Which Nakamichi to choose?

mickeyblu79,

DR 2 is as good as you will ever want it to be. I have no experience with DR 1, though.

Practical difference between cast and stamped metal has probably evened out over the last 25 years. If they have survived, they have proven reliable enough, I would say.

If you are really a cassette novice, you should know that the medium is very inconvenient and novelty may wear off relatively soon. Otherwise, it does posses some magic. If you still have your own tapes from when you were what you are not anymore. It does bring a madeleine moment every time and many of us love it for that. Some admit, some do not. I have to admit that recording new tapes is not as exciting as it used to be, but playing old ones is unbeatable. It beats playing records.

There are tapes to be found, but you will have to learn which ones you really want. TDK SA from 1980-1988 seems to be indestructible. SA-X comes close. However, it will be a real luck to find them for 25 cents a piece. Same tape names from the 1990s, at least on my machines, have had different (less tight in some imaginary way) sound and were far from reliable.

Good luck.

lowrider57, don’t remember how to describe it, but Dolby C just never seem to sound exactly right, so never used it.

The CR-7a is an extremely nice deck, however not one of my favorites. It is a later model that used the stamped metal transport. The higher end models using the cast metal transport always seem to be just slightly better. A couple that I lusted after were the ZX-9 and the 682ZX. A certified Nak tech I know thinks the 682ZX was as good as anything they ever made.

"Practical difference between cast and stamped metal has probably evened out over the last 25 years. If they have survived, they have proven reliable enough, I would say."

Both transports were reliable. It’s just that the cast metal transport sounded better and it always will.

Either deck would likely give you good service, but as I previously said, as long as both decks are in the same condition, the better choice is the Cassettedeck 1.

tls49,

I have no experience in comparing those so I stand corrected. However, if someone starts a thread about the theory of that, I am afraid it would turn ugly.

@jond

My CR-7a with belts is marginally better than my CR-7a with gear train. High frequency was not an issue on Dolby B with either deck when stock. I found Dolby C to sound a little "processed", but not degraded to digital levels.

I suggest that you buy the best deck you can find. My father, a shipyard superintendent, with corresponding hearing damage, compared a high class Denon to a DR-1. His comment, "There’s really no comparison, is there?"

I thought about a ZX-9, but the automatic alignment feature on the CR-7a is really useful.