[SET Man]

Hey!

   I haven't use cassette tape for many years now. I still have a small box full of old tapes.



  I recently open them up and dug out my old JVC deck hook it up to my system. I found a 26 years old tape that used to belong to my late uncle. It turn out to be one of an old album from my childhood. I remembered listening to this with my family when I was about 4 year old. It actually both tears to my eyes.... seriously!

   With that I'm now looking for a new tape deck to replace my now 17 years old JVC deck. It is still work but I've been thinking of getting something better since I might digitized those old tapes. The deck will mostly be use for playback and not recording.

   I've been looking around and haven't found one yet. But I have been in contact with someone who have a Nakamichi 1000 deck and still trying to make a deal with him with price, shipping and etc.

   Yes, I know that the Nak 1000 is as old as I am. But assuming the heads are still good I think I might go for it.  What I fear most is getting it fix and finding parts for it.

   So, what do you guys think about this Nak 1000 deck? How much this thing go for these days? Any one know anything about his deck?

   Also, what other deck should I keep my eyes open for if this deal with the Nak 1000 don't work out? Thanks

Take care,
Buddy

[Wayner]

I have a Sony ES deck, TC-K707ES with Dolby S. It has an awesome transport and all digital VU, tape counter and even multiplex filter for recording off of FM. You should be able to find one for a nice price. It is comparable to the Dragons.

Wayner

[Airborn]

I remember my roomate had that Nakamichi 1000 deck in college and he used to play Grateful Dead tapes from live shows his brother used to make off the Sound Board.  It was Great!  I still have a Harmon Kardon TD202 tape deck that works perfectly.  I have about 100 old tapes I still listen to, including many of those old live Grateful Dead concerts.  I need to transfer these to digital before its too late because there is no other source for many of these tapes.  I also have a couple of live Traffic, Springsteen and Black Flag concerts on tape that I don't think could ever be found on any other medium.  Let me know how you end up transferring your tapes to digital, as I would like to follow suit some day.

[earwig]

Can you still get parts for a Nakamichi DR-2, need to replace a slipping belt inside? Its been in mothballs for a few years dont know what to do with it.

[Tubes 4 Ever]

Nak decks are hard to beat, don't over look some of the lower end units. They were great decks in there own right. I also like the Akai decks.

[ltr317]

Hi Buddy.  I have a friend who's looking to get rid of his Nakamichi deck for cheap and can bring it to a Rave meeting.  If you're interested, I'll ask him for the details.

[SET Man]

Hi Buddy.  I have a friend who's looking to get rid of his Nakamichi deck for cheap and can bring it to a Rave meeting.  If you're interested, I'll ask him for the details.

Hey!

    You are a day (or two) too late. The deal with the Nak 1000 went through and I picked it up yesterday

    But just wondering. Which model your friend have anyway?

Take care,
Buddy

[SET Man]

Can you still get parts for a Nakamichi DR-2, need to replace a slipping belt inside? Its been in mothballs for a few years dont know what to do with it.

Hey!

   Yes, you could still get belts for most of the decks out there.

   Here's one for your DR-2... belts

   Never bought anything for this seller but he/she got belts for your machine.

   BTW... that is a nice machine there. If you still have tapes to play than you might want to get it out. Otherwise you could sell it.

    Good luck.

Take care,
Buddy

[some young guy]

That's funny... I just brought out my old Sony TC-RX79ES and several boxes of old tapes. I haven't gotten around to hooking it up yet, but it's on the rack waiting for me.

[ltr317]

Hi Buddy.  I have a friend who's looking to get rid of his Nakamichi deck for cheap and can bring it to a Rave meeting.  If you're interested, I'll ask him for the details.

Hey!

    You are a day (or two) too late. The deal with the Nak 1000 went through and I picked it up yesterday

    But just wondering. Which model your friend have anyway?





Take care,
Buddy

I think it's the CR-1A. 

[SET Man]

Hey!

   OK, guys time to meet my new old cassette deck that I picked up this past Sunday.

