Unfortunately, very often not, from a purely economic standpoint anyway.

Double Trouble

Dual or double-cassette decks have two cassette bays instead of the one more commonly found with better cassette decks. It’s important to note that dual cassette decks were generally the cheapest cassette decks of their time. Long-term usage and serviceability were not high on the designers’ list of priorities with these low-cost machines.

Now, if you haven’t read any of my in-depth cassette deck maintenance articles, this can be some of the most labour-intensive work in hi-fi. Properly servicing one deck can be involved, so servicing two usually cheaply made mechanisms is generally work that = needs to be done, yet isn’t economically viable to do, a classic catch-22.

This doubling of mechanisms means double the heads, double the belts, double the capstans and pinch-rollers, double the cleaning and double the disassembly and reassembly. Doubling the already time-consuming workload usually means more work than these decks are worth.

I generally avoid working on dual cassette machines for these reasons, unless it’s light service work.

Viability vs Lovability

If both decks in a dual-cassette machine need only light maintenance then having this work done may be worthwhile. If both decks need repair in the form of idlers, belt replacement, or other deeper service work though, costs quickly exceed the value of dual cassette machines.

I like to keep my customers happy of course and generating large invoices for equipment worth very little isn’t a great way to achieve that! That said, there will always be people unhappy that I decline to work on their dual decks, presumably missing or failing to understand the important points I’ve explained here.

The opposite is true of good single-deck machines of course and I still work on those, like the two beautiful Pioneers below, from my collection.

Single-deck machines are always built better, perform better and are generally nicer to work on. Decks like this are almost always worth servicing and repairing, but a whole day is sometimes needed for mechanical work on complex decks like these.