It has all the necessary needs of a very good cassette player, like 3-heads, bias adjustments, Dolby HX-PRO, Dolby B, C and S, auto calibration, single -unidirectional mechanism and it sounds clear and warm.

A lot of plastic on the mechanism, but Sony prioritized their budget towards the sound quality of this deck.

Requiero informacion de una Decks de cassettes que graba 3 o mas cassettes por minuto (s) para reproducir mensajes Cristianos.-

Great features period!

Plastic plastic plastic!The plastic build of the decks face and feet feel flimsy.... This deck must be protected.

GET ONE OF THESE ON EBAY! This deck is loaded with amazing features, and at an incredibly affordable price. I won't dive too deep, but the features are amazing!!! 3 heads, bias control, dolby b,c, and s ams, ceramic cassette stabilizer, great peak metering... This deck is power! I use this deck for analog sculpting within my digital recordings, and man - this deck performs! this deck takes a huge dump on Denon's comparable stuff.... Why go Nakamichi? This deck is affordable, it's newer than comparable naks...

Similar Products Used:

denon, nakamichi,

Good value for the money ($350 list) for a 3 head cassette deck with fine bias tuning. 5 year warranty.

Light construction (many plastic parts - they don't make them like they used to).

I purchased the TC-KA1ESA almost 2 years ago and have been pleased with the quality of the playback and it's recordings (I trade live concert tapes and do a lot of taping). I searched for a 3 head deck with fine bias tuning for under $300. I found limited choices since companies seem more concerned with manufacturing dual well decks with as many 'features' they can 'cram' onto a deck at a certain price point than building a quality deck that simply plays and records well. I compared the Sony to other 3 head decks (similiarly priced units such as Denon DRM-740) and felt it sounded a bit better than the rest.

Similiar to VCRs these days, this deck is mostly manufactured out of plastic parts to reach it's price point, so it seems slight. As with all of the Sony ES line, it somes with a 5 year warranty which provides a good deal of comfort (especially compared to the usual 1 to 2 year warranties for other tape decks).

Similar Products Used:

Teac A-170S, Marantz SD1000

Excellent value, great quality recordings, well arranged controls

Primarilly plastic construction

As with another of the reviewers, I purchased this deck quite a while ago for heavy use in the trading of live concerts. In the 3 years now that I've had it, this deck has served me very well, even with the huge load I put on it. The sound quality of the deck is superb, and it is easy to manually clean. I agree that the only real drawback of this deck is the fact that it is constructed mostly of plastic, but definately worth the price!

In today's market of feature loaded, dual-well, auto-reversing crap that is out there, it is nice that there are still a few solid tape decks being built for those of us that aren't 100% digital (or are like me and still have a lot of old stuff that they still want to listen to!)

Natural Sound: Neutral & Transparent

No remote

With good tape and source material this little puppy sounds excellent: natural, neutral, detailed, transparent & extremely low noise. Sounds more full and natural than my Sony MD Walkman recorder, but not as nice for editing. The music search and real time counter are groovin.' The fast forward and rewind rip. The build is a little light, but for so little bread I'm very happy.

Similar Products Used:

Various Sony & Onkyo decks

Neutral sound in record and playback, especially with Dolby S and B. Low noise. Reliable. 5-year warrantee.

Dolby C does not match my old Nakamichi recordings

My old Nakamichi BX-2 and CR2A tape decks both wore out after many years of use. It was the digital age, but I still had twenty years of recordings on cassettes: recordings from sound boards at concerts, from old "Jazz Alive" shows on NPR, and from rare LPs. And my wife and I have cassette players in our cars.
I did not want to spend too much money, because I was budgeting for a CD recorder. So, after some research, I purchased a Sony TC-KA1ES. The 5-year warrantee figured significantly in my decision.
Overall, I have been quite pleased. This unit has produced the most quiet and neutral non-digital cassette recordings I have ever made, especially with Dolby S. Playback of recordings with no noise reduction, with Dolby B and with Dolby S are about as good as I have heard in their respective categories.
I only run into problems with some Dolby C tapes made on my old Nakamichis (perhaps this is a Nakamichi Dolby C quirk). Sometimes I can restore almost all of the original frequency range and sense of dynamics with equalization, but there have been a few tapes that I have discarded in frustration.
I make all my new recordings with my Pioneer PDR-609 cd recorder, which makes recordings that sound the same to me as their source. But I still use my Sony TC-KA1ES to make tapes for the cars, and I am in the process of copying my cassettes to CDs.
The Sony has proved to be durable and reliable; I have not had to use the warrantee. I recommend this machine to the diminishing number of people who have need of cassettes. For new recordings, as good as the TC-KA1ES is, I think that almost any new cd recorder would be much better, and CD-Rs are cheaper.