   The Nakamichi 1000 Tri-Tracer.





  This is the first deck by Nakamichi with its name on it. This is the cornerstone of Nakamichi and the mother of all Nakamichi tape decks, especially 3 heads models.

   The condition overall is excellent for its age. How old it is? Well, it is as old as me! Or maybe a few years older since it was first introduce in 1973 and the last 1000 came out in 1977, the same year I was born. The biggest flaw that bother me a bit is that it missing a lever sleeve on the power toggle switch... oh! well, it is minor I guess



   The photo above show the close up of the three head... play head, recording head and eraser. Not bad for a 30 years old deck don't you think? The rollers look okay, still soft and run well. So far so good, it haven't eat any of my tapes yet... better keep my fingers crossed. Yes, I gave those heads and roller a good cleaning.



   Here's the inside. Pretty clean. A mechanical marvel. Excellent motors and those huge flywheels sure keep the speed very stable.



   The electronic boards. I pulled them out and give those contacts good cleaning. This solved the left meter problem of which was working with what seems to be showing lower output than the right one. I check out one board of which I think is the head amp and I don't see any IC (integrated curcuit) chip at all. Look like it is all discreet here. This confirmed my research on this deck and this is one of the fact that I was interested in these old deck. Other that I've considered was the 700 from the same period and to me looks prettier too



  Here's Mr. Bubble check out the deck.

   So far I've been having a blast from the past playing some of my old tapes that grew up with. Some of the tapes are as old as me and this machine. It plays these old prerecorded tapes beautifully. I've never thought that these tape could sound this good... no is it not as good as vinyl  but better than what I remembered them.

   I have really try recording yet. I did brifely when I picked it up and it seem find. But I got this deck pretty much for play back only.

   My mission is to use this deck to play those old tapes and convert them in to digital using my Apple PowerBook G4 with M-Audio "Transit" Yes, I know the Transit is cheap but I did tried digitized an LP than put it on CD and it sound very good. Better than I expected.

   Not just that. I might borrow another deck from fellow New York Raver to make copy of those old tapes on to new tapes

   Well, let's see. Right now I just ordered new belts set for this machine. Yes, it run beautifully and those belts seem fine. But the counter belts seems to stretched a bit. So, I will put in new belts and see if it could get any better than this.

    Anyway, I'm listening to it right now.  And I'm having a blast from the past! So far so good and no major problem yet. Maybe I will write more later on this.

Take care,
Buddy

[BobM]

Congratulations Buddy. Nothing like listening to old music found again. Brings back many memories. I think we all associate childhood events with music, at least to some degree.

I have a Nak DR-3 which replaced my older Harmon Kardon 3 head unit. The Harmon Kardon was state of the art when it was made, with extension up to 17Khz (ha!), but the DR-3 beat it hands down.

Enjoy,
Bob

[martyo]

Hey Buddy,

I have a Carver TDR-1500 cassette that I use to listen to taped Dead concerts.

I do remember when the Nakamici 1000 came out, mid 70's. It was $1K. It was the first quality cassette. I still remember a listening session at a high end dealer with it and KEF 105's with a recording of Sheffield Labs Firebird.

[SET Man]

Congratulations Buddy. Nothing like listening to old music found again. Brings back many memories. I think we all associate childhood events with music, at least to some degree.

I have a Nak DR-3 which replaced my older Harmon Kardon 3 head unit. The Harmon Kardon was state of the art when it was made, with extension up to 17Khz (ha!), but the DR-3 beat it hands down.

Enjoy,
Bob

Hey!
     
    Yes, it is amazing of how music could bring back memories. Some tapes I have are 20+ years old from my early years.

Take care,
Buddy

[SET Man]

Hey Buddy,

I have a Carver TDR-1500 cassette that I use to listen to taped Dead concerts.

I do remember when the Nakamici 1000 came out, mid 70's. It was $1K. It was the first quality cassette. I still remember a listening session at a high end dealer with it and KEF 105's with a recording of Sheffield Labs Firebird.

Hey!

