PIONEER CT-S800 Reference Casste Deck (1988), replacing my dual-well CT-W910R

hey all! thinks to a kind enable by my good friend STUWEE, i am now in the final stages of procuring my dream cassette deck, the 1988 Laser Amorphous Head equipped PIONEER CT-S800!! today or tomorrow i'll be paying the seller, TAPEHEADS member Dimitar. i should have it by early next week if not sooner. until then, some stock photos:













This post has been edited by MacGyver on April 01, 2009 09:39 am

Congrats it looks just great.

Now the dancing gif girl in your sig makes perfect sense! Too F'n cool, Ditimar is a great guy! I'm very happy for you John! Closer to the perfect Pioneer system one day at a time, hey, remember when it was just the receiver and not much else, that was only a couple of years ago. You're zoomin' up, I'm happy to have be of assistance....Enabling is my middle name

yep, thanks so very much, stu. back in 2003, the VSX-D1S was the ONLY halfway serious piece of gear i had as yet ever owned. better, in fact, than ANYTHING my parents had ever bought!! and it wasn't until 2007 that i started adding more serious components, starting with the 1986 TOTL DENON DCD-1500 CDP with rosewood panels, that was my very first high end CD player. as such, i'll never let that go, even though it will likely never be an active member of the system again. i suppose it's, to me, what that SAE C-101 cassette deck is to you, stu. anyway, after that, with the PIONEER PD-M6 CDP i started my way towards an all-PIONEER dream system, which, a couple years later, is near completion. i have since replaced the M6 with the REFERENCE M90X, and have handed the M6 down to my 15 year old little sister! she described the M50 that it replaced as "mono-sounding" by comparison. i'll make an audiophile out of her yet!! anyway, i suppose i should thank my lucky stars, stu, as i suppose that is just about as fast as anyone ever dared dreamed to put an ideal setup together. anyway, stu, i paid Dimitar last night. he says he'll get her out FRI. or SAT. also, he was kind enough to email me PDFs of the O.M AND S.M.!! i just finished banging out hard copies this morn! i should have the deck well before this time next week! i'll keep you posted, stuwster...

This post has been edited by MacGyver on April 02, 2009 09:03 am

You're Sooooo lucky that Teac came along when it did, otherwise the CT-S800 would've been Mine!!

let's just shake hands on our both coming out like a couple of fat cats, huh, stuwster? i'll let you know how this deck handles both versions of the TDK MA-XG; please render us privy on how your TEAC fares with those storied cassette blanks...

This post has been edited by MacGyver on April 02, 2009 06:41 pm

Congrats. I had one that had melted belts that I stupidly sold. It is built like a tank and feels like an amplifier.

WOW. how the devil did that happen? this 1988 model isn't THAT old yet. PIONEER must've used cheap belts, as the CT-W910R that this CT-S800 will be replacing is only a year newer, and it's belts are quite sound. hell, even my very first deck, a 1988 BOTL CT-980W, is still operationally sound, even after the HUNDREDS of cassettes i made on it for me and my truck driver ex-father between 1999-2004. i guess i can thank my lucky stars that i'm getting an example with BRAND NEW BELTS...

This post has been edited by MacGyver on April 03, 2009 08:31 am

let's just shake hands on our both coming out like a couple of fat cats, huh, stuwster? i'll let you know how this deck handles both versions of the TDK MA-XG; please render us privy on how your TEAC fares with those storied cassette blanks...

*shakes hands with John* Done! I'll do a quick hijak since you asked.

The Teac is just about the finest piece of machinery I've had the pleasure of laying my grubby hands on! Everything is just so smoooooth and delisioso, yummy! So far I hear a great difference in tapes, the Maxell XL-II, and XL-II-S seem to be the warmest, most analog sounding for making my nastier sounding CD's playable. The vaulted MA-XG's are a tad clinical....I've not mastered the twiddley L/R bias and level controls I really need a great pair of 'cans to get the best out of a tape. mY set-up isn't for near field monitoring

It does just what it's supposed to, make an exact copy of an LP, warm up the Digititist just right! I've got some plans to try some live recordings coming up this month, we have Tucson's Folk Fest being held where I work.

boy am a glad i only have ONE BIAS control to deal with on the CT-S800, then! it should be easy enough to master. the S800 manual states that as you are monitoring a recording, you can tune the BIAS by ear:


turning the knob clockwise: BIAS increase, less high freqs, less distortion.

turning the knob counterclockwise: BIAS decrease, more high freqs, more distortion.


i was able to wrest SUPERB performance from both versions of MA-XG on my lowly CT-W910R dual-well. i am confedant that i'll be able to do the same with the CT-S800...