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Measurements of Nakamichi Dragon Cassette Deck

tomchris

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Recording vinyls and later CDs, cassette players were the first thing that started my interest in Hi-Fi when I was young in the '80s.

And yes, the Nakamichi Dragon was high on my wish list. It just looked so cool in pictures with all the buttons. Around the mid-90s I managed to acquire one. What a huge disappointment. Talk about a classic layered Nakamichi transport shoehorned into a rat's nest of wires and PCBs, sandwiched in cheap plastic. The performance of direct drive dual captan is impressive. The finicky belt-driven automatic azimuth correction system, not so much. Removing the top cover and looking at the internals you get to experience a product clearly dating back to the beginning of the 1980s, screaming for ICs to come and replace the vast number of discrete components covering the PCBs those days.

All in all, it presented a solution to a problem that did not exist. The people who could afford a Nakamichi Dragon did not borrow or play cassettes from other people.

Still nostalgia is inescapable.
 

itsikhefez

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I recently finished working on a Nakamichi ZX-9. I am pretty much a novice when it comes to tape restoration but I've done a few by now.
Replaced all the belts, idler tire, electrolytics and orange caps.
In this case I also needed to disassemble the transport due to seizing of pinch rollers.
I was only able to achieve 0.035% W&F which is worse than the original spec of this unit at 0.022%.

I haven't done any measurements but subjectively tapes sound really good.
In my system (Benchmark DAC3/LA4/AHB2), the difference between a pre-recorded tape and hi-res streaming is fairly small.
If I record the hi-res stream on a metal tape and switch between source/monitoring, it is barely distinguishable.

Not my primary source of listening but pretty fun nonetheless
 

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USER

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Seeing that people are posting their own measurements, I thought I'd add to the fun.

Yesterday I received a cheap, barebones, and shockingly small (Radio Shack) (Optimus) Realistic SCP-32 that I ordered from eBay and today I performed some measurements on it. There are a few positive reviews of this on Youtube so I was curious. I have a Nakamichi RX-505 that has long needed service, but the expense, wait times and prohibitively small number of people that can work on it make it a project I continually push out into the future. I recently ordered a 90s Sony dual deck from eBay that was supposedly tested and refurbished from a seller that does this for a living but W&F and speed were so far off that I returned it instead of trying new belts that likely fit better. It was a frustrating experience. Anyways, this made up for it.

Radio Shack.jpg
SPC-32 SPECS.jpg


Here are my measurements using ABEX test tapes. I hooked up the deck to my laptop with an E1DA Cosmos (at the 1.7V setting). I am a hobbyist in every way so I would appreciate any criticism so that I can do this better. As this unit is pretty much bare bones, I don't think I can perform FR tests. I have not touched the deck in any way.

Realistic 1 W&F.jpg


On the NAK T-100 program W&F fluctuates from around 0.068% to 0.098%; Peak is at around 0.17%. Speed deviation should be easily better tuned, but it's pretty good considering the unit is from 1991! Clearly they used extremely high quality belts as they are still working perfectly. Puts the Sony belts to shame. I thought it would be fun to run it through JP's instantaneous frequency script (which is available on this site). The script is meant for turntables so I am not sure what the proper number for "sec_per_rev" should be so I fiddled around to get these:
Realistic SCP-32 - ABEX TCC-144.png
Realistic SCP-32 - ABEX TCC-144 2.png

Hilarious. But many turntables gushed over in forums are likely worse! The Sony dual deck I got from the first seller you see selling refurbished Sony decks measured approximately 0.15% in compartment 1 and 0.4% in compartment 2. Spec is 0.07%. I personally think they use whatever cheap belts they have and don't bother with the second compartment.

Output is incredibly low for this deck so here are REW graphs of an ABEX 1kHz test tone. I recorded and normalized it to -10dB as the test tape specifies. Not sure if one can do this. Again, the E1DA is set to 1.7V. Click to increase size. Left and right channels.

REALISTIC 1 LEFT N+D.jpg
REALISTIC 1 RIGHT N+D.jpg

REALISTIC 1 LEFT N+D SPECS.png


One of the big offenders is the power supply. Looking inside, the factory soldering leaves a lot to be desired. These days there should be ways of improving noise as a DIY project.

Finally, levels and azimuth (12.5kHz):

222.png
azimuth.png


I have to say that for something I didn't touch, I am super impressed. I double checked azimuth by correcting a recording on Izotope RX and it didn't really adjust anything!

