SonyTC-WE475 Twin Cassette Deck

As a budget cassette deck this does the job; the sound it produces is as you would expect from Sony and it records well in either automatic or manual mode.
This, though, is a functional rather than top of the range hi-fi deck: If you want to record on both decks and have a better range of adjustments the next model up ought to be considered.
It does just what I want, and no more - the ability to record from radio, CD or disc and, occassionally, to dub from tape to tape.
My only reasons for not giving 5 stars was because the Dolby switch appears, and feels, rather flimsy (although, it must be said, it works perfectly well), and because of the clunky noise when the tape reverses from one side to the other.

I have to say this is a very good cassette deck indeed.I read your other reviews before purchasing and the bad on did make me think a bit. No I have no hesitation in giving this product 5 stars. It does everything I want from it. Allright the mechanism is klunky but this has been the case with every cassette deck I have owned. As for the sound quality it's the best I have heard from my ageing cassettes. 10 out of 10 for everything.

Sitting on top of my Sony W100 twin CD deck recorder, this Sony WE475 twin cassette deck matches perfectly and looks rather more expensive than it's typical sub £150 street price. However push in a tape and the cassette door crunches worryingly into place [no silky smooth precision here, although the damped eject is fine] - that said if you touch the tape eject as you push the cassette door in, the loading can be silky smooth as well. Also the rather loud noise the unit makes spinning the heads about every time you press play is a bit alarming [I can understand now how one Amazon reviewer had a tape head shear off on his deck]. I've never owned an auto-reverse cassette deck that quite made the racket these heads do. These are undoubtedly the cassette decks weakest points. It's more than possible that the unit will prove reliable, but I wonder if it will last 12 years like my old expensive Yamaha single deck cassette recorder [although admittedly the Yamaha only got used for a few hours a month towards the end]. Another irritation for me is that this cassette deck is high on features I won't use or need, like the twin cassette decks, the auto-music search and auto-reverse play heads - and all these extra features are built-in to a tight budget. I find the tape auto-reverse a pain as it takes a while on your hands and knees to work out which side of the tape you are playing when searching for a specific track [as there's no remote control or backlight for the tape window - I have to use a torch]. For the money, I would have preferred just one better quality cassette deck and no auto-reverse [but with the demise of the tape cassette, decent HiFi cassette decks like this simply aren't manufactured anymore].

Likewise this WE475 was the smaller cousin of the Sony WE675 cassette deck that's not available in the UK and sadly appears to have been discontinued - and this 675 sibling has the features I would use, in particular the automatic bias and equalisation to set up each cassette tape individually for optimal record, and the multiplex FM filter for Dolby noise reduction when recording radio. So you are reduced to a basic 'generic' bias and equalisations for ferric, chrome and metal tapes. Granted the sibling WE675 [not this model] also has the twin record decks, a higher price and identical build quality though, none of which I actually care for. I did consider the similarly priced Pioneer CT-W208R twin cassette deck, and wonder if it is better built, but that model didn't have a headphone socket unlike this WE475, and this Sony unit perfectly matches my Sony W100 CD recorder. Despite the snazzy search and auto-reverse features, sadly this WE475 deck lacks a remote control to make best use of them. The Cassette deck comes with a detailed manual and a set of phono leads. Naturally there's no microphone or alternative input/output other than the standard twin rear phono in/outs and the front headphone socket. The mains cable is captive on the rear of the unit, which made installation awkward with my HiFi furniture as the mains plug was too big to slip through my HiFi furniture's rear cable feed hole.

In this WE475 deck the left cassette deck is replay only and the right cassette deck has an extra head for both record and replay. The WE475's user manual is a tad annoying as also it carps on about the extra features of the more expensive sibling WE675. However, I mostly want this cheap cassette deck to play my large collection of audio book cassette tapes or record selections for the car - so ultimate HiFi sound quality is pretty irrelevant - I now use my W100 CD recorder for HiFi recordings and rip to iTunes. And so far, a year on, being only used for a few hours a month this cassette deck still works fine. Hopefully with my very low rate of domestic use it will last long enough to see the compact cassette medium off into silicon heaven. In fact there very few consumer HiFi separate cassette decks [and CD recorders for that matter] in production, as the format is already all but dead, so choice is now extremely limited to a few twin cassette drive decks [that probably share the same drive mechanism].

So this Sony unit loses two stars for the dodgy tape load mechanism and noisy rotating heads that worry me a tad, and for the lack of remote control, and bias/equalisation optimisation - although granted I've no interest in recording music tapes for anything other than the wife's car [mine's got a CD player] and this unit does come with Dolby B and C noise reduction and HX Pro [selected by a rather stiff triple slider]. So I don't require ultimate HiFi music quality with tapes and I suppose I should be thankful I could buy this Sony cassette deck so cheaply at all - if it had been much more expensive I probably would have abandoned the cassette medium completely. For that reason alone I am happy with my purchase: 3* for build and features, 5* for convenience and value.