Those were true workhorses. I can't tell you how many times I used them over the years. 

I may have told this story before, but it's thanks to this machine that we won a Dan Award for a story we did while I was at CFTR. One of our reporters, Tricia Wood, was doing a story on a controversial drug that was being given to pregnant women and that was suspected of causing birth defects. 

She managed to get an interview with the head of the drug company (which would probably never happen today), and went there with the Sony cassette machine and a professional mic plugged into it. It sat on the floor between them while they talked. 

When she got to the contentious part about the harm his drug might be doing, the creep subtly kicked at the mic plug until it came out, thinking she would get nothing but a blank tape that couldn't be aired. She kept asking him questions, which he believed would never be heard. 

At one point at the end of this Q&A, he gleefully held up the kicked-out mic cord at her, prompting Trish - who did not suffer fools gladly - to demand 'why did you do that?' He sneered a kind of non-answer and the interview ended.

But what he didn't know was there was a built-in mic on the front on the machine and while the quality wasn't great, it was salvageable. We boosted the audio and aired the whole silence-attempt sequence, which made him look like he had something to hide. It was so damning that soon after it aired, he was no longer with the company. 

And all because the Sony machine had an extra back-up. 

Those were wonderful tools and great quality for a cassette. We used them all the time and they were great.