Teac W-790R
A dual-well auto-reverse deck that sold for $219 and asked you to record on one side only.
Overview
The W-790R is the odd one in Teac's twin-transport pair from the late 1990s: two auto-reverse wells, full logic control, high-speed dubbing — and only one of those wells actually records. That's the whole design brief in a sentence. Deck 1 is play-only; Deck 2 is the record/play transport. Teac built it alongside the W-860R, which does record on both decks, and charged accordingly. A distributor sheet of the period lists the W-790R at a manufacturer's list of $219.00, with the dual-record W-860R at $299.00. Retail advertising from the same era shows the W-790R discounted to $173.00 and the W-860R to $197.00, so the gap narrowed on the street but never disappeared.
What the money bought was a fairly complete feature set for a budget twin. Both transports are auto-reverse, so neither well forces you to flip a tape. Both run under twin IC logic control mechanisms rather than mechanical piano keys. There's variable pitch control at plus or minus 10 percent — useful for tuning a tape to a fixed-pitch instrument or chasing a drifting dub. High-speed dubbing and synchro reverse dubbing let the two wells hand off to each other in either direction. Noise reduction covers Dolby B and C plus HX Pro. Around the back and front you get RCA mic and line inputs, and there's a headphone output. A multi-function fluorescent display handles the metering and status. An optional rack mount kit was offered for installs that wanted the deck in a standard bay.
The single-record layout is the thing to understand before buying one. If the plan is to copy tapes one at a time, the W-790R does it and does it with auto-reverse convenience on both ends. If the plan is to run two recorders at once — duplicating from two sources, or keeping both wells hot for a project — this is the wrong deck and the W-860R is the right one. Collectors note that this distinction is easy to miss in a listing photo, because from the front the two machines look like siblings. They are siblings. Only the record capability separates them.
Pricing context is worth having. A period retail listing shows the W-790R at $149.99 in one 1999 catalog, well below the $219 list, which tells you these were being moved as commodity hardware by the end of the decade rather than as enthusiast gear. That's consistent with how Teac positioned the pair: the same distributor copy that describes the W-790R calls the line "high performance at very modest prices," and the rack-mount series it belonged to was pitched as professional performance without the high-end price tag. Marketing language, both — but the price points back it up.
On the used market these turn up regularly and cheaply. The honest caveats: dual-well decks of this class live or die on their transport belts and idler tires, and a machine that sat unused for twenty years will usually need both wells serviced before it behaves. Auto-reverse mechanisms add a rotating head assembly to the maintenance list. The fluorescent display is a known long-life part but not immortal. Buy one expecting to do some work, or buy one that's been gone through. At the prices these fetch, a serviced example is almost always the better deal than a "mint, untested" one.
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