Update: I bought a second unit that had a channel that was out so I replaced the capacitors on both as I was already ordering the parts and shipping is the "expensive" part. In this one a few needed replacement and a bunch more were pretty much at 20%. As the layout made it an easy project I simply replaced them all to save me the hassle in the future. After calibration I get this:

REALISTIC 1 OSCOPE.png
REALISTIC 1 LISSAJOUS.png


Both units measure pretty much the same now.

I have always respected Radio Shack electronics and this is why. They get the job done. Dolby B is too strong, adjustment options are minimal if I am being generous about it, and it doesn't record, but if you treat the deck as a box of gain to archive tapes in the easiest and cheapest way possible, while retaining quality, I think this deck is a winner. Hell, this is better than most if not all portable cassette players people are buying these days for 10x the cost!

PXL_20230302_160538785.MP.jpg
PXL_20230302_160546281.MP.jpg


Look at how small it is! I'm thinking stocking stuffers.
 
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USER

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Since I had everything out I decided to perform a few measurements of my Nakamichi RX-505. As I've mention, it needs work. There is something off that is causing some W&F issues. Because of this, I will limit the measurements I show as it has become evident that it needs further alignment. The annoying part is that I took it in to get serviced last year! The repair man said that he had experience with Naks and even serviced a RX-505 a month beforehand. This all goes to show how tough it is to buy and maintain a high-quality and a little bit esoteric piece of gear. As it is not properly calibrated, I am not going to perform any FR measurements.

RX-505.gif


Noise and distortion of the right channel using an ABEX 1kHz test tape, as captured through an E1DA cosmos set to 1.7V and adjusted to -10dB as specified on the test tape. (Again, I am normalizing the recording, please let me know if this is wrong.) Click to zoom in.

NAKAMICHI RIGHT 1KHZ N+D -10dB A.jpg


NAKAMICHI RIGHT 1KHZ N+D -10dB A SPECS.jpg


It seems to be in the same realm as the Dragon Amir measured.

More importantly to me, it shows that the Radio Shack above I got for $30 is pretty good! Distortion (and normally W&F) is what sets this deck apart. (To be upfront: I just realized that the Nak was set to type II tape after I first posted this. Not sure how much of a difference that makes. I'll update this post in the future.)

COMPARISON.gif


Levels and Azimuth:
NAK 1KHZ OSCOPE.jpg
NAK 12.5KHZ AZIMUTH.jpg


As mentioned, this was "serviced." Aggravating. But a simple enough fix.

And finally W&F, which I am bringing up for a particular reason:

NAK W&F A.jpg
NAK W&F B.jpg


Unlike with the Realistic, W&F is stable here. This is good as it says the test tape is good. But something is wrong. Peaking up to 0.4%. The person that "serviced" it either didn't know what to do, didn't have what was needed to fix it, or thought that it wasn't audible enough for me to care. I told him to let me know of any issues and that price and time were not an issue. Oh well.

And here it is processed through JP's instantaneous frequency script at different revolutions per second settings:
Nakamichi RX-505 - ABEX TCC-144 3.png
Nakamichi RX-505 - ABEX TCC-144 2.png

This is an excellent tool with which to diagnose turntable issues and I am wondering if it can be helpful here. @restorer-john does something like this say anything about what is going on? Idler tire perhaps?

Nakamichi RX-505 - ABEX TCC-144.png
 
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Descartes

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This is a detail measurements of the iconic, Nakamichi Dragon Vintage cassette deck. It was kindly brought to me at a meet at our local audio store (Gig Harbor audio).

For those of you too young to know :), the Nakamichi Dragon has the reputation of being the best cassette deck available at the end of the cycle for the format. It came out in 1982 and retailed for USD $2,499. That would be $6,500 today's dollar so quite a lot of money. I was too poor to afford one at the time so it was a pleasure to get my hands on one finally for this test.

We were testing it in a dark room and this is just with the light of a phone so please forgive the poor lighting:


Unlike digital products and amplifiers, we are at the mercy of calibration tapes for testing such products. The owner had a few of them and that is what I used for testing.

I unfortunately did not capture the results of 1 kHz tone but here are some other frequencies.

315 Hz:
View attachment 18585

Oh boy. :) We are so used to SINAD (signal over distortion and noise) of 90+ that numbers like 41 dB seem so, so low!

Likewise distortion components are just 40 to 50 dB down from our main tone as opposed to 90+ in digital.

