved in after. (I work at a company in the old Luxor building)
@@csstp yup, there isn’t much left to indicate Luxor was here in the building anymore except the name - Luxorcenter, the guard building where you had to sign in and that had the video surveillance was just torn down a few months ago, I was allowed to dig through what was left in the old guard room. Took home the intercom with two reel-to-reel era answering machines, and a old coaxial video crt monitor etc. :)
Regarding the song guessing: I was getting vibes of New York / Lady Is A Tramp & We Built This City On Rock & Roll. Just saying! Plus it looked like no belts were required - so long lasting and robust too! A very nice device indeed! Quality sound, components and performance it seems!📼
This looks like a system I had in my Suoermarket in the 90s or before ...we would get a new tape every week with plenty of ADs and annoying background music ...but we were specifically told not to use our own tapes ..when store store was open.....these things were well used and took a lot of damage only really lasting 6 months or less...ahh the good old days..
My guess is that employees weren't allowed to load in their own cassettes and had to use those provided by the chain because of corporate policies and/or the music having been licenced.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen another cassette deck that loaded tapes the same way a car’s tape player does; this is a first for me. That alternate playback sequence feature is really slick. Couple that with another unit or two and you’d have a pretty varied radio station playlist sans the computer. I’d be tempted to get one just for that purpose, since I have boxes of tapes that are just collecting dust after being digitized. At least then I’d be able to put them to good use again.
Excellent equipment with solid performance! Even though the slot loading cassette decks may seem low end, when done correctly and with quality components, it sounds as good as those new CD things. Nice find, always cool to get it complete. I’m sure that even with daily usage, it’ll still work without a problem!
Cool ! It would be fun to have one of these, wire it into the PA system, and play cassette tapes of Mall Musak for that real true 1970s department store sound ! :-)
The only achilles heel of that unit is the Sanyo STK4151 Hybrid audio amp they're known for failure. Finding a real one can be a chore as most of the ones you'll find online are counterfeit. You'll probably be ok for intermittent home use though. They were very common place and pretty much every manufacturer used them back in the day. I replaced a ton of STK modules in CRT projection TVs as they were used as convergence amplifiers.
@@rwdplz1 Yeah they made a series of multi rail voltage regulators too some specifically for VCRs. I remember one on an early 80s Hitachi VCR (linear power supply) the heat sink on the VR got so hot in normal operation you could practically fry an egg on it.
STK's have a bad reputation of breaking, but it is because equipment manufacturers push them to their limits of power supply voltages (or put them on a tiny heatsink). One time a friend came with a Technichs compact stereo and he broke the STK, and it was obvioisly pushed to the limits. When I put a new one, I rewired the power transformer to a less voltage output winding, and he has never again been able to break the STK again (but he also didn't notice the slightly less output power).
While you were demonstrating the playback order AND how it would "toss" to the other deck when one tape is ejected, My thought was "Hey, you could run a low budget radio station with this..." Then you said it! LOL.
Nice unit. Though one can't help wondering if it's much of a step up from a front loading dual auto reverse deck, which had the advantage of easier access for head cleaning - arguably the number one maintenance task on a tape deck. But TOA made good kit, even if the mechs weren't technically their own. NEAL were another making solid industrial audio units.
I've heard of them as I have a few of their wireless microphones, one is from the mid/early 80's, all are decently built and the oldest of them gets 30hrs of battery life from 3 x AAA (no 9V batteries here!), even the slightly later system only uses 1 x AA for 10hrs which is pretty good, plus the older receivers can be powered by the mains or DC. You need to get the TOA MR-8T, an 8! track compact cassette recorded, doubt they sold many so must be pretty rare. TOA are generally regarded as a quality manufacturer making pretty bullet proof audio installation gear, so not surprised this still works fine, they even once made an impressive large digital mixing console the ix-9000.
He had to find that closing time song on tape, cue it all up, make the aligator clip connections, ground it at he appropriate time... Why does that bring me so much joy and how does he know it will???
It's not "It had to be you", it's "It couldn't be you" This is an awesome unit, and I'm tempted to see if I can get the 800 model as my main tape deck since my walkmans are dead and I've no motivation to fix them currently.
