Sony TC-161SD

"Deluxe Dolbyized Stereo Cassette Deck"

It may look flimsy-ish and dated but the 161SD not only has a F&F head, a built-in (switchable) limiter but also a Closed-Loop Dual Capstan and a low-noise FET preamp.

The quadrilingual canadian catalog I have (french, english, spanish and german) mainly spends time on the new F&F feature which is "very necessary for recording and reproduction of matrixed 4-channel signals such as SQ".

But the closed-loop dual capstan made for a strong feature in 1972 and the 161SD only needed a third head to compete with the later TC-177SD.
And better audio boards because, specs-wise, it does show its vintage... but there is pretty serious hardware under the hood here !


The 161SD was a TC-2250SD in Japan, replaced by the fairly similar TC-2260SD in june 1974.