Nakamichi Dragon Cassette Deck Test

[@jameskoralewski1006]

In those days, in the recording process of making cassettes, the angle of the head to the moving tape medium was critical. If the angle between the moving tape and head wasn't exactly perpendicular, the recorded music wouldn't sound proper. If your friend lent you a cassette tape of music that he had recorded, if his head alignment wasn't correct when he made the tape, it would not sound right when you played it on your cassette deck. Unless that is, both cassette decks had the same exact skewed head angle. With the Dragon, it would correct any errors that your friend's deck might have had, by aligning its own tape head angle to your friend's tape being played by first sampling the recorded music and aligning its own heads to match what your friend recorded with his tape deck. The Dragon would also align its tape head with the inserted blank tape each time a recording was initiated with the Dragon. This way, if you lent your friend a tape that you make on your Dragon, as long as his head was not misaligned, the Dragon's tape would present no azimuth errors to his tape deck.

[@RUfromthe40s]

before the dragon, heads could be aligned and the nakamichi system only work perfectelly for a short period of time and normally the best cassette deck brands when you recorded a cassette on them they would sound perfect in the most of existing decks ,i know this because i started using nakamichi decks in 1974 and have their best models till today including the 680ZX and BX-2 ,maybe the most reliable of all but have also from other better brands, people don´t talk about the cassette deck 1 released in the 90´s by nakamichi it seems it was their best ,there is a 1.5 but never seen it or bought it, i do prefer because of the quality TEAC, Pioneer or AKAI as the best decks ever in the world along with the B-215 from revox and the phase linear that after being bought by Pioneer they released a carppy version ,the CT-A1 but better than any nakamichi till today, and i´m not trying to sell my two dragons in a very bad condition allthough some already ofered me 5.000€ for the two and still working but like crap, either the 82 or 94 version, the 1000ZXL(special edition) is a fine deck but not close to the best

[@gsmd770]

The best cassette deck in the world!!! Simply Beautiful!!!

[@bolo_tim6870]

why?

[@kennethbowron4122]

I bought my dragon in japan new in 1982 and it is very mint condition still today .I absolutely love it. sounds great just bought 20 cassette tape for it and Nakamichi DR2 deck also. not for sale...period..

[@HamtaroEL]

DRAGON > DR-2

[@ua..1484]

Какой красавец, управление ну просто прелесть. Спасибо. Правда приятно такой видеть аппарат. Берегите

[@olaniyi570]

I have one and I love it for what it can still do today. I use it to record Vinyl and sometimes CDs onto cassette. This deck will record SACDs in incredible fidelity without breaking a sweat.

[@jameskoralewski1006]

You can't compare the quality of a CD recording to any cassette recording, even a Dragon! The only real reason to still be making cassette recordings is if you are regularly playing your music on cassette decks in a car or in your home. I think that we mostly moved beyond cassette decks to other and better formats.

[@RUfromthe40s]

@@jameskoralewski1006 normally every average deck can record a cd and the recording will always sound better ,because the cd is the worst format released till today allthough in the 80´s they were built from a much better matarial but their errors couldn´t be fixed not by buying the best dac in the world or equalizer(a good one)

[@morgangaines4338]

I wanted one of these so badly when I lived in Japan but the cost at that time was well out of my budget. In my opinion to this day still a great piece of musical equipment.

[@the80386]

they were 2500 when they came out. that's 6500 in today's money.

[@jameskoralewski1006]

They were unbelievably great in their day, but are of little use in the current era of mostly digital music. Though, they make a great museum piece to put on display.

[@TheChristopherStone]

What a Classic piece of audio equipment. It is my greatest regret that I never owned one. Love this machine for what it could do at the time it was introduced!

[@olaniyi570]

Its not calibrating its aligning the head azimuth when the green arrows blink. It can do that for any prerecorded or self recorded tape it assures optimal high frequency response.

[@redhead5150]

Have the RX-505. What a piece of stereo equipment. Nakamichi was so ahead of it's time in stereo technology.

[@moochincrawdad]

They'll never make stuff like this again - such a pity!

[@s2v2e2n2d2]

Amazing Deck !!!

