I have rejoined 1980 or was it 1982? Attached is the very cool Akai CS-MO1A cassette deck that magically appeared on my doorstep having been delivered by the little elf in the white van. In other words, the guy from FedEx. It works extremely well and sounds great, for a cassette player from the early -80s.
Unfortunately, my slightly better Technics model is been kicking the bucket for the last 20 years, and I think it is just about petrified. I decided to take a chance and go for this one.
There’s a story here, and I think I will tell it, briefly..
Back in the day I was living in one of the mid-western “I” states and knew the manager of the high-end audio store (the only one between Terre Haute and Evansville) and he was saying that they needed some updating to their store, etc. We came up with the idea of painting a 40’ x 20’ mural on the side of the building. I did not design the mural, but I would be the “assistant”. In exchange, the store would provide a rather good Akai stereo system with receiver, tape deck and turntable.
Well, we did it. The mural was quite the thing. The store was called “The Listening Post” and for some reason they concluded that a pony express rider riding across the range with a sunset in the background was appropriate for the mural. What this had to do with a listening post I do not know and am afraid to ask to this day. Besides, I was the assistant, not the artist. Well, there was a fence post with some earphones in the mural, but what do I know?
Anyway, it took about a week in the summer to do the job. We ended up with parrot-toes as we had to paint from ladders. It was the talk of the town and was quite the knock-out as we used industrial paint that had stunning color.
This model of tape deck was the one in the deal. However, when they saw the finished mural they upgraded the receiver to a much nicer model. I think it was an Onkyo, but I don’t remember for sure.
It was pretty good back in the day, and right now it sounds not bad for the era.