Upon taking the TEAC 450 cassette deck from its carton an extreme feeling of delight and anticipation literally takes over. The 450 is an exquisite machine to look at. And just from the touch, you know it’s going to sound fantastic. Having received an advance copy of Paul Williams’ new album on a cassette, I immediately placed it on this machine and laid back and listened and listened some more. The reproduction was fantastic. I had just heard the test pressing, So the album itself was very fresh.'But for some reason hearing it on the 450 the music was more intimate. The music seemed to grow within the transistors and naturally flow from that little box to my ears.

To review this piece of equipment adequately* though, I wanted the answer to one basic question: what happens to the TEAC 450 after months of wear and tear? To find out, I approached Tom Spaulding at Warehouse Sound in San Luis Obispo, California. The equipment he sells must meet stringent standards before he will market it in his catalog.

I went to see Tom’s 450, which had taken up the life of the professional. Spaulding had originally brought the Teac deck, along with several others, to his home to write copy for the catalog. The others were taken back to the Warehouse, but he kept the 450 with him. It had been used on the road recording concerts that Warehouse Sound Professional Products Division has been involved with. It has been used at outdoor concerts in oatfields, smokey clubs and high school gyms. It’s been ravaged by weather and people, hauled around like road equipment and basically had the shit beaten out of it.

This 450 was an excellent candidate for our “10,000 mile performance test.” It had been doing its jobs and still was. It sounded good, the dials were easy to read. They are in plain view, so when placing the deck on a shelf the VU Meters are very easily discernible, plus they are large and well lit, as well as accurate.

The 450 is a professional looking machine that performs like one. Many decks are very plastic looking, and look more like toys. (Though major face lifts are underway, as in the Pioneer Deck.) Besides the Dolby Noise Reduction Unit, other accessories include: an LED peak indicator for recording purposes, a tape motion monitor — a light bar that indicates the movement of the tape (this device also automatically shuts the deck off at the end of the tape), and a three position bias switch and three position equalization switch which allows you to tailor the machine’s characteristics to those of the tape you are playing.

Tom had a couple reservations. The non-functional dust cover that fits over the top of the deck is not hinged and just sort of gets in the way. The tape compartment is protected, so the dust cover is not necessary but you pay for it anyway and may try to find a use for it. Try covering a tray of brownies with it. It’s just about the right size. Also the tape timer switch, which enables you to hook the deck up to an external timer, doesn’t seem to have much use. It could even be confusing for someone not very familiar with the machine.

But is that enough? No. The quickest and most accurate way to check out a tape deck is with the A/B Comparison Test. The test consists of duplicating a record on tape and then cuing up both the record and the tape to the beginning of the music (at exactly the same place). When they’re in synch, switch back and forth from tape to record and your ear can judge the quality of the recording.

Using this system, the Teac scored impressively on signal noise ratio, though not quite as well as Teac claims, a fact that may be due to the six months wear and tear the test machine had previously undergone. Its ranking on frequency response was, in the words of Tom Spaulding, “very good indeed.” The Teac 450 is a machine well worth checking out.