The almost perfect bang-for-the-buck back deck in '93. I bought it new and has been my cd player ever since. Never needed repair or calibration ever. Yes there were more desirable players like the stable-platter Pioneer, but the cost rose exponentially, and to say the truth, all the advances in DACs and sampling rates were but experiments back then so all players sounded the same, differing only in features.

This puppy had a lot of features; you could program tracks to play in any given order or combination of selections, automatically pause at the beginning of each track, display song/album duration -partial or total- in four different manners and control the volume of the outcoming signal in 2 db increments (other brands had 1 db increments, which doubled as total volume control for the whole system)

With most of my almost-all vintage stereo components, I never felt the need to upgrade. I play lots of vinyl and concert dvds these days, reducing cd playing to an average of 4 a month, which may explain this device's extraordinary lifespan.

THE one thing I could not stand is it didn't have any anti-vibration built-in system, so it would skip when played loud (later solved by 4 gel feet)

Every record store in town had one of these playin g from dusk to dawn, and ownwers changed it every 2 years !! It had a lot of functions that would sync it to a Technics cassette deck for recording, which seemed very hi-tech at the time. The day I listened to my first cd I disconnected my 2 cassette decks and sold them together with all the tapes.

Not worth buying it used since most units should be malfunctioning or about to die by now unless it has had very little use like mine, and I ain't sellin' !! Nowadays you can't buy any decent dedicated cd player for less than U$ 350 in the states. This thing retailed for like half that figure back then. People are just playing their cds on their dvd players these days. I'd really rather have a standalone unit since I don't use flac, mp3 or anything like that. ALMOST PERFECT and I still love and pamper it.

Durable, stable, good set of features, very silent mechanics.

No digital outpur, some features only available with the remote.

I have this unit for more than 10 years now, never once opened the cover, never cleaned the lens etc. It still works perfectly. Changed 3 amps, 4 sets of speakers, etc. etc. but PG440 still works. The only missing thing is it hasn't got a digital output but I believe that is quite normal for its age.

I have a Technics SL-PG440 (recently renamed the SL-PG450 with a smallerremote). It is a single disc unit with 32 times oversampling, a 12 db level control on the remote,index keys for the first 10 tracks, a time fade, a programmable synchro link for dubbing, auto cue, peak search, and of course skip and search buttons. The peak search allows you to find ~the loudest spot on the cd you are dubbing in order to set your record level lower than the peak of the tape deck. Unit is very durable except the rca jacks in back tend to wear out,
but if your are mechanically inclined you can solder them better than the
original connection and they won't come loose again. The unit is very hard
(i.e. pick it up about an inch high and drop it if you want it to skip)It has a duralbe/quiet loading tray and has never scrathed one of my CD's. I
recommend this unit for permanent hookups such as churches radio stations,
hi-fi home stereos, or high quality dubbing needs. My rating is four stars
because the rca output jacks should be more durable.