I appreciate your tape Deck videos. I've been thinking about picking one up as I have my dad's old cassette collection tucked away and I was thinking about giving them a listen. My sister got his vinyls ☹️
I work/worked on a lot of TOA equipment for repairs. they are very rugged. their later series of conventional loading cassette decks and their cd players (yes they made cd players) were just rebadged units built for them by Tascam.
if a tape deck met the q specs of a (japanese) car manufacturer, you can be sure the design is mature, reliable and working under extreme conditions, e.g. after bad handling during car assembly. Car manufacturers use to claim $$$ compensations if a line has to be halted or cars sorted to a rework track "due to parts failure". and such equipment has to work at least for 3 years when used for daily commute, either in the alaska or south of italy, without causing warranty claims above a defined threshold... otherwise the carstereo manufacturer will have to pay compensations the car company as well.
(SHHH!! Don't tell them the SECRET!!) 😉 Seriously, tho... I've become a big fan of TOA's D-line over the past year or so. They marketed these as "Electronic Music Mixers" with a couple of expansions such as the D-4E expander for the main unit, the D-4. But it was the D-3 that really grabbed me. You get, in 1U, a 4 stereo or mono input per channel, an AUX send/return, direct outs per channel, and great, thoughtful interface design. I snagged one last year, put it in as the summer for this shortwave-driven setup I'm planning to (hopefully!) use live as part of my rig. To make a long story short, it was pure serendipity. For live electronic performance, these are so easy to work with sonically that I dove back into eBay and snarfed two more for summing duties with 3-channel insert matrix voodoo that lets you drop these effortlessly into eight mono mixer channels. Oh yeah...these things also do NOT need an insert Y; they're designed so that all you need are a bunch of bog-standard 1/4" TRS cables. The signal return is set up automatically in the unit, and it works with any standard channel insert. That's not a TOA product this time...but something from another installed audio firm: Biamp. The Advantage AM is what I'm on here. It has only ONE flaw, and that's the fact that powering it requires proprietary rules to be followed... either you have the base-level mixer and it supplies DC to the AM via the main 27V supply, or you can hunt down an Advantage 12V supply as the power source for using the AM alone. Or in my case, you use one Advantage 12V supply to feed DC to two AMs, or maybe a single AM that sends the DC from one device to another 12V-only Advantage unit. Oh...did I mention that each AUX send on these also has its own insert?.Yeah, you can go nuts with the AMs. Damn shame that there's no present-day equivalent devices on this level...plus Biamp likes to kick "legacy" gear to the curb and pretend it never existed. Which, of course, is pretty annoying until you stumble across full instructions AND schematics for every Advantage-series device, all bundled up for DL on Biamp's site. Nifty! Fact is, there's a PILE of "contractor audio" gear out there...brands like Symetrix, Rane, et al have serious latent mojo factors. My studio has a bunch, from Biamp's MI days spring reverbs, to dynamics control of all sorts from Symetrix, Rane for EQs and parallel FX work, and even some proto-gear like cut EQs and notch filters from Rauland (a precursor to Biamp, in fact)...and my beloved spectral masking noise gen from Muzak itself! Contractor audio...if you know what you're looking for/at, it's ALL got massive "abuse potential".
Man, I miss the days when stuff was built better than it had to be. PS., I really liked the audio samples of "Begin Disseminating the Information" and "We Constructed This Town".
If I was in a store and they started playing that e-i-e-i-o song, I would leave my cart of frozen goods right where I was and would leave! 🤣 That's awesome you were able to find something NIB like that! Thank you for having it on, the logic was interesting
They turned the worst song from the 80s and managed to make it worse. I'd prefer the MIDI version someone would have embedded on their Geocities website.
TOA makes the good stuff! If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on any of their Japan-produced products, it’s nigh impossible to kill them. The Taiwan stuff is pretty good, too. The thing that strikes me: it looks like they repurposed the chassis from the MK2 version of the 900 Series amps for this deck. The MK2 900 Series amps were also released in 1992, replacing those honkin’ huge silver 900 amps with the analog VU meter on the front panel. This is a new piece of equipment to me, so I don’t know if they would’ve made a version of this that used a variant of the old silver amp housing.
the music tape selection of VWestlife never stops to amaze me!
