26 October 2019

SONY TC-177SD (1973) - First 3 Head Cassette Deck

cassette deck

The SONY TC-177SD (TC-6150SD in Japan) was introduced in 1973 and it was the first 3 head cassette deck from Sony and probably a world first too. Assuring extraordinary sound quality are a ferrite erase head and Ferrite & Ferrite Record and Playback heads. F&F heads give excellent tape-to-head contact and wide frequency response, in addition to lasting up to 200 times longer than the standard permalloy variety. Adding to the excellent performance characteristics is the Closed-Loop Dual Capstan Tape Drive, which severely cuts down tape skewing, modulation distortion and wow and flutter. Being a product of the 70's the deck also had "surround compatibility" Through Symphase Recording, you can record 4-channel sound from an SQ or FM matrix source, and play it back through four speakers and an amplifier equipped with a 4-channel decoder. And the solenoid assited transport functions provide stable, fast and easy mode changes. Separate bias and tape select switches let you take the advantage of normal, chrome or ferri-chrome tapes. During its production years there were available two versions. The initial models had no azimuth control but later in production this was also added. With only one large motor the rewind and fast forward time was 90sec./C-60. Frequency response is 20 Hz to 20 kHz with both FeCr and CrO2 tapes. 


cassette deck

cassette deck

cassette deck

cassette deck


cassette deck