One could write a book about this simple cassette deck. The Advent 201 is the machine that made cassette playback respectable for hi-fi.
The Advent 200 was the first machine to use Ray Dolby’s noise reduction circuit in a cassette deck. The Advent 201 went further, by using the indestructible commercial Wollensak transport, with its massive flywheel and idler drive system coupled with Advent’s spectacular electronics. Now you could use a cassette deck to play solo piano, without noticing Wow & Flutter. You could record live using their excellent stereo microphones or make tapes from your favorite source.
Tape formulas were quickly improving and one could get a frequency response of 30-15,000hz using Chrome Tape and during the mid seventies the response improved to 28-15,500hz using the new Ferrichrome tape by BASF. That is an amazing response from a cassette deck in the early to mid seventies. It took years for anyone to match the overall specs of an Advent 201.
Expensive when new, the Advent 201 listed for $359.00 in 1971 which would place the cost today at about $2951.00. The price would only escalate and in 1977 the Advent 201A would retail for a flat $400.00 making it one of the most expensive cassette decks you could purchase at that time.
The Advent had a huge and loyal following. It was a machine you would purchase and then keep the rest of your life, it was that good, that reliable, that well made! I must have at least 7 Advent cassette decks and can attest to their robust and easily serviceable design.
The cassette deck I have used more often than any over the last 50 years of listening is an Advent. Not that I haven’t tried many others, I have. Go to the Nakamichi 500 cassette deck post for a partial list of machines that I have owned.
The Advent was so successful and popular that other manufacturers tried to jump on Advent’s bandwagon by using the same now familiar looking Wollensak transports for the own machines. Wollensak offered serval decks under their own label, HeathKit offered two decks, that you could finish assembly on to save money, but they were nearly as expensive as a finished Advent 201, and the HeathKit electronics were not nearly as good sounding. English manufacturer NEAL built the most successful Advent variant with their 102, and 103 machines. The NEAL’s were also excellent sounding decks, nearly as good at their Advent counterparts. They also had a well designed base, that angled the tape deck slightly making easier to use.
Advent used to have store owners demonstrate the 201 by having live musicians in their store. The musicians would play, while the salesman recorded their performance live using Advent microphones. Then he would cue the musicians to stop, quickly rewind a section and play it back immediately. Stunned, would be the word to describe anyone who experienced this. The results were outstanding, and no other cassette deck at the time could even come close to making a quality live recording. The Advents had gobs of headroom.
Advent also marketed whole cassette albums, of Jazz and Classical music cut from masters in real time.
I have several of these tapes and the quality is incredibly good. I will do a blog post of quality prerecorded cassette tapes in the future and include these.
Manufacturing ended in late 1978, with machines still being available up until 1980 from stock. By this time, TEAC, Akai, Sony, JVC, Technics, Pioneer, Sansui, Kenwood, AIWA, and of course Nakamichi were all building decks that would perform as well or better then the Advent 201A, at least on a spec sheet. Nakamichi was the undisputed King of cassette decks, manufacturing what was arguably the finest machines in the World at the time. Pioneer, had made an enormous commitment to all tape formats and was building remarkably good machines, easily besting TEAC, Akai and SONY.
Still, the Advent had charm, build quality and was capable of making cassettes that were nearly indistinguishable from their original source. I personally put my Advents up against every TEAC, Pioneer, Akai, Sansui, JVC, Kenwood, Nakamichi, and ReVox decks that I owned. Most everyone of those machines are long gone, but the Advent is still in my system today. I became so fond of them, that I would pick them up for pennies on the dollar at garage sales, trade in’s at hi-fi stores and online auction sites.
Easy to disable and clean, the decks are remarkably well made. The huge 4 pole synchronous motor found in the Advent was also used by Thorens and Rek-O-Kut in their transcription turntables. The flywheel in this machines is three or four times the size and weight found in other decks, which means speed stability is superb.
Advent built their own electronics for the Wollensak transports and simplified the deck by including one large recording/playback VU meter instead of two. The reasoning still makes sense today. Use a toggle switch to set recording level for the “A” channel, then set recording level “B” channel, then use the meter to monitor the higher of either channel. Which means you only need to look at one meter, as your channels have already been balanced. Fading in and out of a recording couldn’t be easier using the master input control.
Further, the deck had a built in 400hz calibration tone to set the Dolby record level for any tape you may use. You could also dial in the bias and equalization settings for your favorite tape using an outboard 10k signal. Once this was set, you never had to worry about them again. (Unless of course you radically change tape formulas)
I always likened using the Advent like using a fine manual focus film camera. You’re in control of all the adjustments. You needn’t worry about whether or not your soft touch solenoids would stop working, or your automatic bias, EQ, and Dolby adjustments would function, or where or not one of your puny little cassette motor bearings would call it a day. (Many did). Because this machine was made to be used day in and day out, 24 hours a day. Remember, this was a commercial transport designed for continual heavy duty use. At home, this machine is on holiday.
Of course, the deck wouldn’t have been a success if it didn’t sound good, and the sound is excellent. The bass response is deep, the midrange is perfect and the highs are never shrill. The deck has amazing head room and sounds good with or without using the Dolby B noise reduction.
I have had my main machine a 201A serviced once by Mike at Deltronics back in 2015. The deck had developed a noisy transistor. That is probably the only thing you can expect to service, aside from replacing the odd capacitor, which I have never had to do.
In addition to the 201A in my personal system, I have two 201’s that are on duty at my office and studio. I personally like the look of the all black 201A better than the black and silver 201. While the 201A, sports a sendust head and a peak reading meter, I acutally like the ballistics of the 201 VU meter, as it's not so jumpy when responding to high end notes. I also have never seen a worn out permalloy tape head, which is what the 201 has. Sonically, I have never been able to tell them apart.
Purchase a clean used one, do a minor servicing and you're good to go. You can pick these up for $50.00 in most cases. Pristine serviced decks can run you into the hundreds.
I will occasionally swap a 201 into my system. It really matches the Akai 4000DS, Dual 1229 turntable and the Sansui 4000 receiver. Not only are they all from the same time period, they have the same esthetic.
I have four other decks in storage at home and recently purchased a very early model 201 with lights to indicate Dolby on/off and Tape bias selections. Only a few hundred were made this way and I am looking forward to going through he machine and restoring it to as new condition and using it.
If you don’t need a lot of bells and whistles, or dancing lights, and can appreciate the solidity of a fine well crafted machine that you can use over and over and over again, then this might be the perfect cassette deck for you. I have made well over 1200 recordings with my Advent 201A, some are nearly 50 years old and still sound excellent today. It certainly is the end game for me. I just love it!
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