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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
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
swampwalker's avatar
swampwalker
5,138 posts
 
Another option would be an NAD 6300. 3 discrete heads, full monitoring capability, Dolby B and C, fine bias adjust, metal, chrome and reg equalization and a "car" setting that compresses dynamic range a bit in recording, to compensate for high ambient noise levels. Maybe not as high build quality as the NAK, but a great deck nonetheless.
arnold_layne
141 posts
 
one thing people have not addressed is azimuth. No tape will sound it's best on a deck that the tape was not recorded on if you do not adjust the azimuth of the playback head to match the azimuth of the recording deck.
The higher end Nak's have this feature. Most other consumer decks you can adjust the azimuth by turning the screws at the base of the head, but unless you know which screws to turn, this is not advisable. The Cassette Deck 1, CR7a, ZX7, ZX9, Dragon, 1000ZXL have adjustable or automatic azimuth adjustment. I've not seen any other brand of deck that has this user adjustable feature.
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