Let's jump up to 3 kHz:
View attachment 18586

Channels are mismatched in both phase and amplitude. The Dragon is supposed to auto-calibrate the phase but clearly it is not able to do so.

Increase in frequency has also increased our distortion.

Widening of the 3 kHz tone at the bottom shows random jitter/tape speed variations.

Lastly here is 12.5 kHz response:
View attachment 18587

Granted, the levels are low but 4.5% distortion??? Phase and amplitude errors followed us here too.

Conclusions
Even though this is not a thorough test and the pedigree of test tapes is unknown, these results are more than depressing for those of us who cherished this marquee audio product. Worst of the worst digital products have performance that is hundreds of times better. Oh, well. :)

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Cassette decks were so bad. Not surprising about the results!
 

rdenney

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@USER The go-to for rebuilding pinch rollers is Terry's Rubber Rollers. Terry was down for a quite a while after a serious bout with Covid, and that was about the time your deck was in the shop, if I'm remembering correctly. Perhaps your technician had no source for a properly rebuilt pinch roller, and without that, wow and flutter is not going to be as good as it can be. Terry was back in business recently when I had a roller rebuilt for my Teac 4300 open-reel deck. You might get him to rebuild the roller in your RX505 to see if that improves your measurements.

Rick "who seems to be fairly insensitive to wow and flutter for some reason, and is grateful for that" Denney
 

August West

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My current Nakamichi inventory: 2 DR1's 2 CR7's 2 DR8's 1BX300 (I owned the Dragon which I sold a few years back) I believe the CR7 (with manual pb azimuth) to be the best playback deck. The Dragon would be second. The auto azimuth has a limit for correction and when it reaches that it makes a knocking sound. The Nak tech says that is very bad and one shouldn't let that happen. In any case after recording more than 3000 cassettes in this lifetime, I can say that a Dragon is a fine pb deck.
 

USER

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I previously mentioned that I purchased a refurbished Sony cassette deck from eBay that was so far from spec I had to return it. I decided to go for a deck that I could refurbish myself as I lost confidence in eBay sellers. I figured I could not do worse if the deck was not too far gone.

Here now are measurements for a Sony TC-WA8ESA dual cassette deck. This is from the ES line, however it is a late 90s ES, so it is rather light and does not compare to the best Sony made (generally overseas exclusives anyways). More, it's a two-head dual deck, which means there will be compromises. However, it was one of the better decks Sony sold at the end of the cassette era and was not cheap. Had some good bells and whistles including Dolby S and HX Pro. Retail was $550 from 1997-1999. About $1000 today if you can believe it. There were only two models that were more expensive at the time and they were quite a leap price-wise.

price.jpg
price2.jpg

sony_tc-wa8esa_double_cassette_deck.jpg

I cleaned out and replaced the melted belts, replaced a couple of broken gears, replaced a couple of pinch rollers, recapped where needed, added dynamat anti-resonance/sound deadener to the inside cover (it feels and sounds much more expensive when you tap it), and aligned it. Tests performed using ABEX test tapes. I must say the layout of the circuit board is so notably well-done. Everything is so thoughtfully placed and well-marked on the underside. This made recapping it almost fun. Sony's engineers were the absolute best and I was super impressed.

Compartments A & B:

B.png
COMPARTMENT A W&F.jpg


Meets spec. In your face eBay "refurbisher." W&F is relatively stable, especially compared to the Realistic. Measurements for reverse play were a little worse. That seems to be the price you pay for these dual head dual decks. Digital archiving should be done using the best compartment and one side at a time.

N&D: 1kHz ABEX test tone that was recorded and normalized to -10dB.

Compartment A, left and right channels:

SONY A LEFT - 1KHZ.jpg
SONY A RIGHT - 1KHZ.jpg


Compartment B, left and right channels:

SONY B LEFT.jpg
SONY B RIGHT.jpg


Compartment A is closer to the power supply so perhaps the hash is from that. I'll fiddle with it some more...

...OK, a little better. A, right. These things are so finicky that you can't expect perfect repeatable results.

A RIGHT.jpg


Below are the typical results and those of the Realistic next to it. The numbers are very comparable, though how the decks reach them is very different, so it's not apples to apples. This seems to be the upper middle class, with better THD separating the great decks, not SINAD, though not by a whole lot. (My Nak got to -72dB). It should go without saying that there is more to a cassette deck than this.