[@68yello]

Una sola parola: FANTASTICO !!!

[@Ailgadem]

Eh già! Probabilmente la migliore piastra a cassette mai fatta. Io presto prenderò un Nakamichi CR-1E :-)

[@ArcadeDude44]

Awesome deck, good music too. Thanks for sharing.

[@VC-yx8bb]

отличная дека лучая Very Nice!!!!!

[@cinqo7]

Six Blade Knife by Dire Straits. Great song to show off the greatest cassette deck ever.

[@scottlowell493]

Actually, Nak made a lower cost deck that sounded as good. ADS made a better sounding deck for 1/2 the price.

[@manzanaresantonio]

@@scottlowell493 Nothing compares to Nakamichi 3-head decks, especially the Nakamichi Dragon, trust me. Even a 2-head Nakamichi outperforms most 3-head cassette decks out there. I have 30 top of the line cassette decks in my collection and the only ones that come close to Nakamichi decks are the Tandberg 3014A, Revox B215, Harman Kardon CD-491, NAD 6300. AIWA AD-F770 or AD-F-990 and the Onkyo Integra TA-2900!!

[@echo1434]

It's amazing how good this video sounds considering it's a cassette going through speakers and being re-recorded, and then going onto KZbin. You must have a good all-around rig there!

[@RUfromthe40s]

that´s why it sounds so good because you´re hearing digital compression of sound used by KZbin, even a cheap cassette player would sound like this. it´s a cassette?do you know what they are ?because cds will never achieve their best quality in Audio, because it´s phisically impossible ,a old digitral format developed in the 70´s is not the best digital sound and even worst when they made them of a cheap material ,if you have a cd bought in the 80´s compare them in your hand and then in a cd player

[@the_famous_reply_guy]

ITS A SLICE OF HISTORY BOYS AND GIRLS

[@mr.summerset8054]

six-blade knife. good choice

[@kephaone]

One of these days i'd like to hear something other than rock played on these high end components. Maybe some Common, Jeru, De La Soul, Tribe, Wu-Tang....

[@mcclendonreport]

Peter Kepha In the words of Kanye West, "..when I listen to music around the house, it's usually not rap.."

[@Toolness1]

Nobody that listens to that crap can afford one of these. trollface.jpg

[@Jellybeantiger]

Peter Kepha you need a 50 dollar unit,fine for rap.

[@rumo201]

For Rap, you dont need high end stuff. Use a ghettoblaster, and fine

[@mapp4751]

what a stunning looking deck!

[@kevorkh2000]

Super.... lagend....

[@tonyperek7292]

I like that deck. I think single well cassette decks are the best.

[@stijnkraft]

It vibrates. Other than that it seems to sound very well :)

[@hennessy4666]

as a hifi collector for last 20 years i wanna say ,dragon is indeed a cool deck but to be honest there are many other decks who can outrun him anytime...........pioneer ct a9 ........aiwa ad6900.........aiwa excelia.........alpage al300........alpine al90.......onkyo ta2900........luxman k05.........akai gxf 91........and more .

[@scotthullinger9955]

That's the best ever consumer grade tape deck.

[@svenschwingel8632]

There are a few others. But not many. And three of them are other Nakamichis.

[@raffaeleliegi5420]

Quella cassetta della Sony mi è sempre piaciuta. Galattico sto Nakamichi

[@grass519]

good tunes. i wanted to get one cause of the auto azimuth, g/f said to ugly to go in the living room. so i guess the TEAC will stay.

[@Curi0u50ne]

I mean this sounds great what speakers are in use here, with that DS track imagine if you filters it through a tube amp 🥰 Oh well guess I’ll stick with my Denon drm740 and dream off what it could sound like

[@igorartolalacarra1547]

Hola Precioso Un saludo!

[@mikereif7240]

So which one is the play button?

[@kurtissmith3513]

that's a lot of buttons.

[@terrybeavan4264]

LOL indeed it is, and the markings are small too, particularly those buttons on the right side can be hard to determine how what's set! Before I got comfortable with mine I used to keep my trusty old mag-light flashlight next to it so whenever making a recording I could be sure I had everything set the way I wanted it!

[@stefanangheluta331]

brilliant!!!!!

