MARANTZ PMD221 Portable Cassete Recorder (19/20XX?)

Joined
May 26, 2011
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408
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IRRIGON, OR. U.S.
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#1
found this fairly well-made piece at that local rummage sale i attend, held every month or three, paid about a dollar or so.

it's well made, ant it seems to work perfectly. only issue is that it is MONO only, but is definitely Hi-Fi MONO, even out of the internal speaker.

no DRAGON-killer by any measure, but probably among the highest-performance Monophonic "Dictation" cassette recorders ever made, and a worthy addition to my Compact Cassette collection, PIONEER or otherwise...











 
Joined
May 26, 2011
Messages
408
Location
IRRIGON, OR. U.S.
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#4
"AGAPE HOUSE" in HERMISTON, OR. they hold a "name your price" rummage sale about ten times per year or so;

http://agapehousehermiston.org/

they've been at it for the last decade at least, and once or twice a year on average i get lucky.

one of the first i ever attended, about ten years back, i found a sealed five-pack of 1989/1990 MAXELL XL-IIS, for example...
 
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orange

Veteran and General Yakker
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Jul 6, 2010
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17,704
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Broken beyond repair but highly affable
#5
Well that's pretty cool! The Salvation Army thrift store here closed in the last year and Idaho Youth Ranch is under fire for poor management and apparently being more harm than good for the kids they are supposed to be helping :(.

Starting to miss Sally Ann.
 
Joined
May 26, 2011
Messages
408
Location
IRRIGON, OR. U.S.
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#7
It was used for recording telephone wire taps too.
standard CIA issue then, may i presume?

Never leave batteries in this deck.
why? is this deck prone to draining it's cells in short order and causing premature leakage?


also, before anyone gets carried away on notions that this was some intelligence field officer's personal dictation recorder;

this deck was found, -in a plain jane SAMSONITE suitcase filled with foam sheets cut to fit the deck, it's AC power supply, and a couple of vanilla TDK TYPE-I's-
on a pallet loaded with unremarkable 70's-era P.A./sound reinforcement gear and a box full of old issues of some Square Dancing magazine,
so i can only presume that this deck was part of some local small-time DJ's personal equipment profile
for some sort of square dancing affair that they had been DJing for at least as far back as the early-1970's...
 
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rtp_burnsville

Chief Journeyman
Joined
May 1, 2011
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899
Location
Savage, MN
#10
I have the stereo version of this recorder and it did a very good job recording.... The mono version were the defacto practice recorder for many musicians in the day. The variable speed control allowed one to slow the music down and easily pick out riffs and harmonies.

Robert
 
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