LEFT SPECS.jpg
REALISTIC 1 LEFT N+D SPECS.png


Channel matching and azimuth (12.5kHz tone ABEX test tape), A & B compartments:

SONY A OSCOPE.png
SONY B OSCOPE.png


SONY A LISSAJOUS.png
SONY B LISSAJOUS.png


As seems to be typical here, you can choose near-perfect azimuth at 12.5kHz or near perfect channel balance at 1kHz. This was deemed a good compromise.

Compartment B, TDK SA-X90 (Type II), -20dB, no Dolby. I could fine tune it more but I wanted to move along and this is already quite good.

COMPARE.gif


Dolby B, C, S (-20dB). I think those little bumps around 400Hz can be smoothed out. I'll discuss them later.

COMPARE.gif
COMPARE.gif
COMPARE.gif


Auto level. Note that the unit has to be calibrated for it so here the left channel will be a bit off. Dolby off and Dolby B. Here we can see how we must negotiate with the cassette for more gain. But really not to bad, -3dB at 20kHz. This looks like a good tape.

COMPARE.gif
COMPARE.gif


Finally, the unit has auto-calibration. Let's see if it helps. Auto level, Dolby off.

COMPARE.gif


Yes, it smooths it out a tiny bit! The original, manual -20dB measurements should benefit from this.

Finally, auto calibration, level and Dolby S (the works):

COMPARE.gif


-1dB at 16kHz and ease of use. Obviously, the bias of the left channel needs to be adjusted better. I just have to decide whether or not I am going to use auto level to see if its worth the time to adjust it. I'd need to check out my other tapes in order to make a decision.

In the end, I think this is a nice deck! In comparison to the higher-end Nakamichi RX-505 here you sacrifice a little W&F and THD but gain the convenience of automatic tape bias and level adjustment. Plus you get Dolby S and HX Pro, which may afford you less noise!

I'm also refurbishing a Pioneer CT-W650R, which looks comparable so far. Stay tuned.
 
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TonyJZX

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I am looking to see how this performs Nakamichi Dragon 11.4.6 Home Surround System

Sign up to be notified when Dragon 11.4.6 Home Surround System preorders are available. Tentative MSRP $3499.

oooof this nonsense

Grande Holdings Ltd (Chinese: 嘉域集團有限公司) (SEHK: 186) is a Chinese manufacturer of consumer and professional audio and HiFi components based in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

In the past, Grande Holdings has purchased several Japanese HiFi manufacturers, including Akai and Nakamichi. It also owns Kawa, a Chinese domestic hifi company, and has owned Singer Corporation, a company best known for its sewing machines. The company has since sold off Singer as a brand.

this is why
 

restorer-john

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So far so good. I'm also refurbishing a Pioneer CT-W650R, which looks comparable so far.

Be very careful with the nylon head rotation gear and spring. (bottom on the head block- right under the head itself) The gears are press fit to the rotating shaft and as the nylon expands over the years, it cracks from the centre with the spring force accelerating the fracture failure. Once broken, the deck is a write off.

Inspect those two gears prior to all the restoration work.
 

ronniebear

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I have always respected Radio Shack electronics and this is why. They get the job done. Dolby B sucks on this (too strong), adjustment options are minimal if I am being generous about it, and it doesn't record, but if you treat the deck as a box of gain to archive tapes in the easiest and cheapest way possible, I think this deck is a winner. Hell, this is better than most if not all portable cassette players people are buying these days for 10x the cost!

View attachment 269093View attachment 269094

Look at how small it is! I'm thinking stocking stuffers.
Good to know - there are better decks in terms of performance and calibration options, but nearly all vintage cassette decks are three to four decades old and aren't all that easy to get correctly repaired. Here is VWestlife's YT video on the visually-near-identical versions which omit auto-reverse but add recording capability:
Realistic/Optimus SCT-86 & RCA SCT-510 cassette decks

I have a needing-adjustment Nakamichi 482 sitting on the shelf. The cassette decks which I actually use on occasion, purchased second-hand but still functioning satisfactorily, are two JVC dual-well decks: a TD-W318 and TD-W254. They feel somewhat lightweight but are still functioning pretty well, are fine for occasional listening of my vintage tape collection.
 
