Uploaded January 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Today we're looking at and listening to the Yamaha K-960. This tape deck was sold from 1981 to 1983, available in silver or black, and has soft touch electronic controls. It also has a wired remote control. Although it lacks some top-end features like 3 heads or dual capstan, in several catalogs it was the listed as the nicest cassette deck. It has a great combination of sound quality features and solid construction over the lifetime of the cassette. If you look at tape decks from the 1960s through the mid-1970s, they generally have very solid cases and big motors, but they don't have nice heads and advanced sound quality features. If you fast forward (pun intended) to the end of the cassette era in the 1990s and 2000s, the sound quality features are all there, but the cases and buttons are cheap plastic. This deck of the early 1980s is a perfect balance, at a time before CDs were available and manufacturers were competing on sound quality. One of the key sound quality features here is DBX, a noise reduction competitor to Dolby that lost out in the marketplace due to lack of backwards compatibility. By the time I purchased my first component cassette deck, Dolby B and C noise reduction had become a de facto standard. However, the dynamic range expansion that dbx provides is impressive.
0:00 Intro and Audio Sample
1:03 Design and Style
2:27 Wired Remote Control
3:00 Why did Dolby beat dbx?
4:26 A Look Inside and Repairs
8:05 Conclusion
Today we're looking at and listening to the Yamaha K-960. This tape deck was sold from 1981 to 1983, available in silver or black, and has soft touch electronic controls. It also has a wired remote control. Although it lacks some top-end features like 3 heads or dual capstan, in several catalogs it was the listed as the nicest cassette deck. It has a great combination of sound quality features and solid construction over the lifetime of the cassette. If you look at tape decks from the 1960s through the mid-1970s, they generally have very solid cases and big motors, but they don't have nice heads and advanced sound quality features. If you fast forward (pun intended) to the end of the cassette era in the 1990s and 2000s, the sound quality features are all there, but the cases and buttons are cheap plastic. This deck of the early 1980s is a perfect balance, at a time before CDs were available and manufacturers were competing on sound quality. One of the key sound quality features here is DBX, a noise reduction competitor to Dolby that lost out in the marketplace due to lack of backwards compatibility. By the time I purchased my first component cassette deck, Dolby B and C noise reduction had become a de facto standard. However, the dynamic range expansion that dbx provides is impressive.
0:00 Intro and Audio Sample
1:03 Design and Style
2:27 Wired Remote Control
3:00 Why did Dolby beat dbx?
4:26 A Look Inside and Repairs
8:05 Conclusion
