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After all these tests I did a careful listening to it with the best tape of this review (the SONY MetalXR). I recorded Thriller and compared the recording to the source and found almost no differences at all. The sound is very crisp and detailed. The image scene is very wide, at the same level as the SONY TC-K909ES, which indeed can surprise most people. I'm not sure that the original, unmodified, F1250 do sound the same, but I bet not.
Everything sounds exactly the same as the original: absolutely same response, same bass, same vocals, same HF, same punch, same image scene. This deck can truly do 1:1 copies. What more can I expect from a cassette deck?
Well, yes, the noise is not the same as a good vinyl nor a digital source, but Dolby can mitigate it quite well. It's not the best system of them all, but you must remember that back in '79 there were not many choices...
Compared to the SONY K909ES which I already reviewed, I could not find any difference at all, or at least the differences were so slight that I could not find any*. Both have excellent sound and are capable of doing 1:1 copies of the best vinyl.
*: Of course, tapes were recorded in each deck, with their particular settings for achieving the best calibration possible
in each case, which produced almost the same frequency response.
PROS & CONS
| PROS |
CONS |
| Excellent, very stable transport. |
Mechanics are very 'clunky' |
| Extraordinary build quality. |
No fader. |
| Excellent 3-way calibration system. |
No independent Rec Balance. |
| Excellent & fast meter resolution, with peak and avg. |
Linearity not as good as other top models. |
| Blue fluoroscan is eye-catching |
FF/REW time is not as quick as others. |
| Pitch control is very useful in some cases |
Calibration procedure requires several rounds. |
| Beautiful design. |
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| Extraordinary sound quality. |
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So finally I listened to my reference recording (already explained here) and combined all data into a single graph, to let us quickly see all the measurements about it:
PIONEER CT-F1250 final rating.
So, the Pioneer CT-F1250 is truly a highly remarkable deck, especially back in '79. The only thing that could be better is the recording linearity which is very good but not excellent. However, a thing must be remembered: my unit has a special head and not the original one, and lot of changes have been made internally to adapt this head, so this is not the usual performance of the F1250 out there.
Although this new head can be the reason for this non perfect linearity, there are also benefits: lower noise (which is remarkably low) and better channel separation.
Thanks to the following sites as they served well for some information: Vintagecassette, Vintagecassettes, HifiEngine. Also thanks to Vincenzo (aka Vince666 at Tapeheads.net) for his unvaluable help with the corrections.
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