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jae

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Anyone have any idea how the newer TASCAM stuff (such as 202MKVII) measure up to these older decks?
 

gvl

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The limitation is the media and performance of the magnetic head. I seriously doubt there have been any research and advances in this area in the last 30 years, so improvements are unlikely, so the newer stuff is the same or worse, likely the latter.
 

ronniebear

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Anyone have any idea how the newer TASCAM stuff (such as 202MKVII) measure up to these older decks?
From discussions at Tapeheads, not even remotely close to the Nakamichi Dragon or other Nakamichi, ReVox or Tandberg decks from the '80s and '90s.
The TASCAM 202 MKVII and its brother the TEAC W-1200 are lightweight but fairly adequate decks, similar to the bottom-of-the-line early '80s decks from TEAC, JVC et al. By today's standards, these decks are expensive for casual users. If there were at least one other company making a similar hi-fi cassette deck, I suspect prices would come down a bit. As of now, these are the best you can get brand-new in 2023, and the adjective would be acceptable/adequate, not terrible but not fabulous.
 

jae

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From discussions at Tapeheads, not even remotely close to the Nakamichi Dragon or other Nakamichi, ReVox or Tandberg decks from the '80s and '90s.
The TASCAM 202 MKVII and its brother the TEAC W-1200 are lightweight but fairly adequate decks, similar to the bottom-of-the-line early '80s decks from TEAC, JVC et al. By today's standards, these decks are expensive for casual users. If there were at least one other company making a similar hi-fi cassette deck, I suspect prices would come down a bit. As of now, these are the best you can get brand-new in 2023, and the adjective would be acceptable/adequate, not terrible but not fabulous.
I am more than willing to believe this but some sort of tests or proof is always welcomed. I meant "measure up" quite literally. Is it common on Tapeheads to have anyone conducting objective tests/measurements for parameters to do with playback accuracy/fidelity or the effect of certain features? Something more relevant to me would how does the objective measured performance of typical well-maintained vintage gear as they are now (since that is the best one could hope to obtain) compare to the performance of something like the new TASCAM/TEAC.

From ASR we've learned in many cases that a device being "lightweight" doesn't necessarily mean it is doing its job any better or worse than a more robust device and in fact as far as audio electronics are concerned, it is usually the modern lightweight devices performing significantly better. I realise in a mechanical device like a tape player, weight and robustness can indeed give advantages that could result in greater performance or reliability of the transport, but on the other hand I don't know if TEAC has perhaps optimised their designs to give similar or better (or even marginally worse) performance to older designs at lower cost to them. I can imagine a scenario where vintage overengineering or the inclusion of features that are superfluous can cause pitfalls when it comes the the longevity and ease servicing/maintenance of a device. At least with the new stuff there's a guarantee there are replacement parts in the near future. It might require some effort, trial and error, and wasted time to find a good older device that is acceptable but it is very easy just to order a brand new one, even if overpriced. If they perform within the realm of parity then I think I would lean towards just buying the new device to avoid any potential unknown/unseen problems.

The limitation is the media and performance of the magnetic head. I seriously doubt there have been any research and advances in this area in the last 30 years, so improvements are unlikely, so the newer stuff is the same or worse, likely the latter.
Would you say it is a waste of time to pursue an older TOTL player vs a modern or lower end older unit, so long as the media quality is high or the transducer was provably performant? What about the new vs old noise reduction? Aren't there cases of head performance being similar across wildly different priced devices in a brand or product line? Are there any folks out there reliably modifying their devices, swapping out heads with an alternate or 3rd party one for example to increase performance? Are there reliable lists out there objectively comparing different tape media so there is no guessing with getting the best recording/playback fidelity for a particular purpose? My main purpose of the tape deck is for digital media preservation so I want to maximise for this, I am willing to pay for increased performance or reliability but I am unwilling to pay an exorbitant amount to venture deep into the territory of diminishing returns.
 

gvl

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I think the compact cassette is officially dead. If it’s your hobby then invest into what floats your boat. My 2c.
 

pseudoid

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I think the compact cassette is officially dead. If it’s your hobby then invest into what floats your boat. My 2c.
My 2cents say I had reliable and consistent results, recording hundreds of 90minute cassettes using the Harman-Kardon CD401/CD491
CD491 spec:
FR=20Hz-21KHz (metal)
SNR: 70dB (DolbyC)
THD: 1.0%
W&F: 0.025%
They were not a horror for serviceability either... as I found out after the CD401 faceplate "assaulted" friend's hammer.:eek:
 
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amirm

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I am more than willing to believe this but some sort of tests or proof is always welcomed.
If you or someone else wants to send one, I am happy to measure it. This time I would record on them to rule out test tapes being bad.
 
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