Which Nakamichi to choose?

Calling a cassette deck (especially a Nakamichi deck) a “turd” is just wrong! Anyone who still listens to cassettes knows what I mean. The medium gets a bad rap as it only moves the tape at 1.75” per second. OK, it’s not reel-to-reel but it can sound really good with high quality commercial cassettes. The cassettes can still be found at thrift stores, sometimes in the original plastic wrappers, for a quarter. People who still own and use Nakamichi decks know what I mean.

Inna, you're right about Willy Hermann. He specializes in aligning decks to work better than new. He worked on four of mine and he is amazing. I'm not sure how quickly he turns work around but it was usually only a couple of weeks, but I picked the units up each time. I still have an RX-505 and it works like new (maybe better). I sold my ZX-9 about a year ago, along with 2000 cassettes and box sets, for more than $2000. I regret selling it. One of my first Nakamichi decks was a CR-7A, and I really regret selling it. I still have a few hundred cassettes and I really like listening to them, always without Dolby. It seems to limit the highs.

“I’ll wait for some high end company to release a new high end 3-head deck with the latest technology.”

Sounds good, but don’t hold your breath. Save yourself a lot of angst and just buy a Nakamichi. I recommend the Dragon, CR-7A, RX-505 and ZX-9, as those are the ones I have owned. I only have the RX-505 now, and I sincerely regret selling any of them. I only let them go because I didn’t want to end up on “Hoarders.” (LOL)

melbguyone,

I recognize that there are probably decks that rival the performance of the Nakamichi cassette decks. I recall seeing a Tandberg 3014 at a stereo store decades ago and wondering how it sounded. I never sat down to listen and I can only speak to decks I have owned. Also, I have owned Nak amps, preamps, tuner and CD player (OMS 7). I once took home a Nakamichi Dragon CD player and DAC. I decided that I had too much stereo equipment and returned it. My mistake! I am very comfortable recommending Nakamichi cassette decks, and accept that there are many other decks worth considering.

This is probably too much information, but I have kept my nine year old Lexus for the same reason. I still have hundreds of commercially recorded tapes that I find hard to part with. The fact that it has the Mark Levinson sound system is a bonus. We recently bought a new Honda CR-V for my wife and a CD player is no longer even an option. That's right, not even an option!