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Originally Posted by stereofisher
Dont know how good the Emerson will be. Wont last like the Panasonic which has to be over 30 years old! Hard to beleive its lasted that long!!!
Eric
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I have a Radio Shack (Realistic) SCT-11 stereo cassette deck from 1977 with Dolby and Cr02 (likely a rebadged Hitachi), which was top of the line when it was new. Still works like new with my Aiwa NSX-A888 digital bookshelf stereo system. The RS deck doesn't have auto-reverse or full logic controls, but it does have full auto-stop, which is plenty good enough for me as far as fancy features go.
Panasonic (Technics) was a good make of stereo gear in its day, although I'm not sure who owns the company anymore; last I heard, Matsushita Electric did, but in these days of outsourcing, who knows who makes Pana audio and TV?
When your unit was new, Panasonic meant Panasonic, but nowadays the Panasonic name may show up anywhere--on cheap stuff made in Korea, for example. The companies that make today's cheap CD players, MP3 players and so on haven't forgotten the fine art (?!) of rebadging; in fact, these days it may be done simply to keep alive the name of a former electronics giant such as Panasonic--otherwise the name would go into the public domain and become meaningless (if it hasn't already). It's been done with televisions, stereo gear and small radios since at least the late '70s, so why not today's audio gear as well?