I had written out a response for Tascam 688 options and none of them relevant to Fostex cassette recorders except for this following paragraph would also apply to various Fostex models. There were still a lot of discrete components and mechanical components in these older units that many times translated into dead but revivable.

"Don't exclude "Parts only" and "broke" devices because the failure may either be a minor fix or possibly what's broke may not have any affect on your purpose for the device. Look for the "broke" cause or inquire to what it is. For instance, a working 238 that the record function doesn't work but the machine is otherwise in working order. Since you're not looking to record, a broken device with this failure would allow you to recover your 688 recorded audio."

Many models of the same brand used similar formatted heads that mainly varied in precision, construction materials and quality but shared the same physical size and format. The different models could read and playback material recorded on a different model. In the Tascam scenario, 688 was the best quality, construction and precision followed by the 238 and with the 488 the least quality model. But they all shared similar size and format of the heads and both could read and playback 688 recordings with small variance in quality.

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