Nakamichi Cassette Decks

I am floored at the length of this thread!  This says a lot about Naks in general...although I haven't used mine in years, I still remember vividly the differences in the top end Naks and the others, along with other manufacturers' machines.  Although I liked other decks, from various manufacturers such as Teac, Tandberg, etc., and despite having owned several other decks, I ended up with only Naks.  They just sounded better to me.  After selling off everything but my last two, a Dragon and a 700ZXL, I did some A-B testing.

(I had two 700ZXLs but sold one to a friend - talk about seller's remorse...)

Bottom line: to my ears, the Dragon was a superb deck, that reproduced music from top to bottom beautifully. 

HOWEVER, again, to my ears, the 700ZXL had a more 'organic', smoother sound...and could reproduce bass notes that you couldn't even hear.  I believe they tested down to some absurd frequency, like 11 Hz.  You need a good subwoofer to really hear, and feel, what they can do.

One other thing to note: the 700ZXL was designed and built with a cost-no-object philosophy that seemed to end with the death of Etsuro Nakamichi.  The amount of shielding and dampening material used, and the silence of the mechanism itself, were beyond reproach - and I am certain that it added to the quality of the reproduced sound.

When playing tapes from other decks, though, unless the 700ZXL's heads matched up perfectly with the other deck's, the Dragon won this one, hands down.  The heads were designed to follow the tracks, maximizing performance from all tapes.

I hear you, blueranger...there's nothing like hearing a top quality cassette tape (or reel to reel).  I opted for the 700ZXL because the Dragon had not yet been introduced, and the 1000ZXL looked like a piece of military gear, with the sliders and whatnot.  Also, I had bad experiences with sliders over the years, so I tended to avoid them.  I was ecstatic with the performance of the 700ZXL, and bought another a few months after getting my first.  A couple of years later I bought the Dragon, and after ensuring proper break-in, started testing them both.  The differences were quite significant, especially given the outstanding specs of the Dragon (not to mention the advanced technology).  Time and again, however, the 700ZXL outperformed the Dragon, especially on the most demanding things available at the time (just released CDs, but primarily difficult to record vinyl, such as Sheffield Labs releases).  On the Sheffield version of "America", the clarity of the transients was amazing...but the underpinning of the lowest frequencies was revelatory.  I eventually sold off one of my 700ZXLs and kept the Dragon, though, since I sometimes listened to tapes from other machines.

At this point, however, I am considering whether it is worth restoring both units, since most of my listening is now done via CDs...