Thinking of buying a tape deck

[Headcoat]

Thinking of buying a tape deck here.

Any recommendations prefer not to spend more than £100.

How would an old Nakamachi 600 sound ? Nightmare to maintain ?

Cheers

[SergeAuckland]

Nakamichis are not difficult to maintain of one has the original service manual, otherwise one needs to know them. When I was a Nakamichi dealer in the mid 80s, I had a full set of manuals and service tools, but disposed of them many years ago. Manuals may be available on-line.


As to sound, they are as good as their set-up, in that any high-end recorder will only give of their best if aligned for the tape being used. This means buying a batch of tape and sticking to it, and once that batch is used up, buying another batch and realigning the machine for that one. This is not so critical with reel-to-reel machines not using Dolby noise reduction, but with cassettes, especially with Dolby C, alignment is critical to getting good recordings.

Unless you have a large number of cassettes you want to play, a reel-to-reel machine with 10 1/2" reel capability like a Revox, Tandberg, Tascam etc will produce better results, and be easier to maintain.

S.

[ncdrawl]

Thinking of buying a tape deck here.

Any recommendations prefer not to spend more than £100.

How would an old Nakamachi 600 sound ? Nightmare to maintain ?

Cheers

the revox b series are among the best and can be found for relatively cheap...but wait..are you talking about cassette or r2r?

Sent from my Android/Galaxy S 4G Hipster Douche Device using Forum Runner

[rockmeister]

Thinking of buying a tape deck here.

Any recommendations prefer not to spend more than £100.

How would an old Nakamachi 600 sound ? Nightmare to maintain ?

Cheers

Lots of good tape machines from the late 70's and 80's will have thier electronics working well, but I imagine you need to find a good source of motors, idler wheels etc etc etc before buying.
Nakamichi have a great reputation for sound, Pioneer's top range of kit were not far behind, and Yamaha made what I thought were the best of the rest at a more reasonable price.

[Headcoat]

Cheers chaps. Was going to use it mainly for playback of my old pre-recorded tapes and maybe some bargain bin purchases of the same. Might also record the occassional compilation for playback / old times sake. So cassette it is and not r2r.

Would say 5-7 hours playback a week (on average) require replacement motors, idler wheels etc ? Is a Nak overkill unless I'm looking at a lot of recording ?

[SergeAuckland]

Cheers chaps. Was going to use it mainly for playback of my old pre-recorded tapes and maybe some bargain bin purchases of the same. Might also record the occassional compilation for playback / old times sake. So cassette it is and not r2r.

Would say 5-7 hours playback a week (on average) require replacement motors, idler wheels etc ? Is a Nak overkill unless I'm looking at a lot of recording ?

A Nakamichi is not overkill if you want to get the best out of your existing tapes, no more than a good turntable/arm/cartridge is overkill for LPs. There's also a better chance that a Nakamichi will still be performing well after all this time than lesser machines. It might be hard to find a Nakamichi in good condition for £100, and frankly, getting a machine in poor condition is going to be hard work unless you want to do a lot of restoration, the cost of which would exceed that of getting a good machine in the first place.

Other than a Nakamichi, I would also look at NEAL, which use the Wollensak transport, Studer and ReVox and the TASCAM machines, especially the 122.


S.

[smithy]

If you are interested I have a Yamaha 580SE in the loft only used for about 5 minutes from new.£40 maybe.

[dj.gibby]

If it's mainly for playback of old pre-recorded tapes then try and source a machine with an adjustable 'playback azimuth' control. This will help get the best from your cassettes. Sorry but at the moment i can't for the hell of me remember the decks that had the adjustable control on them. Can anyone else help here?

[Headcoat]

Thanks again all....got to do some considering - Yamaha 580SE or a Nakamachi 600....Serge nice one and smithy thanks for the offer may well still take you up on it.

[googleborg]

I recently sold my 580SE after buying one just to test tape VS CD etc, it's a good deck, sound quality on some recordings I made was very acceptable, better than I expected tbh

internal porn

https://picasaweb.google.com/1171751...580SEInternals

[Capt. Z]

I liked those NAD tape decks. They usually had a trim pot that let you add treble, which always was helpful to get a better overall frequency balance.

[Rapid 17]

A tape forum worth joining, here http://www.tapeheads.net/

Geoff.

[stuartypoorty]

A tape forum worth joining, here http://www.tapeheads.net/

Geoff.

Thanks for the plug Geoff, I'm spending an inordinate amount of time there.

If anyone is looking for a deck this is a great place to start, many of the members have multiple decks and sell through the site. Moreover a buyer shouldn't encounter the issues commonly found on decks purchased via other auction sites, the goods usually looked after and maintained to a good standard.

Our turntable section over there is a good one too.

Pop over and have a peek.

[wickfut]

why would anyone want to go back to listening to music on a C90?

I'd rather sell everything and buy a £300 midi system than have to relive the olden days of pissfarting around with rewinding/forwarding and crumpled tape getting mangled in heads etc.

[Headcoat]

Never had one tape get mangled way back and I listened to a LOT.

Like to listen to whole LP's so not a problem needing to rewind/fast forward - searching for a 'better' track.

Have a heap of old cassettes - don't want to spend cash replacing them and am attached to them for the memories/as objects.

Tape actually sounds good to me, far from the nth degree of detail but little harshness and overall a decent experience.

why would anyone want to go back to listening to music on a C90?

I'd rather sell everything and buy a £300 midi system than have to relive the olden days of pissfarting around with rewinding/forwarding and crumpled tape getting mangled in heads etc.

[SergeAuckland]

why would anyone want to go back to listening to music on a C90?

I'd rather sell everything and buy a £300 midi system than have to relive the olden days of pissfarting around with rewinding/forwarding and crumpled tape getting mangled in heads etc.

For the same reason many listen to LPs? A well recorded tape, even cassette, sounded better to me than any LP, as it had lower noise and distortion, and just as good a frequency response. My Nakamichi never mangled a tape, and a C90 would do 45m a side rather than just 20m. I only got rid of cassette once computer recording became viable.

S.

[Radioham]

I use a Pioneer. I cant remember the model number, but it has an an A/D converter in it to do some form of sound processing, an it also means that the Deck has an optical connection and not just Phono's.

[russ abbott - royds brother]

Just remembered i have a pioneer ctf 800? up in the loft.
Not sure why i still keep it.

[smallangryboy]

Just remembered i have a pioneer ctf 800? up in the loft.
Not sure why i still keep it.

Does it still work?

[Steveh]

I have a Yamaha KX580SE (Dolby S, playback trim.etc,.....top of the range). It was many reviewers "best buy" at the time. Not used for several years, and very little usage since purchase. PM me if interested.