    Bootleg Dead's concerts tapes?

    Yes, it is amazing that the 1000 cost $1000 in 1973 when it first came out. A lot of money back than for sure. It is huge! At 39lbs it is like a small reel to reel machine.

     And I don't think you will find any Hi-End store with a tape deck today

    So far I'm still impressed with the playback sound quality of this 30+ years old deck playing my old prerecorded tapes I have. It does need some more cleaning, adjustments and I'm waiting for new belts before I will use it to digitize those old tape I have. And this is what I want to use this deck for.

Take care,
Buddy

 

   

[JimJ]

Nice looking deck...I don't think I could listen to tapes forever, though

I have a box full of 90+ blank tapes, the tape itself is yellow in color, I don't know what you'd call those...would those be useful to you in any way?

[Audiovista]

Another great find Buddy...I still remember that great sound from your Akai R2R, I know tapes can't beat it, but you sure have another very interesting piece of equipment!

And that old cathedral AM radio.....it's sound beats most of today's receivers.

[denjo]

How do you spell that? 
Jokes aside, I think the cassette decks of yore - Nakamichis come first to mind, Akais and Sony too - were well built to last and still sound pretty decent! For those of you wishing to tape from digital to analog, I read a tip somewhere that video cassette decks (yes, the VHS ones) are great for taping audio analog!

Great find Buddy! Looks like your vintage audio collection is ever-growing! You can set up a Museum soon! 

Best regards
Dennis

Ps, the analog VU meter looks really cool!

[Russell Dawkins]

Jokes aside, I think the cassette decks of yore - Nakamichis come first to mind, Akais and Sony too - were well built to last and still sound pretty decent! For those of you wishing to tape from digital to analog, I read a tip somewhere that video cassette decks (yes, the VHS ones) are great for taping audio analog!

The great unknown brand in decks was Aiwa. In the twilight years of the cassette deck Aiwa made some outstanding decks, both in sound quality and functionality. Precious few others would let you do all of these things: go from play to pause to record/pause to record; go from stop straight into record/pause; go into record from play without stopping; fast scan forward and back with reduced output. Other makers' decks would do one or the other, but never everything I needed to do. Denon was the biggest offender with regards flexibility and sounded bland, too. Aiwa also employed Dolby HX PRO which enabled hotter recording levels by reducing bias signal in the presence of high frequency energy in the program content, thus avoiding saturating the tape partly with the bias signal itself.

Mid priced Aiwas sound better than the equivalent price Naks and the next two levels up, too; they just never had the cachet because they never put the equivalent of the 1000 or the Dragon on the market, let alone the 700 which some think was their best. Insiders I knew figured Nak was cynically milking the reputation they earned legitimately in the first 8 years for the last 10 years of their tenure as a cassette deck maker. Having said all that, a Nak 700 was easily the best deck I have ever heard, and the only time I have really enjoyed listening to cassette.

As far as video decks - there was a period in around 1990 when I know that certain exhibitors at audio shows used these to demo their stuff and thought of it as their secret weapon. Most people had no idea of the quality that these things were capable of.

The Achilles heel of the analog tape medium is wow and flutter, and this was one area where the dominance of the new fangled CDs was indisputable, regardless of what was thought about the harshness that was also attributed to the digital recording medium.

I'm on thin ice here because I'm no engineer, but I believe the VHS and BETA HI-FI formats were both similar in that they were not only both analog (although commonly thought of as digital) but had very low wow and flutter because of their fundamental principle of operation which was FM, not AM. There were other problems to do with tape stretching and incompatibility between machines, though. When things were not perfect a nasty sounding 60Hz buzz accompanied the music.

[martyo]

I remember Beta being used for audio, I didn't think VHS's quality was as good.

Bootleg Dead's concerts tapes?

They really weren't bootleg, the band had a tapers section at the shows and encouraged exchanging tapes. Drove the record companies nuts. Kind of funny, it would be the quietest area at a show, no hootin' and hollering. Even the adjacent areas would be quieter, there was an etiquette.