Your first component that was "special"

Nakamichi 682ZX cassette deck. It cannot take everything from my Nottingham Spacedeck table but it sounds great for a cassette player. Nottingham is also quite special for me.

Hifijones, exactly. I have some very valuable to me records that are almost impossible to find. Accidents aside, no record with any turntable set-up will tolerate so many plays. As I said somewhere else here, I have one Maxell Vertex tape that I played at least 500 times, and dozens more with 200-300 plays on them. The same sound, no bleeding thru or anything. Now, despite using best tape and over $1k interconnect, my tuned and aligned deck cannot fully compete with Nottingham turntable but it is not far and with some recordings very close. One day I will have high end two track reel to reel deck in the system as the main source but I will keep the Nakamichi as well.