Similar Products Used:

Nakamichi BX-2 and CR2A, JVC

Excellent sound quality; relatively inexpensive; 5-yr warranty

Like most MD, CD & DVD decks, too much plastic

With the digital age and
audio salesmen nipping at my coattails, I was persuaded to replace
my dying cassette deck in my living room system with a Sony MD
recorder. Bad choice. The slightly harsh but cumulatively
irritating timbre and lack of universality (few of my friends or
students have MD decks) resulted in a cheap sale to a neighborhood
teenager. So, with a little hesitation and heckling from an audio
salesman, I purchased a Sony TC-KA1ESA cassette deck.

I rarely listen to cassettes at
home but, instead, use this deck to record CD, DAT and LP for
Walkman and auto use. Tapes are especially useful in cars because
thieves prefer CDs and CD players (my car's CD deck and CDs are
long gone). Heck, leave tapes on your dashboard and you may scare
thieves away.

 

Features

As the bottom of Sony's ES line,
the TC-KA1ESA gives you the important basics and nothing more: 3
heads, 2 motors, music scan, memory stop, auto tape selection,
bias tuning, two-speed fast forward, balance, Dolby B, C, S &
HX, headphone jack, and a real time counter. There is no auto
reverse to muck up the sound. It responds to Sony system remotes
but doesn't include a remote control.

The transport buttons are hard
plastic. A rubber coating would have felt better and provided a
sure grip. Unfortunately, the transport makes loud clicking sounds
when stopping and starting (my Tascams are relatively quiet). Some
serious torque emanates from the 2 DC motors resulting in a very
zippy rewind and fast forward. I wish the cassette well was
backlit but that's a feature you pay extra for in the top end
TC-KA3ESA. If you want to record live materials you'll need a
mixing board and/or a cable adapter. This puppy has only RCA
I/O.

The brightly backlit meters are of
the bar graph type and provide a pretty light show. They're
calibrated like most consumer decks. i.e., you can pin the meters
wide open and not get much distortion. Zero dB on my Tascam
122MKIII seems to be about the same as signal strength as +6 on
the Sony! Consequently, it would be hard for a novice to screw up
a recording.

Construction

Contrary to its Sony ES pedigree,
this deck is plasticky and light (like most VCR, DVD, MD decks),
sporting a thin metal case and a metal-look plastic front panel.
The fit and finish is of good quality, and it is certainly a
handsome and unobtrusive unit if you like the black "professional"
gear look. The cassette door features a ceramic cassette holder
with a Sorbothane stabilizer to help resist resonance. The hard
plastic feet could use dampening material to control resonance as
well (you can add your own). This unit was manufactured in
Malaysia.

RFI
Resistant!

I was originally concerned with
the plastic front panel because I live one block from a
transmitting tower. Suckie, huh? Yes, RFI is in my phones and any
cheap, unshielded audio component or musical instrument.
Amazingly, Sony must have included excellent shielding on the
inside because there is no audible RFI. I returned two more
expensive decks due to RFI problems.

Tape
Calibration

Setting the tape bias is easy and
takes about 30 seconds with the built-in tone generator. I
sometimes found the recommended settings slightly bright and CD
like for my taste and, consequently, rolled off the highs during
calibration. I prefer the "generic" uncalibrated setting with Sony
tapes (Maxell chrome needs slight tuning). Could it be that Sony
engineers have impaired upper frequency hearing and hence boost
the highs? My old Sony CD deck and MDR-7506 "professional"
headphones sounded so bright it hurt my teeth. The good news here
is that tape bias is easily adjusted to taste. Of course, if you
want good sound, be sure to use top-quality type II (chrome) or IV
(metal) tape.

Sound
Quality

Fortunately, Sony saved the ES
quality for the sonics. There are decks that sound a little better
but not this side of $300. It sounds almost as good as my $1000
Tascam 122MKIII, a heavy weight three-head deck holed up in my
studio rack.

