jldmelb wrote:

Anyway, just an idea.

You just gave my salvaged Beocord 2000 casing a new meaning in its life. The gap which accepts the cassette tape is almost as big as a standard iPod dock, drop in the iPod, close the flap and hit PLAY like you're using a regular Beocord.

And here's where the magic comes... if you can pull the track/artist information out of the iPod somehow (other docks do that as well), you can put a small LCD display in front of the face plate, fx. in place of the volume LEDs or the play/stop/rewind status LEDs, and have the artist/title info displayed on the front of your Beosystem, like it was always intended to look like that. 😁

I like!! 🤒

Beocords are a hidden gem of sound machines!

I can recall last year in thrift store suddenly in a bit of a dilemma as I noticed a very fine looking Beocord 5500. Okay the belts are most likely gone right? Something most be wrong here. I located 2 different tapes and the Beocord played them with not much trouble. The tapes were early '80s and not in that good condition.

The price were 24£ and not a scratch anywhere. Not even stack marks!

Since then I have used it as a second tapeplayer at the bottom of Beosystem 6500. It has worked with no trouble at all.

I have done alot of comparing to my Beocord 6500 but exept the 5500 look its totally the same machine.

As long as you stick with at least type 2 tapes of earlier production like pre 1994 then you have very options for great sound.

Though beocords have their merits, I do not think they should necessarily be saved as such.

Just like the old reel to reel players , how many of them are actually in dialy use?
The beocords are easily available and most of them are still in working (ok..maybe needing new belts) order.
I still have a beocord 7000 and there is one in my ouverture.... none of them get to see more use than 2 to 3 times a year.

I like the ipod dock concept and played with the idea of doing just that, a year or two ago, but realized I hardly use ipods anymore.... guess I just grew out of them. My wife still uses one when working out, but it's by no means our main source of music.

We still listen to cd's and use a mac mini and beoport as a media server to my beosystem making an ipod based system completely redundant. Therefore I see more merits with building a small size multimedia pc (like an atom +ion motherboard) or mac mini into the casing of a beocord. Would at least be up to date and fit in neatly into the rest of my B&O system. 

My mac mini is 4 yrs old and I might buy a new one when a decent upgrade will be available. Maybe then, I will dismantle my tape deck and build the mac mini with  SSD and the beoport right in..... besides the beo 4,  I'll even have the ipod touch as 2-way remote giving me all the info I need. 

I have had my Beocord 1600 for nearly a year I guess. It works fine and the only thing wrong is the counter but I have not looked into it yet. It came with 3 tapes and two of those were fully recorded with the light music of the times the Beocord 1600 were new. Not my style I'm afraid so I'm not in the habit of using it.

Many Beocord owners are mostly not aware how good they can sound. I got my Beocord 9000 back in 2003 by chance. It looked great and played well too but recording? I never really did so when at the same time discovering that my cassete collection where mostly type 1 and 2 and most of it recorded on the former stereo before I ever had B&O. It did not really sound good.

I got a TDK MA-XG90 from ebay.co.uk. It took me a while before I even recorded on it as the tape price is very high. The new reissue Metallica LP's came in double format so 2 songs for each side. Ride the Lightning went on the tape and some Garage days tracks to fill out side B.

I never could understand Dolby so never used it but tried Dolby C while recording and the end result? I do not have a working Beogram around for months but the sound of that TDK tape is making very well up for it. 

As long as you use decent tapes type 2 at least pre '95 you can get incredible sounds out of a Beocord. You have to look as tape prices can and will get more up with time.

It's not just a Beocord 9000 that is the best. My currently most used Beocords are the 5500 and 6500. They record just as great and plays just as well.

Lets get some more debate going here. Are you using a Beocord and if not why not? 

I currently have a Beocord 5500, sounds great with some brand new TDK SA-90 tapes i bought from the UK. When I bought it 15 months ago, I thought that cassette recorders were too old-fashioned, though I listen a lot to vinyl.

In the summer of last year, I bought the LP which became my all-time favourite record: Avenged Sevenfold's Self titled record. I thought it might be cool to have it on tape because I played that record 3-4 times a day, bought some SA-90's in the supermarket for a fine price, and began recording without dolby. Sound quality was very nice though. Six months later, I re-recorded on another new SA-90 tape, with Dolby C: A lot better signal/noise ratio! Scince then, I have recorded several compilations from my LP's and iPod with extraordinary results. Sometimes, I will try to buy a Beocord 9000 to hear the difference in sound quality. My father had one, but it was unused for many years. The first time I tried to use it 3-4 years ago, it began to shed magical blue smoke...

I have the same idea to buy a Beocord 5500/6500/7000 and convert it to an iPod docking station

-Søren

I still use tape - I have a 5500 now - the 9000 was exceptional but not as convenient. It is very useful for timer recordings though Listen Again on the BBC has probably superseded it. My 9000 now has a new owner and I hope he got the MA-XG tape I sent with it! 

Friedmett wrote:

Are you using a Beocord and if not why not? 

Absolutely use them.

Love them.

Kill this thread before the secret gets out and the prices go up! 😁

Peter wrote:

My 9000 now has a new owner and I hope he got the MA-XG tape I sent with it! 

Yes he did, thank you!  And I'm looking forward to using it for something really worthwhile.

On the idea of converting a cassette compartment for an Ipod, have a look at this.  I am tempted!