Show off your cassette deck!

Probably this. On the rare occasions I've bought cassette decks and had them shipped, I've left them in a warm room and basically ignored them for the better part of a day. I've still had them serviced, though; after all, they HAVE been through a courier's hands.

 

Thanks- I'll give it a try.

 

This deck was delivered by the dealer, which is local, though. No shipping.

 

I wish I could be that lucky. About a year ago, I received a Pioneer cassette deck that had been wrapped in two layers of brown paper and....................that's it, just brown paper. Needless to say it didn't work, but I'm going to have it repaired anyway.

 

Justin,
Thanks for the good advice. I left it on overnight, and it still didn't work.

The good news is the dealer is happy to fix it. He has a tech/repair person that used to work for Nakamichi.

 

Finally I bought my first cassette deck today. Deck should be in perfect condition. I expected it to arrive in monday. What is your opinion about it.

Aiwa Excelia 009

 

Still love my Nak with azimuth alignment on the (critical) recording head, fine tune bias and EQ.
The following model went to direct-drive which I never found as pleasing.
It still sounds so musical and arguably better than any Redbook player in its price range.

 

Well Aiwa makes great gear (as GuildX700 pointed out, the Aiwa XK-S 9000, is considered by many to be the best cassette deck ever), and it is a 3 head design, so I bet it is a great deck. it sure looks purty! Best of luck with it.

 

I've had one of these for the last ~25 years. Still works great. Best feature: pitch control for correcting the speed of tapes made on lesser machines. It has lots of features and I've used them all. Mine is still in mint/near mint condition and is mounted in a rack. I can't imagine liking another cassette deck more than I like this one.

(Not my pic - pic found on the net.)

 

You're welcome, it was worth a shot.

Bonus on the dealer/tech. While he is working on it you should see if he can replace the belts and re-lubricate critical parts. If he has the right tapes, gauges, and ability to re-calibrate the heads/NAAC/transport that would be even better. Probably would cost a couple hundred+ extra or so, but you would get peak performance and maybe another 20+ years of service.

Good luck, keep us up to date as the "project" unfolds.

 

I bought complete package of belts and am sending them with the deck- they are going to replace them all for me. They are even picking it up as I have no car (city living).

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/23016840@N04/16348639501/
Tascam Portastudio 424

 

This was a high end deck back in it's day, it sports dual rear mounted power transformers. It got a very good review in the 11/1989 issue of Stereoplay. It's not quite as good as the top line Aiwa XK-S9000, but it is a very good deck.

 

This thread is making me wish I still had my Nak DR3. I am not sure I could resist if a Dragon in great condition crossed my path.

I have been trying out an Akai GX-646 reel to reel this past week (a friend had it sitting in his garage in the box ... < 10 hours on it) ... hopefully it will soothe the tape itch for awhile

 

Wow, that is a unique design. I don't think I have ever seen external transformers on a component of this nature. Please post some photo's when you receive it and give us your opinion on its performance.

Thanks,
Justin

 

Those are killer decks-great sound and built like tanks.

 

Nice!

 

A beauty for sure. I was considering one of those as they may have the best cost to quality ratio in the Nak line, but I found a Dragon at a really good price, but I could live happily with that deck.

 

Man, I've been playing a lot of tapes on this thing for a few weeks now, whoever did the adjustments and calibrations, refresh
of belts and such on this clean, near new low hour deck hit the ball WAY out of the park!

It sounds way better than the AD-S950 I originally owned years back. And that deck was great until it died.

It plays my 30+ year old home made tapes better than ever! I'm always in fear when putting in a tape that old, but this deck handles them with kid gloves. I've had a few old tapes damaged in my much more expensive Teac V 8030S, not sure why.

It's not quite up to the amazing sound of my Aiwa XK-S9000, but I'm really impressed at this deck and how it handles any and all old tapes I throw at it.

I think I'm going to use this to archive what's left of my old tapes to CD.

 

Does the Dragon align azimuth on the record head (for recording), as well as the play head (for playing) for each tape? When I bought my ZX7 new, back in the day, what sold me amongst other aspects of Nak quality, was the fact that from a purist standpoint this deck got the record head in position from the start, so every Nak made tape would be spot on. I understood in their later decks Nak chose to have azimuth alignment on the play head as a compromise toward best "playback" of any tape, rather than the more purist POV they formerly held. Personally I rarely played anything in that deck that was not made in that deck, certainly no mass manufactured stuff, it was just too Low-Fi compared with my home mades from radio shows or off Lps played from my Sondek Lp12.

 

Yeah the Dragon has auto alignment of both the record and playbakc, so any tape is supposed to play back with proper alignment. I'm not sure I will ever need that, as I intend to use this to make mix tapes, which is why the ZX7 would have been enough.

 

Here is my cassette deck mountain:



I have no idea why I have a cassette deck mountain, they just kind of arrived here somehow, parts of other system purchases etc. The three head Sony ES at the top is actually pretty decent, I used it to digitise a few old 1980s cassette demos etc a decade or so ago.

 

This was my player fron 1983 Nakamichi LX 5 3 head unit
Very nice piece, joy to record with
I stopped using it 8 years ago and gave it to a friend in my audio club

I would tape albums direct to xliis and put them away
Years later when I stepped up my table the deck went neglected

 

The deck is in the house.
My first hifi deck.

 

Ah, the beast! Great!