Anyone into cassettes?

I have a 90's vintage Yahama cassette deck on my rig that I use on occasion. Sounds better than ever these days in that my setup is the best I have ever had as well by far.

I have not recorded any new casettes since the 80's though when I dabbled with hifi VHS as well. I use my tape players mainly for old tapes I recorded back then and in college in the 70's. These are blasts from my past and a lot of fun to listen to still. SOund is not tech perfect, especially noise levels and high end, but still very enjoyable, more than ever. I have "ripped" a few of these to digital as well and play these now on my music server rather than via the tape decks. That enables me to do fast and easy a/b comparisons in sound quality between those tracks that I recorded originally to cassette on my college system years ago (using an Aiwa AD6550 cassette deck I bought while working at Tech HiFi back then) and tracks ripped from other sources. Lots of fun.

Mid-late 70's AIWA cassette decks were very good performers with good build quality and looked great. The AD6550 I had specifically was gorgeous and stacked up quite well against Tandberg in a/b tests back then. I was a poo college student and could not afford Tandberg so settled on the Aiwa. More ergonomic for use in a dorm room as well.

Aiwa like much Japanese gear (save Nakamichi and a few others) went south fast after that targeting cheaper gear with more mass market appeal.

I gave my Aiwa deck to my wife to use in her apartment 25 years ago. SHe married me shortly after. Enough said. :^)