Just got my Nak Dragon - Wow

I still have a functional Nakamichi ZX-7 with the belt drives and it indeed is an analog treat. For pure musical pleasure I would put it up against many of the CDP's of the day and I can record, obviously! Topoxforddoc it's cool to hear there is still someone out there hearing the Nak quality. Enjoy!

Sorry, but how does it sound so good if you are recording CDs?

Or do you have secret master tapes on cassette?

Dear CwLondon,

I don't have any secret master tapes; in fact I haven't even got round to doing any recording yet. (I will however be recording some old reel to reel tapes on my Revox G36 later when I have time). I've just started relistening to our old back catalogue of pre-recorded cassettes that we bought all those years ago. I have just been stunned just how good the deck is. It costs but a fraction (less than 10%) of my vinyl front end.

Listening to the Dragon through the rest of my kit (Tron Meteor tube preamp, Quad IIs and Avantgarde Duos) has been a humbling experience. I never thought cassette could be this good - reel to reel yes, but cassette - surely not! We have all known how good a top vinyl front end can be, but how many of us truly believed in the old compact cassette?

With manual azimuth alignment on the recording head it gets even better when you play back a cassette that you recorded say, off an Lp on this deck as with my ZX-7, pretty impressive. The dragon as I recall may have auto azimuth on the play head. Do you know? Anyway back in the day (1985?) when I bought it a record Lp recorded on a blank cassette would smoke, hands down, the first CDs that started showing up. It took years for the music industry to sort that mess out. Some CDs sound really good these days. It’s about time as they move some of us to new formats yet again. Enjoy!

topoxfordoc

I am actually a big fan of the old Nakamichi products

I had a Nakamichi 250 in my car in high school
an Nakamich LX5 later in one of my favourite systems
and I also had 2 Dragons which I agree are very good

I used to agonize over cleaning records, stylus etc and then try to make great tapes for replay and/or the car

I think an old cassette deck or reel to reel would be great for archiving LPs

just not so sure its worth the time and effort to record digital sources which was my point