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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
nuno_barbosa
32 posts
 
I own a Cassete Deck 2 and yes I still record tapes to listen in my car and the quality is very inferior. In the nak at home is fine but I've tried in other home decks with same poor results. In the car the issue is mainly due to the input/output level. To use in the car I have to record with a higher input to be able to have a decent sound level but some care is needed or you'll get sound distortion.
For great home sound from tapes I would say get a Nak but to use in other equipments maybe you can try some other brand, the Sony you mention might be better for wider use.
kirkus
502 posts
 
The width of the magnetic gap on a record head has NOTHING to do with the performance of a subsequent playback head. The only compatibility concerns are those of track width, which in a cassette will cause severe crosstalk way before it affects performance parameters.

I have heard the "Nakamichi tapes only play back well on Nakamichi decks" thing for years . . . and I think it's an old-husbands' tale. But Nakamichis were more consistently in good mechanical and electrical alignment from the factory compared to most mass market decks. So if you make a recording on a Nak, play it back on the Nak and it sounds great . . . maybe in comparison another deck doesn't sound as good on playback.

Also, if you compare two tapes, one recorded on a perfectly-calibrated machine, and another on one that runs a tad slow and underbiases the tape, and play them both on a third machine . . . to most people the recording that's higher in pitch and sizzlier on the top end (the second one) will sound "better".

If you find a nice Nakamichi, buy it. They're great.
kmulkey
173 posts
 
I've owned a Nak CR-4 and a CR-7a and they both were incredible machines and the tapes sounded OK on other decks.
But, the deck that put all Naks to shame, as far as playback on other decks, was the HK CD-491. Sounded crystal clear, not even a trace of muffling and you could actually use dolby B or C, regardless of whether it was a car deck or another home deck. Great unit.
royy
148 posts
 
I have a Nakamichi 600 cassette console. Make me an offer if you are interested.
john_z OP
178 posts
 
Thank you all for some very good feedback on this rather obscure topic! It's a little silly in this digital age of iPods but what the hey - I've always enjoyed time spent making recordings to tape real-time while listening to the music.

Buying new seems out of the question esp. for a single-well design. They truly look to be extinct on the consumer side of the market. In the meantime, I have a pretty decent single-well tape deck built into my early '90's era JVC "executive" micro system to get me by (dolby B, metal tape capability, U-turn autoreverse, full-logic controls) but not even close to a good standalone deck, I'm sure. The JVC was built a few years before the cassette part became an afterthought (or vanished) on those systems. The big issue for me with the JVC is no Dolby C (or S, for that matter) and no line out - you can't output to your main system, aaargh! But it has an Aux In which is being put to good use connected to iTunes via my AirPort Express in the bedroom :) -jz
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