The extremes one has to go to to avoid the copyright hounds
@@paulstubbs7678 Really? There are very odd selections but at some point, even Paul McCartney's Let Them In, no less, is played. It plays for like 8-9 seconds, does everything under 10 seconds go under the radar?
@@BilisNegra I think that's a sound alike
@@themoviedealers Nope, it's the real Wings deal. It's featured at 9:03 with the timer function test.
When you have a collection as big as his, it's hard not to play something interesting
*Update:* The BA-823s are all gone, but eBay seller "dsings14u" has several new old stock BA-806s for sale. That model has a mono amplifier, but the cassette decks in it are still stereo, so with the line output mod I showed, you can get stereo out of it.
It's fine.
it fits in with the equipment, all it needs is the line at the bottom of the frame and it would be a vhs tape playing.
its nostalgic in a way to see this quality.
Perfect. Makes it period appropriate.
Looked great to me.
Yes
Thank you for never saying "all right, guys" or "ok, guys" or "all right" or "ok" at the beginning of every take like basically every other youtuber in the world does.
I do tend to start a scene by saying "so" or "now". But in my defense, my videos are entirely unscripted, and it's a challenge to operate a video camera, operate a piece of equipment you're demonstrating, think of what to say about it, and actually say it, all at the same time.
@@vwestlife Please never change the way you do them. You ALWAYS respect continutity. And I can't tell your videos are unscripted, because there is never a "uhm"
@@nickdiba7512 I edit those out. 🙂
The Oompha is strong with this one 😂👍🏻gruss got 😊
I love how you've managed to save and share so many of those radio station jingles and stuff. It oddly makes me really nostalgic despite not ever really listening to the radio. Every time you use one to show off hardware it makes me smile.
I feel like this odd-tech just spawns in. There's more than I would EVER expect.
Indeed. Tone controls on the back, nothing less!
@@jmi5969 To stop the sales assistants playing with the controls, like I suspect happens in the local BP Filling Station and M&S Simply Food.
Dat gibt schon kurioses Zeug!
"Finally, the satisfaction of using a VCR combined with the enjoyment of listening to an audio cassette!" - marketing, if this was sold as a consumer unit
Wow! What an awesome find! Your so lucky! By the way, I bought the "Pyle PT-649D Dual Cassette Deck" & have had it for about a month. I absolutely love it! Does what it's supposed to do & sounds just fine doing it! The company must've seen your video on why new machines sound like crap & fixed the problem. 👍🏻
I have heard of TOA, my primary school had a portable meeting amplifier with a cassette deck in it that was made by TOA. It was mostly used in the music room for students to practice their singing, it was also used at some school assemblies. I've also seen TOA outdoor horn speakers in various places.
That is a really good find. It has a lot of features most cassette players don't have. Pretty cool that you still had new looking cassettes.
Sounds nice, and seems to be working perfectly. We had TOA wall amplifiers in several of our large meeting rooms at NASA (GSFC), when I worked there years ago. Nothing fancy, but reliable, and completely usable gear.
I have both an XLR cable and an adapter to make this work it's called wire cutters and wire strippers.
It is actually quite common for XLR to be terminated in screw terminals or euro blocks for for installed equipment. for wires or fork terminals. That's quite an interesting machine!
Really digging that replacement track version of "New York, New York"
I especially liked the nod to “You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile” at 19:14, specifically the “who cares what they’re wearing on Main Street or Seville row” lyric in the original.
We built this cassette deck… we built this cassette deck with Ten™️ components!
As always, top notch job showcasing new old stock at its finest. Robust thing, huh?
I suppose specialty music venues, stores, etc might not have wanted mediocre sound quality even for “just” background music. Especially given the nice specs, adjustability of motors, and remote controls.
Nice ceramic adjustment tool btw.
Yep! I think so too!
