Kenwood KX-920 (Early 1980s)
The Kenwood KX-920 is a three-head stereo cassette deck from the early 1980s. In the KX series it sits between the KX-820 below it and the KX-1020 above it. The KX-920A followed in 1982 as a minor update. The record on this model is thinner than its successor's. No original price, production years, or period reviews of the KX-920 itself have turned up in the available sources. A contemporary advertisement in HiFi-Stereo (March 1977, p.58) touted a larger-than-regular flywheel for wow and flutter of 0.08% and a heat-compressed super ferrite head for frequency response of 30-16,000 Hz and S/N of 62 dB with Cr02 tape.
One caution. The database entries for the KX-920 and the KX-920A are nearly identical, so some of these figures may belong to the later deck. The KX-920A is known to use a double-gap ferrite erase head, a sendust record head, and a hard permalloy playback head. That detail is attributed to the 920A, not the 920, so it is not passed along as fact for this model.
What is known about the KX-920 itself is short. It is a three-head, single-motor deck from the early 1980s with strong measured performance on paper, in the middle of Kenwood's cassette lineup of the period. The archive would welcome details on transport behavior, build quality and sound.
- Type: Stereo cassette deck, 4-track, 2-channel, 4.76 cm/s
- Heads: 3 (record, playback, erase)
- Motor: Single DC motor
- Wow and flutter: 0.035% (WRMS)
- Frequency response: 20Hz–18kHz (Metal tape)
- Signal-to-noise: 70dB (Dolby C, Metal tape)
- Inputs: 50mV (line), 0.35mV (mic); Output: 0.45V (line)
- Dimensions: 440 x 150 x 240 mm; 6.5 kg
- Accessory: Wooden case CK-14
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