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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
xiekitchen
821 posts
 
I have had several Naks, CR-1a, CR-3, BX-300 and Cassette Deck 1 Special Edition (silver).
I would not worry about the tapes giving you problems with playback in your walkman or car. I have a pretty good walkman I paid well over $100 for back in 1998 (silver aluminum body) and tapes made on my NAK deck do not sound muddy or in any way indistinct on the walkman. These tapes sound fine in my car as well. Where they do not sound as good as playback on a NAK deck are on some other home and pro decks... on a Denon, Marantz, Teac, the tapes do sound rolled off in the highs but still have good bass. I typically record tapes on my BX-300 on my downstairs system and then play them back on my Cass. Deck 1 on my upstairs system and the tapes sound great. BTW if you can find any Nak. brand tapes these are the bomb and the best tapes I've ever used.
clio09
3,355 posts
 
Same experience here. I used to play NAK recorded tapes on a Tandberg 440A. The Nak recorded tapes didn't sound as good, but they didn't sound unlistenable by any stretch either.

I just unearthed the following decks from storage:

NAK 550 (2 of them), 480, and 680ZX.
Tascam DP-1 DAT Deck
Tandberg 440A
Uher Report Writer 4400
Sony TCD-5M

Now I need to get a preamp with tape input/output to get them going again. I have tons of concert tapes I recorded back in the '80s to listen to.
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,468 posts
 
I had a 7000 II Nak. CD, Phono, fm, and I-Pod (with excellent earphones) are way better
seasoned's avatar
seasoned
181 posts
 
Used to make tapes on a Nak 480 for playback in the car (Concord head unit, ADS speakers) and the sound was outstanding - treble was clear and extended. If there is a problem with tape track-to-head alignment, the first to go will be the high frequencies. Listen for the highs when evaluating...if they are clear and extended, then no worries.
headsnappin's avatar
headsnappin
295 posts
 
Most manufacturers of cassette decks boost treble in the record mode and Nak boosts it in the playback mode as prescribed by philips who invented the cassette. In the days of owning a cassette based car stereo I finally used a nak car deck and got great sound.
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