However, your comment made me imagine some smaller businesses running their background music off of consumer tape decks and tapes bought from a record shop, like how I've seen some businesses around me run their digital signages off of consumer TVs and/or PCs, and that one time I went to a restaurant that ran their background music off of a Spotify account on the free plan with all the adverts in between songs.
@@kbhasi Spotify free plan - margins are tight for restaurants right now. Some are still recovering from C-Vid and worker shortages. Gotta economize where they can!😉 I certainly remember restaurants and stores back in my "yoof" just running a local radio station for their on-site background tunes.
@@lawrenceh1405
Yep, I remember that a KFC at the ground floor of the same building as a private school I attended played something like Class 95 FM or Power 98 FM (prior to their format split years later) through their speakers. It's been years since I've visited that particular location, but I think they shut off their music system some years ago and uninstalled it (but probably left the ceiling speakers installed).
(Edit: they remodelled a few years ago from what I can tell looking at photos on Google Maps, and probably had turned off their music system)
Besides that, I've been to some other small businesses that play radio over the music system.
I'd definitely much rather have a business playing a local radio station with ads than a free Spotify stream!
"Mad Man Muntz approach...".you really dated yourself. I worked with his son in San Francisco in the 70s at a car stereo importer. How fun!
TOA was a brand name I used to see frequently on PA horn speakers back when I was a kid. I remember seeing amplifiers with the same brand name also within public address audio systems. It was almost a fetish I had in my younger days trying to discover anything audio tech related in every place my parents dragged me to, from supermarkets and shops to auditoriums and theatres. TOA featured quite often in these little expeditions.
This is cool, I like it. I remember when I worked retail back in the 1990s we had a sound system with a single well auto-reverse cassette deck and we only played the company tape when we knew the "big boss" was coming for a visit, otherwise we played our own music tapes.
I love when retro enthusiasts make use of professional equipment in the home.
In the country where i live (Malaysia), my college also uses equipment made by TOA for public announcements as well as for the audio system in the auditorium. Apparently my college isn’t the only one that uses TOA products, it is also widely used in schools, community centres and malls. Even my local train station uses them as well. It proves that Japanese made products are trusted for it’s reliability for years to come.
Actually the TOA in South East Asia are not always made in Japan. All their entry level products were (and still are) made in Indonesia. I knew one of the TOA factory owners in Indonesia. Too bad he passed away last year :(
The last of the Japanese audio companies? All the 'HiFi' ones seem to have closed down with their brands being taken up by various crap suppliers who have no hope in generating a good name for themselves.
@@paulstubbs7678 Technics and Yamaha are still going strong.
Here in Indonesia too, TOA is a popular brand for PA purpose. You can found in almost every village in indonesia
@@goldenlotus9613 Even TOA is Synonymous with PA System (Amplifiers, Mic & Speakers) and Megaphones
I am very surprised that after 30 years sitting in a box that it worked! I used to do a lot of work with TOA products back in the 90's thru the early 2000's. Mostly mixer/amp units. The biggest problems I ran into were the muting relays would get oxidized and created lots of intermittent issues. Easily fixed with a business card and some Deoxid. They made some good products. I have a whole bunch of TOA modules kicking around that would plug in the back. Thanks for the video!
Amazing how well build it is. This days only stones could last.
The second song sure sounds a lot like Starship's "We built this city" A song that I have loathed since I first heard it on the radio on the schoolbus in highschool.
I used to have a pair of loudspeakers made by Toa! Very common in Cuba in theaters and open stages and mostly professional audio! I had a pair of toa horn speaker you could hear from haft a mile away! Very reliable japanese audio brand!! Great video by the way!!
It was obviously made for a very specific purpose, but adding a few more features would have really made this thing a LOT more versatile.
Used plenty of TOA gear in the 90s at church mostly. Seemed high quality and designed to last. Though looking at one of the other commenters this may have declined in recent years
True, have two of them.. they were the old "A" series models MK-II or something like that and they have a really good sound quality and are built like a tank and almost never powered down. But newer models were good also but it sounds tinny to me.
