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I had two of those Panny decks when I was in my teens. Someone gave me my first one and I got the second from a thrift store. Eventually I parted with both of them and just had to get another one in recent years. Elvis's music sure has a wide appeal, second only to The Beatles. Personally I prefer Elvis. I haven't heard much of his Christmas mucis but I reckon it is among the very little good Christmas music. I'm not knocking Christmas, I love it, but much of the music leaves a lot to be desired. Agent K explained Elvis' final exit very succinctly: "No Elvis is not dead, he just went home". No I don't believe that but it's the best theory I've heard. As for the car cassette decks, our 1984 Lynx had a factory deck. The car was 8 years old when we got it and the tape player was already malfunctioning, it ran way too fast.
I've been messing with 8-track tapes and players over many years; got my first player when I was 9.
When first playing a new-to-me tape I'll listen carefully for the splice to start passing through the tape path and pull the cart out immediately, or push "Eject" when using my Panny. More often than not that splice is toast. A little piece of aluminum foil tape and it's as good as new. Still I could use a R2R deck for re-threading tapes as the tension tends to drift.
I think those Ford quad decks were made by Motorola. I don't know how their capstans are held in but with mine the bottom is all that keeps them from falling out.
Ruined something when trying to improve it huh? Been there, done that, got the tee shirt. I'd rather use 45-minute tapes for recording, seems the 90s are more likely to tax the drive mech/freeze up.
Tape/player build quality started dropping later on. I've had countless locking tabs snap off and avoid the cheaper players altogether, primarily because of the el-cheapo plastic and set screw holding the head in place. Darn things are almost always broken from the tension that screw puts on the plastic.
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