Which Nakamichi to choose?

Calling a cassette deck (especially a Nakamichi deck) a “turd” is just wrong! Anyone who still listens to cassettes knows what I mean. The medium gets a bad rap as it only moves the tape at 1.75” per second. OK, it’s not reel-to-reel but it can sound really good with high quality commercial cassettes. The cassettes can still be found at thrift stores, sometimes in the original plastic wrappers, for a quarter. People who still own and use Nakamichi decks know what I mean.

@lowrider57 I would personally never record with Dolby Noise Reductions it kills the high frequencies.

Good info in here once you get past the turd stuff. I think some people don't understand that many of us old timers who grew up in the 80's have boxes and boxes of cassettes laying around and no way to listen to them. I have been shopping for a while, but the problem isn't finding a deck, it is finding the right deck.
-Geoff

@lowrider57 

I use Dolby B, but not Dolby C. With Dolby B, there's not much to choose between a hot-rodded Revox A77 half-track at 7.5ips and a hot-rodded CR-7a.

"Hot-rodded" means mainly cap and resistor improvements, not fundamental circuit changes.

@jond 

Not my experience with the CR-7a. The auto-alignment feature makes up for any limitation in what is basically a different compensation curve.