What a wonderful music team, I feel like a child watching your videos and remembering my adolescence, here to Argentina the shipping costs a small fortune, with the inflation that my country suffers
Wow, the "radio gets results" jingle at 13:13 unlocked a long-dormant memory. One of our local stations played that jingle every day for years in the late 90s/early 2000s. I had completely forgotten about that.
Thank you for another informative and entertaining review. What a find! I still have over 500 cassettes, mostly recorded with Dolby C on Maxell chrome and TDK metal tapes in the 80's-90's mostly with a Yamaha KX-650 3 head deck (1990 vintage) that died years ago, and to which I listen now, on the Yamaha's JVC KD-VR320 (1985 vintage) predecessor, which I'd passed on to my then-girlfriend (before we married). I was so pleased to hear the opening bars of your test tape thinking it must be from Kitchener -Waterloo, Ontario, home of the world's second-largest annual Oktoberfest. Canada's 'polka king', Walter Ostanek, who often visits from St. Catherines (near Niagara Falls), frequently performs that song. He's our equivalent of Frankie Yankovic. I enjoy your posts. Cheers.
TOA was really popular for audiophiles in the music production industry, it’s cool they made a dual auto reverse tape deck!
Wait, what? I’ve been using TOA on and off for 40 years and never knew that.
@@DavidSusiloUnscripted they’re a high end electronics company, they’re meant for businesses and religious organizations, our synagogue used their speakers and recording equipment for events!
@@Markimark151 Yep. It's an unknown brand to "consumers" but they have very high quality equipment!
@@jamesslick4790 yeah, it wasn’t a consumer brand, they were made for B2B, but they made really good sound equipment! I wish there was more ways to buy their products, because they don’t sell directly online! You have to get a vendor contract with the company, because their stuff cost about thousands of dollars!
@@Markimark151 Yeah, true. as a "consumer" (or even small business) you have to "score" on the secondary market.
What a cool and interesting tape deck/amp....never saw anything like it. Great video!
That is a really upbeat rendition of "Old McDonald Had a Farm"! :-)
Open the door and let him in, and Closing Time are also quite appropriate for opening and closing of a business. Nice touch.
Techmoan is little envious now ;)
The clips of the songs make me happy. TOA so popular in my country since the 80s.
Cool video! A company where I worked remodeled a conference room and replaced the AV stuff, I got to keep the amplifier which was a TOA product. It looked very similar to this, very well built, and had a modular system where you could plug in various cards for different types of inputs (microphone, line in, phone).
I had a small TOA PA amp (powered mixer) for years when I was an indie musician. It was great.
I installed a TOA amp at a school last month. I expect it to last for 30+ years. TOA is built to last.
the reason for the screw terminals on the microphone is that this thing would have been installed in booth and the leads would have gone to a wall terminal that ran to a microphone XLR input in the floor of the auditorium or something like that
Impressive little machine! I always see TOA stuff for cheap locally, I wondered if it was any good. Now I know it's worth a shot
Someone said the old machines were quality like this, the new TOA is not the same.
TOA always was know as the cheap stuff in the musical instrument PA world. Cheap crap, mostly.
The NOS gear is always amazing to see. I'd love to know the story behind how this one was "forgotten". I worked in a grocery store that used consumer gear for store music, and it was horrible when would it would flake out. It was in a locked office, and we'd have to listen to the same song on repeat for an entire shift, which is basically torture.
Surprisingly great quality - the line out mod is superb too. Really impressive stuff.
As for the songs - pretty sure we've got New York New York and We Built This City soundalikes.
finally a new tape deck which isnt rubbish at all... the service friendly design also is Genius
it’s new old stock
Excellent machine and video, long live cassette 😊🇬🇧
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
Built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
Love those genu-ine 80s hits. Reminds me of that Simpsons line: "they said they changed it just enough so they don't have to pay us"
Never have this one before. This one was a background music system like Muzak, Seeburg, 3M and others, and it was made for industrial use like the Califone and Audiotronics for their cassette recorders and cassette players for educational, school and classroom use.
This deck actually sounds really good, one of the better ones I've seen on your channel. Combined with the modular layout it's a real winner!
TOA makes high-quality, and easy to "field" service gear.
