So I've got this old cassette deck, Advent 201, bought it late 1974. I'd like to get a dust cover for it, have tried e-Bay, no luck. Now thinking of a plastics company? Do you think there is in USA a plastics company which will make something to the correct specs?
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Are you certain that machine had a rigid dust cover?
That is a Wollensak deck. Wollensak was a company that originally made camera parts I think. It was acquired a long time ago by 3M. They made tape transports and tape recorders under the Wollensak brand for many years, especially a semi pro reel to reel portable machine. Wollensak made the first decent cassette transport in St. Paul MN. The deck was entirely mechanical with no solenoid action and no electronic speed control, just a flywheel.
Despite that it was a pretty good deck. The deck was used by many manufacturers, of which Advent was one among many. They added their own electronics. The most famous deck to use the Wollensak transport was the British NEAL company which I think at that time had merged with Ferrograph, which was Wright and Weare.
They had produced a line of the finest reel reel recorder lines in the history of tape recording, and there decks were used by a large number of tape manufacturers.
Ferrograph Mk6 stereo tape recorder.
Wharfedale even produced a cassette deck using the Wollensak deck.
Now I think a few may have had hard covers, but most had soft covers that went over the whole machine. That may be why you can't find what you are looking for. I'm pretty sure my father's old NEAL deck using the Wollensak is still in the family home, where my mother still lives. I'm going over their to visit my mother in three weeks and I will see what cover it has, but I believe it is soft.