[@damianarrowsdeux1895]

i want to press those buttons

[@rajeshbakshi3018]

at @ 1500$ for a used one... i can still only think of having one!! But hey guys i got the pioneer ct 95 for 300 bucks and its a beauty... some say it beats the dragon...

[@pauldiaz4273]

Those pioneer ct 93 and ct 95 are beautiful and elegant looking decks!

[@김희택-f9t]

Good !!!

[@TapesNstuffS]

Does the bliking green light above the cassette mean its calibrating to the tape?

[@terrybeavan4264]

Yes, I've owned one since 1995 and this is what sets the Dragon apart from (almost) everything else! You press play and explaining how it does it gets quite complicated but that direction light flashing means the "NAAC" (I believe it stands for Nakamichi Auto Azimuth Correction) is adjusting the playback head alignment to the tracks that were laid down on the tape. You put a tape into this machine, even one recorded on another machine that might not have been in good alignment, and this deck will align the head to the tape, press play and as that light starts flashing you really hear the difference in high-end response as the head came into alignment--pure magic! :) Knowing that if certain pieces fail including the metal band that operates the alignment mechanism it'll be nearly impossible to get repaired and huge money if it can be, these days I use mine only sparingly but I do enjoy listening to it!

[@darkfiles2274]

list of all songs

[@jameskoralewski1006]

A factory new Nakamichi Dragon tape deck was about as good of a cassette deck that you could get in the eighties. I recreated many first plays of new vinyl records on metal cassette tapes and the results were that the newly created cassettes sounded very near to the new vinyl record. I used this method of creating cassettes to be played in my car and on other cassette decks that I owned. This was great until the recordable CD was created. The homemade CDs were better than any homemade cassettes. Almost no noise and better dynamic range. The random access search of the CDs was also a nice improvement. This ended up being the cause of the death of the Dragon. Long may it's memory live!

[@rccarloverluxembourg718]

you wanna show us with your tricky fingers that this deck is undestructible...well I tried this many years with my walkmen from Sony and Panasonic and they all did not survive except 1 Aiwa...

[@tomzielinski9506]

Yea, this guy is an idiot with a bunch of idiot fingers.

[@Deke1]

early to mid 80's

[@ursuozmozcokv8927]

AIWA XK-009 EXCELIA "killer Nakamichi Dragon".

[@robertkirk4387]

wrong

[@Ivanoff685]

Да шо вы ?!! И хде такое позырить ? Xk-9000 все равно будет хуже

[@pauldiaz4273]

I would agree also the Aiwa XK-S7000 and S9000

[@BobSaint]

What was that last track?

[@HamtaroEL]

@Deke1: 1982.

[@paolociarpaglini9492]

What of special..?, my Teac v 8030 s sounding realy good in my system. Do you want hear her?, search Paolo Ciarpaglini, you can find my video only in this way. Regards.

[@aaronharper842]

I'll be honest, I was a sucker. Bought the 9.2 surround system ($1200). I can honestly state now, this system is a complete scam. My Bose 2.1, 200W system outperforms this system in every aspect. Clarity, Surround, Base, Functionality... This is a ripoff system. Amazon will accept my return, or my credit card will honor it. Worse case, I'll hire a lawyer to return this piece of crap system to recoup at least 3/4 of my purchase. Don't be a sucker like me.

[@tomzielinski9506]

Aaron Harper. Wtf does your system have to do with the Nakamichi Dragon??? Stfu "Sucker"

[@kpfeif]

Rx-504

[@ushirogeri8085]

Old Grundig is cheaper and better.

[@brabenec1]

skvělý kazeťák, test o ničem

[@alfierireina2953]

3381362393 SONO

[@Synthematix]

thats the most ugly piece of hifi gear ive ever seen

[@wezmarauder2754]

You are going to LISTEN to it, not LOOK at it. Function over form. Besides, it's not clothes you wear, a car you drive or a house you live in. Aesthetic qualities for vintage hi-fi equipment doesn't come very high up on the priorities does it??

[@stabgod]

I saw one of these for sale at a Goodwill store near Atlanta. It was selling for less than $10. I didn't buy it because I am a fucking idiot.