Sounds superb and great on the wow and flutter figures better than a lot of budget decks.
I thought the name sounded familiar, and then I realized two old amps I found in the trash container at work a few months back were also made by TOA - their VP-1120.
A real pair of lead weights they were for sure to drag home, not sure if they were used by the Luxor company at the end before they closed up shop here in my town, or if the amps belonged to some other company’s audio system that moved in after. (I work at a company in the old Luxor building)
@@csstp yup, there isn’t much left to indicate Luxor was here in the building anymore except the name - Luxorcenter, the guard building where you had to sign in and that had the video surveillance was just torn down a few months ago, I was allowed to dig through what was left in the old guard room. Took home the intercom with two reel-to-reel era answering machines, and a old coaxial video crt monitor etc. :)
Regarding the song guessing: I was getting vibes of New York / Lady Is A Tramp & We Built This City On Rock & Roll. Just saying! Plus it looked like no belts were required - so long lasting and robust too! A very nice device indeed! Quality sound, components and performance it seems!📼
Yes! That’s it! I got the same vibes. I love We Built This City from Starship! Great jam
This looks like a system I had in my Suoermarket in the 90s or before ...we would get a new tape every week with plenty of ADs and annoying background music ...but we were specifically told not to use our own tapes ..when store store was open.....these things were well used and took a lot of damage only really lasting 6 months or less...ahh the good old days..
My guess is that employees weren't allowed to load in their own cassettes and had to use those provided by the chain because of corporate policies and/or the music having been licenced.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen another cassette deck that loaded tapes the same way a car’s tape player does; this is a first for me.
That alternate playback sequence feature is really slick. Couple that with another unit or two and you’d have a pretty varied radio station playlist sans the computer. I’d be tempted to get one just for that purpose, since I have boxes of tapes that are just collecting dust after being digitized. At least then I’d be able to put them to good use again.
Every time I see those LAZER cassettes, it sends me back to the 1980s when I used them on my TI 99/4A.
Excellent equipment with solid performance! Even though the slot loading cassette decks may seem low end, when done correctly and with quality components, it sounds as good as those new CD things. Nice find, always cool to get it complete. I’m sure that even with daily usage, it’ll still work without a problem!
CDs won't catch on anyways
@@mikehall3976 Hell, 30 years from now, I predict they'll still be listening to LP records.
Cool ! It would be fun to have one of these, wire it into the PA system, and play cassette tapes of Mall Musak for that real true 1970s department store sound ! :-)
The only achilles heel of that unit is the Sanyo STK4151 Hybrid audio amp they're known for failure. Finding a real one can be a chore as most of the ones you'll find online are counterfeit. You'll probably be ok for intermittent home use though.
They were very common place and pretty much every manufacturer used them back in the day. I replaced a ton of STK modules in CRT projection TVs as they were used as convergence amplifiers.
Yeah, I replaced a lot of those.
I've replaced several in VCR's, too.
@@rwdplz1 Yeah they made a series of multi rail voltage regulators too some specifically for VCRs.
I remember one on an early 80s Hitachi VCR (linear power supply) the heat sink on the VR got so hot in normal operation you could practically fry an egg on it.
STK's have a bad reputation of breaking, but it is because equipment manufacturers push them to their limits of power supply voltages (or put them on a tiny heatsink).
One time a friend came with a Technichs compact stereo and he broke the STK, and it was obvioisly pushed to the limits.
When I put a new one, I rewired the power transformer to a less voltage output winding, and he has never again been able to break the STK again (but he also didn't notice the slightly less output power).
Back when TOA was good quality, made in Japan. Now all bashed out in China...
Yep. I used to have some TOA utility/line mixers and the build and sound quality was top-notch.
Yep, their 70/100v PA system has a good sound quality. Not sure on the newer model but sounds kinda tinny to me.
Marty said Japan makes the good stuff.
Not all Chinese made stuff is crap
@@SockyNoob MOST is 💩
What a cool little unit, nice find!
I listened on my Sennheiser HD600's and those direct line out recordings sounded absolutely fantastic!
My first introduction to TOA was when I was in grade school doing school announcements and audio setup.