I mainly listen to pitch and noise
revealing recordings--solo classical guitar, lute and
harpsichord--so it's not unusual for cassette decks (and
turntables) to flunk Aural Training 101. However, this analog dodo
immediately offered up fine sonic qualities--sonic qualities which
include neutrality, a three dimensional soundstage, a near CD
level of background quiet and excellent pitch stability. With
Dolby S noise reduction engaged it was virtually impossible to
distinguish between the source and recording. I could hear a very
slight difference by playing the source and recording
simultaneously and switching between the two while listening with
Sennheiser 580 headphones. Listening through the main speakers I
was not able to hear any apparent differences (I equalized
volume). I was not as pleased with Dolby C as it sounds slightly
muted (Dolby B sounds better).

I recorded source material from
CD, DAT and LP on to Maxell XLII-S (type II), Maxell MX (type IV,
metal) and Sony UX-ES (type II) with excellent results. All the
tapes tracked well in my other machines, including a Sony 20th
Anniversary Walkman (the stainless steel one), Pioneer auto deck,
Tascam 103 and Tascam 122MKIII.

Warranty

This deck inspires consumer
confidence with the ES line's 5 year warranty. Plus, Sony
maintains its own repair facilities here in Honolulu. Sony's
similarly featured and priced deck, the TC-KE500S (they share the
same manual), has an uninspiring one-year warranty.

Final
Comments

Megabuck marketing teams and audio
pundits have labeled analog audio as inferior to digital in order
to move new digital product. The public eats these lies up and
worships all that is digital. No wonder it's increasingly
difficult to find quality audio cassette decks. Sure, there are
plenty of expensive professional decks available from Tascam,
Marantz and Denon, but consumer-grade, three-head decks are
disappearing. Yeah, cheap boomboxes and two-cassette well decks
are abundance, and they're part of the reason Joe Average thinks
cassettes suck compared to MD. The TC-KA1ESA is Sony's dirty
little analog secret: cheap, smooth sounding, good looking, quiet,
universal and can kick Sony MD butts any day of the
week.

Similar Products Used:

Tascam 103, 122MKIII, Yamaha KX-W602

low noise, real-time counter, bias calibration, fairly solid transport, quick ff/rw, simple controls

lightweight and flimsy chassis, lots of plastic, no speed control, mine had some serious electronic problems (see below)

THE "NEW" UNIT: This review is for the TC-KE1AESA. Mine was a floor (demo) model from Good Guys so my troubles may have been related to that (in addition to the flimsy construction). I inspected it visually in the store and it looked perfectly fine, with just a little dust and barely any fingerprints.

MY SYSTEM: Hooked this up to a Marantz 2270 with Monster Interlink 400mkII interconnects. Listening through ESS Performance Series Model 4 speakers w/ Heil AMT tweeters.

SETTING IT UP: When I got it home and hooked it up, I noticed first that the back plate flexed quite a bit when connecting the cables -- the chassis is quite flimsy. The first few times I inserted a cassette, the door would not latch with the cassette in. I pushed a little harder and it latched. After inserting and removing a cassette several times, the door began to work properly and would consistantly latch firmly. I put in a tape, checked FF/RW, and let it play all the way through both sides.

LISTENING: I put on some assorted rock music for which I also have the vinyl and/or CD for A-B comparison. The mechanism was "fairly" quiet. Sound quality was good and there was very little hiss. Dolby B recordings sounded very good on this tape deck.

RECORDING: I used the bias adjustment feature to adjust for an average quality normal position TDK tape. Made a recording from my turntable without NR and played it back. The difference between the original and the copy was subtle and there was still very low noise. Having that 3rd head to preview the tape is nice.

AFTER A COUPLE OF HOURS: I was playing back a new commercial tape and had just listened to the last song on side one. So I pressed the FF key to go to the end of the tape. The unit made a funny sound, I think I saw a spark from inside the tape well, and the display went mostly blank except for the TAPE indicator and a strange red glow. I pressed stop and it did nothing. The motor was still running. I turned the power off at the front and the motor was still running. So I unplugged it from the wall. When I restored power to the unit, it reset itself and appeared to be okay. However, it's playing about 1 or 2 percent fast.

CONCLUSION: This tape deck, while it has very nice sound and a good feature set for its price range, is not very sturdy. Plus I had some rather strange problems with mine. Your mileage may vary, though, and if this deck is working it will produce good sound. Because I got such a deal on it, I'm going to keep mine and get it fixed by Sony. However, because of the apparently low build quality, I have a feeling that this is not the last time I'll take advantage of the included 5 year warranty.

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha TD-1000, assorted older single well decks

I got this deck to replace an old Pioneer ct-f950. The sound of tapes made with the sony is in a different league from the dolby "b" pioneer. It actually is close to CD sound quality when using dolby "c" or "s". What I miss the most is not having a "peak hold" function for the meters.