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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.
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?
Great find Buddy! Looks like your vintage audio collection is ever-growing! You can set up a Museum soon! Best regardsDennis
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.
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....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.
Nice machine. I do have Nakamichi 700 Tri Tracer deck and I really enjoy its sound and look. Unfortunately, it started to go to the stop mode after every 30 minutes of playing. After cooling down it starts working again for another 30 minutes.Anyone has an idea what is a problem?
Quote from: denjo on 15 Mar 2008, 01:47 amJokes 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. A Nak 1000II will smoke any Awia ever built. Never used a 1000 series one, so won't say it will. The 700 (and 700II) were both fantastic decks that shared a lot of the same technolgy. And once again they didn't make an Awia that good. Now the newer three head decks (Dragon etc.)I've been around only a little bit with the Dragon being the most. I really liked the Dragon, but it still didn't do what I wanted it to do (I was looking for a good auto-reverse setup that didn't shift the heads). I finally had the chance to use an RX505, and knew that's all I needed, but bought a new RX202 for a hundred dollars (only used it for tapes played in the car and truck). Someday I hope to latch onto a good 1000II or a Dragon just for home listening. I've been around the Awia decks a little bit (my brother inlaw used a 9000 or 9090) and they are really nice decks. Better than 90% of the others, and maybe the absolute smoothest operating cassette deck I've ever seen. But they were hard to get parts for when they broke, and from what Larry said they were not fun to work on. My RX 202 dosn't sound as good as his Awia did, but I do think maybe a 505 would give it a good run for it's money. I think my old 600 that I gave to Goodwill awhile back was better. 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.
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!
Thanks for the Nak link SET Man. Have an old 586 purchased new circa '78 that have hung onto for years with intent to fix a couple of bugs. Has a built in tone generator for base line settings, and the sound was always top notch. Also have an HK 3 head that a friend is using currently to digitize his old cassette collection. A nice deck too, but still think the old Nak is better.Enjoy that classic, and the music it makes.
I wasn't saying that Aiwa made the best decks available, just that their middle range (the ADF 370/400) would smoke a Nak of the same price. They never made a Dragon equivalent.This was because Nakamichi seemed to be employing a marketing tactic for which I have no respect - that of capturing attention with a genuinely great and possibly money-losing model or two to establish reputation (the Dragon et al) then milking that reputation for 15 years with over-priced and under-performing (except for the shareholders!) models at the lower end of the model spectrum.My understanding is that the model 700 is one of the less appreciated but very high performing decks from Nakamichi.These days I am so used to the complete absence of flutter from digital recording that I can't stand the sound of most cassette decks except in noisy environments, like truck cabs.