Techmoan would get randy with one of these, nice unit.
While you were demonstrating the playback order AND how it would "toss" to the other deck when one tape is ejected, My thought was "Hey, you could run a low budget radio station with this..." Then you said it! LOL.
Nice unit. Though one can't help wondering if it's much of a step up from a front loading dual auto reverse deck, which had the advantage of easier access for head cleaning - arguably the number one maintenance task on a tape deck. But TOA made good kit, even if the mechs weren't technically their own. NEAL were another making solid industrial audio units.
I love an unexpected Jeff Laurence voiceover.
I've heard of them as I have a few of their wireless microphones, one is from the mid/early 80's, all are decently built and the oldest of them gets 30hrs of battery life from 3 x AAA (no 9V batteries here!), even the slightly later system only uses 1 x AA for 10hrs which is pretty good, plus the older receivers can be powered by the mains or DC.
You need to get the TOA MR-8T, an 8! track compact cassette recorded, doubt they sold many so must be pretty rare.
TOA are generally regarded as a quality manufacturer making pretty bullet proof audio installation gear, so not surprised this still works fine, they even once made an impressive large digital mixing console the ix-9000.
@9:00 I noticed the coy selection of songs. Nice touch!
That made me smile 😊
18:38 I want to be a part of it, New Jersey, New Jersey! 😀
Music fades : Attention shoppers! Right now in our baking department, wax paper is 3 cents off! Hurray before this amazing special is over! 😂
II's a bit surprising to see stereo and Dolby in a BGM machine.
Like the choice of songs for the timer demonstration!
It's TOA of course it still works. I've got a couple of 100v amplifiers at work that have been running continuously for around 23 years..
He had to find that closing time song on tape, cue it all up, make the aligator clip connections, ground it at he appropriate time... Why does that bring me so much joy and how does he know it will???
I actually made my own recording of it on tape just for the video.
@@vwestlife It made me unreasonably giddy! Thank you for the effort!
19:39 that uplifting corporate music hits different
Now I'm curious about what the title of "Legally Distinct from We Built this City" actually is.
They call it "Gold Medal Performance".
This deck looks very high quality.
Great content as always. I really enjoy your channel
Was this video recorded with a analog camera? Love the "soft" image, nice for the eyes!
It's not "It had to be you", it's "It couldn't be you"
This is an awesome unit, and I'm tempted to see if I can get the 800 model as my main tape deck since my walkmans are dead and I've no motivation to fix them currently.
I appreciate your tape Deck videos. I've been thinking about picking one up as I have my dad's old cassette collection tucked away and I was thinking about giving them a listen. My sister got his vinyls ☹️
This was so satisfying! Didn't know the first song and it took me over a minute to figure out starship - we built this city! Love your videos!
Wow, they really jammed a lot of features into these decks. Amazing.
I work/worked on a lot of TOA equipment for repairs. they are very rugged. their later series of conventional loading cassette decks and their cd players (yes they made cd players) were just rebadged units built for them by Tascam.
if a tape deck met the q specs of a (japanese) car manufacturer, you can be sure the design is mature, reliable and working under extreme conditions, e.g. after bad handling during car assembly. Car manufacturers use to claim $$$ compensations if a line has to be halted or cars sorted to a rework track "due to parts failure". and such equipment has to work at least for 3 years when used for daily commute, either in the alaska or south of italy, without causing warranty claims above a defined threshold... otherwise the carstereo manufacturer will have to pay compensations the car company as well.
(SHHH!! Don't tell them the SECRET!!) 😉
Seriously, tho... I've become a big fan of TOA's D-line over the past year or so. They marketed these as "Electronic Music Mixers" with a couple of expansions such as the D-4E expander for the main unit, the D-4. But it was the D-3 that really grabbed me. You get, in 1U, a 4 stereo or mono input per channel, an AUX send/return, direct outs per channel, and great, thoughtful interface design. I snagged one last year, put it in as the summer for this shortwave-driven setup I'm planning to (hopefully!) use live as part of my rig.
