Which Nakamichi to choose?

I had a Dragon years ago, but I’d never go back to that medium. Gilding a turd....

Comment noted. Fortunately you’re in the small minority.

"Gilding a turd"; I never thought about it like that, but it seems most appropriate.

The high cost of high quality tapes is sufficient reason to abandon this technology. Chalk it up to economics. 

I stopped using cassettes 20 years ago. But "turd"? I had the Nak 505 — and tapes, whether from CD or Vinyl or R2R, were indistinguishable from the original. Not only could I not tell which was which, nobody could, including musicians and sound engineers. They didn't even try, they knew they'd only guessing. I still have the 505 and never use it; what a waste, somebody out there would be on Cloud 9 if he had it...