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Nakamichi cassette playback in non-Nak deck?

I've been considering investing in a good used Nak 3-head deck for home recording (DR1 or DR2 or similar) - mainly to make high quality tapes for playback at home and in my Sony walkman and Blaupunkt car deck. Yes, I do own an iPod (1gig shuffle) which I love but cassettes are still cool, too!

Anyway, researching online I came across a bit that stated playback of tapes in a non-Nak deck may be a bit disappointing due to the fact that Nak apparently uses a very narrow gap recording head to magnetize the tape which "ordinary" decks cannot fully playback, leading to a more muddy/muted sound with less soundstage vs. playback in a Nak deck. Anyone have any experience with this?

My walkman is the high-end 10th anniversary edition from 1989 (wmf-701c) with dolby C and laser amorphous head. I believe it is a narrow-gap design with 20-20,000 freq. response with metal tape and S/N better than 70dB with Dolby C. I should say that the FM tuner in the walkman sounds arguably as good or better than MP3's on my iPod at 192kbps! It's a quality deck and I think it would be fun to see how a really well-recorded tape will sound on it. Would a Nak work well in this case or should I find a used Sony ES 3-head deck for best results instead? -jz
john_z
john_z OP
178 posts
 
Pryso - that's good advice that I will use if buying local. I am looking beyond just Nakamichi now and am seeing some nice older decks for sale made by Yamaha and Denon, too. Will even consider a 2-head deck if it's quality. Always wanted a 3-head deck, though! I'll keep my eyes peeled for the NAD, too. We'll see what transpires.. -jz
pryso
1,928 posts
 
John_z, back in the '70s and '80s I owned several different cassette decks. For me, the 3-head models were so much easier to record with due to the direct monitoring. With the low pricing for used cassette decks today, I would not consider anything else.
john_z OP
178 posts
 
Hey Swampwalker, I'm going to look at a NAD 6100 deck from their "Monitor Series" line (circa 1989) for sale locally. Probably a step or two down from the 6300 (It's not a 3-head deck), but looks like a very nice deck nonetheless with low hours offered by the original owner. The price is right and this may be a fine choice for my needs. Pryso- I will bring my walkman to see how the tapes recorded on it sound. Thanks all! -jz
swampwalker's avatar
swampwalker
5,138 posts
 
good luck w it.
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knownothing
1,579 posts
 
My roommate in college had the Nak that was one below the Dragon - don't remember the model number - this would have been about 1980. It made the most amazing tapes I have ever heard (he had a very good preamp and turntable/cartridge combination too). It was in the shop as much as it was plugged into his system, and I used to tease him about owning a Nakamichi instead of a Ferrari, but that is another story. Not sure this argues for buying a high end Nak used now, but the performance of that machine when it was working to specs was un-fricking-believable. I have recorded using a lot of other higher end decks from Sony, Teac, etc., but nothing even came close.

Those Nak recorded tapes played back much better than fine on any car deck and the few home decks I have played them on. I still have them ALL and they ALL still work and sound great - all Maxell's high bias tapes of the that period... FWIW
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