To make a long story short, it was pure serendipity. For live electronic performance, these are so easy to work with sonically that I dove back into eBay and snarfed two more for summing duties with 3-channel insert matrix voodoo that lets you drop these effortlessly into eight mono mixer channels. Oh yeah...these things also do NOT need an insert Y; they're designed so that all you need are a bunch of bog-standard 1/4" TRS cables. The signal return is set up automatically in the unit, and it works with any standard channel insert.
That's not a TOA product this time...but something from another installed audio firm: Biamp. The Advantage AM is what I'm on here. It has only ONE flaw, and that's the fact that powering it requires proprietary rules to be followed... either you have the base-level mixer and it supplies DC to the AM via the main 27V supply, or you can hunt down an Advantage 12V supply as the power source for using the AM alone. Or in my case, you use one Advantage 12V supply to feed DC to two AMs, or maybe a single AM that sends the DC from one device to another 12V-only Advantage unit.
Oh...did I mention that each AUX send on these also has its own insert?.Yeah, you can go nuts with the AMs. Damn shame that there's no present-day equivalent devices on this level...plus Biamp likes to kick "legacy" gear to the curb and pretend it never existed. Which, of course, is pretty annoying until you stumble across full instructions AND schematics for every Advantage-series device, all bundled up for DL on Biamp's site. Nifty!
Fact is, there's a PILE of "contractor audio" gear out there...brands like Symetrix, Rane, et al have serious latent mojo factors. My studio has a bunch, from Biamp's MI days spring reverbs, to dynamics control of all sorts from Symetrix, Rane for EQs and parallel FX work, and even some proto-gear like cut EQs and notch filters from Rauland (a precursor to Biamp, in fact)...and my beloved spectral masking noise gen from Muzak itself! Contractor audio...if you know what you're looking for/at, it's ALL got massive "abuse potential".
3:40 Thanks... I'm going to have that stuck in my head all day now!
The Cassette player is cool!
Der Kassettenspieler ist cool!
Man, I miss the days when stuff was built better than it had to be.
PS., I really liked the audio samples of "Begin Disseminating the Information" and "We Constructed This Town".
Looks like TOA Electronics, Inc. has an office in Secaucus, NJ..what an interesting unit, I'm glad your TOA wasn't DOA
Oh man, I havent heard that "radio gets results" jingle in a long time!
WOW! Nice deal on that machine. The added plus is the built in Amplifier.
This was a phenomenal score.
Your test tape is what I imagine 80's German shopping music to be. Just the thing for buying schnitzel und a nice weisswurst.
A couple of good jams in this! Flirting with that content match, huh? ;)
i love your accent and the way how you explain every detail
Oh nice a new Video Kevin this tape deck looks neat I want one now lol
Very cool. This is an item most of us have never seen or even thought existed. Thank you!
If I was in a store and they started playing that e-i-e-i-o song, I would leave my cart of frozen goods right where I was and would leave! 🤣
That's awesome you were able to find something NIB like that! Thank you for having it on, the logic was interesting
Great find! Thanks for sharing.
19:39 Copyright-free We Built This City sounds absolutely cursed.
*we built this city on tofu dregs*
"We Constructed This Metropolis" by Spaceship
They turned the worst song from the 80s and managed to make it worse. I'd prefer the MIDI version someone would have embedded on their Geocities website.
@@joejoe3011 knocking "Oh I Get It's" song "Confront My Person" put of the #1 spot on the countdown (you will read this in Kasem's voice).
@@F40PH-2CAT "Zoiks, Scoob!" (Just kidding!).
TOA makes the good stuff! If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on any of their Japan-produced products, it’s nigh impossible to kill them. The Taiwan stuff is pretty good, too.
The thing that strikes me: it looks like they repurposed the chassis from the MK2 version of the 900 Series amps for this deck. The MK2 900 Series amps were also released in 1992, replacing those honkin’ huge silver 900 amps with the analog VU meter on the front panel. This is a new piece of equipment to me, so I don’t know if they would’ve made a version of this that used a variant of the old silver amp housing.
It is too early in the morning for that kind of music! :D 3:40
lmao. Wake up the neighbors, play it LOUD!
Man, what a great deal!