Teac W-518R Dual Cassette with Auto-Reverse – Customer Reviews

Within 30 days after recieving this unit, the "play" button on the left deck stopped working.My wife called the local Authorized Service Center.The Service Center said to bring it on down and they would need the Packing Slip for warranty work.I had my order paperwork, but do not normally save packing slips.The SC advised calling TEAC for warranty work authorization--shouldn't be a problem, they said.

My wife called TEAC Customer Service and spoke to someone named "Sandy".She said they could not authorize service for something bought over the Internet--for all they knew it could be a rebuilt unit.My wife gave her the order number and said J&G Sales would verify it was a new unit.She refused to check.

After much discussion, "Sandy" finally told my wife to send her the paperwork we had and she would "determine if it had any merit".

I became very angry after hearing of the arrogant treatment given my wife and told her not to send TEAC a damn thing.I would rather pay out of my own pocket than deal with them.I told J&G sales and Amazon about my experience.Amazon kindly sent me a discount certificate because of my problems--I will not use it because this was no way their fault.Also, J&G Music/Computer Sales was very helpful and they seemed rather astonished at TEAC's response.J&G sent me a copy of my order invoice to send TEAC.

I thanked them, but did not use the invoice--rational or not, I was mad.

I asked the local Service Center to estimate the repair costs for the unit--that I would pay for it out of my own pocket if it was a reasonable cost to fix.Turned out it was over $90 for parts with the total about $183.The left side deck mechanicsm needed replacement.

I told them to junk it, or keep it for parts if they wished.

I won't be buying any more TEAC equipment of any kind, rest assured.Not even if it's the best around.The customer support is arrogant and unhelpful.

11/8/2004 12:00 AM | Rating:

Auto-stop would have been nice, too! It's also the only piece of hi-fi equipment I have withouta remote! It's kind of a pain to get up and both STOP the cassette and have to wait around for the end of a rewind or FF to stop it manually when everything ELSE you have can be handled from across the room!

Two years into ownership, one side of the deck has one channel shot to hades...I don't know if I can fix it yet, but so far, every non-hands-on thing I've done hasn't worked. This is the side with auto-reverse. The non-auto-reverse side plays beautifully. The upshot is, is that I hardly ever USE the thing! Maybe once every three or four months, and already one side is giving me trouble! Not good.

And Teac used to be one of the "un-knockables" of hi-fi! Their reel-to-reels were legendary, along with Revox and Tandberg. My, how the mighty have fallen!

However, I have to commend the excellent separation and hiss suppression of this unit on the side that works right. The signal-to-noise ratio of this value unit is actually not bad! I hear NO hiss whatsoever from tapes as old as the hills, whether regular oxide, metal or chromium, withOUT the Dolby that comes with it on, even! They, in fact, come VERY close to rivalling my CDs for purity of sound. And the dubbing capability...?? It's so weird to have been away from cassettes players for so long, and come back on the market to see that just about EVERY unit has a dual cassette bay design...! When did this start and was demand for such units so large that even BARGAIN units have them? All I know is that this is the first, and so far ONLY, disappointment I've encountered buying hi-fi from Amazon, a disappointment with a somewhat inconvenient manual operation, a shot channel in the premier bay, but one that I can copy cassettes with, at high speed yet, something which I have yet to do, btw. Lord only knows what trouble I'd run into doing THAT!

I want to reiterate that this company was one of the gold-standard brands back in the day for reel-to-reel recorders, so it's no surprise that it sounds good. It's a shame it didn't hold up well as their old equipment.

Reduce it to TWO stars!

12/4/2003 12:00 AM | Rating: