What's In Your Tape Cassette Deck Tonight?

Willy Hermann has gone through each of my three Nakamichi cassette decks: ZX-9; RX-505; CR-7A. As you would expect, they all have sounded amazing after being serviced by Willy. About five years ago, I bought a Nak Dragon from Willy. He called me and told me that he had a request from a medical records company to transcribe their records to magnetic tape, so (at his request) I sold it back to him. You won't meet a nicer guy than Willy, and I appreciated all the work he had done for me, but even today I wonder "what was I thinking."  

The Velvet Underground 

White Light/White Heat

Lou Reed

Set the Twilight Reeling 

After years away, I acquired a cheap cassette player and hooked it into my main system. Shock. The vocals and mid range was beyond amazing. Now hold on just a minute. Cassettes suck, right? But I heard something natural, real, transparent and surprisingly captivating. Even so, cassettes have little low end truncated highs shrouded in that famous hiss. But still...it was there. The presence of the artists was somehow so natural. Lets face it. Each medium has its strengths and weaknesses. Cassettes have more than most but the window provided into the recording environment is unique and fantastic. Improve the unit, cables, etc and be prepared to be very surprised as I was. 

I use Nakamichi 682ZX almost daily. Everything was recorded on Maxell Metal Vertex cassette, the best there is. Sounds excellent, though it can’t match my Nottingham turntable. It is not supposed to. And I use Purist Audio Neptune cables with it.

I send my deck to Willy every three years or so for a regular service. The deck has over 10000 hours on it but the playback head is in great condition. I do keep it very clean and use LAST head preservative regularly, usually every one/two plays. It takes a few seconds to apply and seems to work great.