Vintage cassette players are rarely seen these days. But you may be interested in old-school cassette devices if you still have cassette tapes in your house. Do you know those pretty old cassette players are not always clumsy? Some of them have features that simplify manual operation to make the cassette playing and recording smarter, and the “Auto Reverse” is a useful feature for cassette decks in the past.
What Is Auto Reverse Feature
We know that cassette tapes have side A and side B, so in early yerar users needed to take the cassette out and flip to the other side to listen to the content completely. A Cassette player that comes with auto reverse was designed to skip the manual work and it can play the other side automatically. Some cassette decks also support auto reverse recording so that people don’t need to re-insert cassette tapes to record onto the blank side.
How Does Cassette Players Auto Reverse Work?
The very original and old-fashioned auto reverse cassette players used an electronic shuttle to carry the tape and flip the cassette tape physically inside the player, and a cassette player like this is extremely rarely seen nowadays.
In later years, most auto-reverse players used multiple channel heads, capstans, and pin rollers for each direction and each side. And the latest auto reverse cassette players used a relatively simple system that the tape head could rotate 180 degrees while reversing the motor direction.
Best Auto Reverse Cassette Players
The auto reverse is one of the most convenient features of cassette players and recorders. However, there are not many available choices in 2021 since it’s already an era of Bluetooth and wireless technologies. Nevertheless, we’ve found some portable cassette players with automatic reverse that you can still buy today. Unfortunately, almost all the retro cassette tape decks and cassette boomboxes that have auto-reverse are discontinued.
Portable Auto Reverse Cassette Players in 2021
BEGROTROL Portable Auto Reverse Cassette Player
If you’re not a fan of vintage cassette players, you can save a lot of money opting for this modern auto reverse cassette player. The cassette player is very affordable, but it is versatile and it offers more functions than those old and expensive cassette player. Most importantly, you can get a brand-new product without effort and digging.
As a portable auto reverse cassette player, it plays your cassettes and you don’t need to flip tapes and it stops after playing the 2nd tape side. About the auto-reverse feature, you have two options: this cassette player also lets you manually reverse your tapes by changing the setting.
On top of that, the mini auto reverse cassette player can do many things. It is also a converter that converts old cassette tapes to MP3 and it works with CD burners as well so that you can back up your tapes and store them on your PC easily. The compact cassette player comes with a 3.5mm AUX jack, and it can be connected to regular speakers and headphones.
Retekess TR620 Cassette Player with Auto Reverse
The Retekess TR620 cassette player is a classic portable cassette player. Just like those old school cassette tape devices, it plays and records cassette tapes with built-in microphone and features an adjustable telescopic antenna for the radio.
When it comes to its auto reverse feature, the cassette player supports two playback modes. That said, you can also stop the automatic reverse in single-sided mode.
The Retekess TR620 cassette player is also extremely cheap and you can use it anywhere with 2x AA batteries. And it also allows you to use power adapter to power this cassette recorder.
Vintage Auto Reverse Cassette Player/Recorder Deck
Pioneer CT-W205R Dual-Well Auto-Reverse Cassette Deck
Although you can only find second-handed Pioneer CT-W205R on the market, it does not affect the fact that this is an excellent cassette deck for cassette lovers.
Unlike fancy recording decks, the Pioneer CT-W205R is a 100% product made for cassette tapes. It’s a dual-well cassette deck and supports auto-reverse in both decks. Moreover, the cassette deck allows you to use auto-reverse while recording. It says that the product can do “auto-reverse recording in deck 2 and rewind auto play in deck 1”. With this cassette deck, you can easily duplicate cassette tapes without sacrificing audio quality thanks to the Dolby B S-type noise reduction.
Teac AD-RW900-B CD Recorder and Auto Reverse Cassette Deck
The Teac AD-RW900-B is more than a simple cassette player. It provides a good way to record onto CDs or cassettes, so it would be a perfect fit if you also love CD besides cassettes.
The unit is equipped with Dolby B noise reduction as well and its auto reverse feature work for recording and playing both. The biggest advantage of this cassette deck is that it supports CD recording from cassette, USB, digital input, AUX, which makes this product pretty versatile. Additionally, you can do MP3/WMA/PCM recording and playing with its USB ports.
Unfortunately, this auto reverse cassette deck is not available in 2021 neither. If you wanna purchase a vintage cassette player like this, you probably need to go to second-hand stores.
Is there any auto reverse cassette player has a compact size but decent music quality? Well, some old cassette boomboxes with auto reverse may seem attractive to you. The thing is that there is not a specific auto reverse cassette boombox that stands out, but we did find some Sony cassette boomboxes with auto reverse on eBay.
