The greatest consumer cassette tape deck ever produced?*

A simple query, I'm curious to know what you guys think the greatest tape deck ever produced for mass market consumers is?
With money being no object, what is the highest quality cassette player, the most lavish and best sounding one to ever grace our mortal ears?

I've heard that the Nakamichi Dragon deck is the holy grail of tape decks, and looking at the specs, seems like it could get damn near close to CD quality by the numbers. If only there was a deck like that with Dolby S, then it would be the definitive tape deck (and would cost you your kidney too).

 

Likewise, I remember the Nakamichi Dragon being the ultimate in cassette decks.

 

Even a low end Nakamichi deck sounded better than other brands TOTL decks.

 

I had a Nakamichi 680ZX back in the day and it was an awesome tape deck. I sold it after CDs came out and no longer needed it to buy a potbellied pig .

 

Some people feel a different Nakamichi sounds even better. I think it's the ZX-9.

There was a Tandberg which has an excellent reputation (I can't remember the model), as does the Aiwa XK-S9000 (which had Dolby S).

 

Technics 1500/1506, many still in use today updated and/or refurbished, thanks to the open reel revival.

 

Never owned a Nakamichi, best I ever had was a Pioneer CTF 1250. It was a thing of beauty. I've read that the drawback to a Nak deck is that tapes made on the Nak and played back on a different machine were sometimes sub-par. Have no idea of it's true--perhaps something related to bias or azimuth?

 

That's a fact IMO. I had a buddy that had one. Seemed to be a super nice piece. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to take it home and play with it in my system and compare it to my Onkyo TA-2070 which I thought was a hell of a cassette deck.

 

Funny Steve. But it would have been funnier if you had referred to the latter as cassette player recorders.
I always did want a tape deck as your picture shows.

 

Tandberg TD-20A!!

 

I never owned a Nakamichi, but always wanted one. My Teac A550 was the best I ever owned.

 

Only if the Nak is not running right. Or, the playback deck is way out of alignment.

I have a Dragon. It is simply amazing how good a recording you can make with the thing.

Those 1250s are nice decks, as well.

 

For the more discerning "consumer"...

 

For consumer cassette decks, nothing really beats a Nakamichi deck. I've heard many "high end" cassette decks in my time and I was always able to hear the pitch changes in them. Nakamichi decks don't seem to suffer too badly in that department.

Not a consumer deck, but I would love to hear this deck:

 

Why is that bigger is better thing so important? I mean with us audiophile folks.....women included (very classless and subtle gender joke).

I mean you know what I mean? Right?

 

See what I mean?!!

 

Criteria: The best 'Cassette' deck ever produced for the public..Not reel-to-reel or non-consumer decks.

 

I'd love a Dragon cassette deck, along with a Dragon turntable please.

 

They were awesome, but unreliable as can be imagined. Actually they were worse than that.

And it was a consumer deck. If I recall correctly, they were $1500-2000.

 

There is wide consensus about the Nakamichi 1000 ZXL being the best ever produced

 

Even my bottom of the line Nak outdoes some of the nicest cassette recorders I've heard in my entire life… that said, it's still cassette. You really need something a little closer to Steve's post

 

There was one FS last summer about an hour from here...wasn't running and dude wanted ALL the money for it.

But, Damn what a dream rig!

 

If we are talking with Dolby S then I really rate my Sony TCK-6AES, it's a very fine deck even if you're not using Dolby S and I much prefer it to my low end Nakamichis, admittedly Dragons and CR-7s are in a different league, but if I needed a cassette deck to record with the Sony would be top of my list for a fraction of Nak money.