Audacity Forum

I want to transfer a large number of high quality (metal, dolby, recording on a Nakamichi 582) tapes to digital, and the old tape deck (Nak 582) needs some adjustments that may cost an arm and a leg. Since I only want to PLAY the old tapes...can anyone recommend a similarly high quality tape deck to me? Even if it is just a player, without the ability to record?

I'm so out of touch I have no idea where to look, but it seems the few remaining consumer decks are all "dual deck" designed for dubbing, at a price that can't mean great quality for two sets of heads and movements.

I'm reluctant to look at a used deck, since I don't want to know about problems it may be having, and expect this project to go on for most of the next year.

Before transferring my tapes I had my Nakamichi (a BX2) fully serviced including work on the transport mechanism. It cost c. Uk £150 - not cheap, but much better I thought than buying a new deck for that price.

The are many resources available on t'interweb for Nakamichis - and there are secondhand ones available for sale including 582s.

Don't know where you are based but in the UK I had my servicing done by Bowers & Wilkins in Worthing tel +44 1903 695 695 - they did a great job on my BX2

WC

In the US East Coast, $300 won't get anyone to do more than dust off the case on a 582. Apparently the mechanism that makes the play/FF parts engage senses tension and has to be adjusted in some obscure way that involves a lot of labor just to access it, and even from looking at the manual, the process is sufficiently vague and unclear that the folks who DO know how to do it, can claim it is a black art worth great sums of money.

Used decks? Hard to find "off the shelf" in a storefront, and to have one shipped probably means $40-50 in shipping, each way if it has to be returned as unfit. "Repairs" on anything in the US have gotten to be a difficult thing to find, especially if you want the job done right. The real craftsmen aren't easy to find. Or afford.

This site http://www.analogstereo.com/nakamichi/n ... manual.htm has a downloadable manual for the Nak 582 (with some basic skills you may be able to fix it yourself) - and so does this site http://www.hifiengine.com/manuals/nakamichi/582.shtml.

I read one posting on the Nak 582 where somebody managed to buy a secondhand one for US$14 - but saw another offered for sale at US$890 !

WC

I would tend to avoid second hand tape decks - you're unlikely to know the condition of the tape heads, belts, etc.

For a good deck you will probably be looking at over £100 GBP for a new one. Cassette decks are still made by Teac, Sony, Tascam and Marantz among others. Sony have some available that support metal tape, I don't know about the others.

Thanks, guys.

Steve, that's exactly why I'm not looking to buy a used one--unless it came from a top shop with a warranty and none of that is easy to find. Certainly not inexpensively.

WC, those are interesting sites. The hifiengine one does not have a service manual, the analogue one does--but cleverly wraps it in Javascript to make it impossible to download. (Or so they think.) Anyway, I think I said I already own the service manual, in print, from the copyrightholder. Take a look at the online copy--it is NOT a simple procedure to adjust the play and FF speeds in this deck. It is slightly more difficult than the average appendectomy. Take a casual look through and you will see what I mean.

These machines were an absolute marvel--possibly the first cassette decks to match open reel quality when they came out. And, a mechanical nighmare are they get older. Built to be 'assembled' not 'maintained'.

hellosailor,

yes I see what you mean having had a closer look at the manual - similar problem with my BX-2, which is why it went back to the workshop being beyond my capabilities ( I can clean the heads and the transport mech - and that's about it - similar to modern cars and motorbikes where all you can do at home is blow air in the tyres and put oil & water in occasionally). BTW I love the analog meters on your Nak - mine has "modern" digital light-up ones

In which case it looks like a new one - if Steve says UK prices start at around £100 then you should be able to get one for just over $100 or so in the US.

WC

WC, 100 GBP converts to some $182 US as of today.

And, that would be mistaking the markets for being the same. Many things simply sell differently in different places, any used cassette deck from a reputable vendor (i.e. a high end audio shop or repair shop) will probbaly sell in excess of $500 here, simply because they want that much to fix existing decks. And sometimes, more than twice that much. "Ouch"! But, there's a limited supply, so they can charge whatever they want for them.

No one here is going to sell, and warranty, a high end deck for less than the price of repairing an existing one.

That's probably why we put ketchup, not vinegar, on our chips.<G>

hellosailor wrote:WC, 100 GBP converts to some $182 US as of today.

Yes, but we typically get charged pounds for dollars for the same goods. For example a $50 pair of Levis in the US will retail in the UK for £50 - a $10,000 Harley-Davidson will retail for £10,000 etc. That's why you get so many Brits flying to the US mainly to go shopping - when I used to travel to the US regularly on business I used to buy all my new clothes over there, much cheaper.

Which brings us back to your original question - Amazon US lists loads of cassette decks - e.g. this Teac for $108 http://www.amazon.com/TEAC-W-600R-Dual- ... 59&sr=1-25 it does handle metal tape the spec says. And by the way just to substatiate my dollars/pounds comment above - the same deck on Amazon UK sosts GBP£106 !

Or this Sony at $150 http://www.amazon.com/Sony-TCWE475-Cass ... dpp_img_in.

Neither will ever be as good as your Nak, and unfortunately they mostly seem to be dual drive and auto-reverse, but they may get the job done satisfactorily. And when it's done its job you can sell it on eBay.

If you lived closer I'd offer to lend you my Nak BX2 - but it's a long swim over the pond ....

WC

WC-
A lot of your retail prices are determined by higher UK taxs and tariffs. For instance, you may pay twice as much for gasoline--but that's only because you have taxed it 100%, like most of Europe, to support other programs. Your tariffs on some products are historical, if the Crown wasn't so swift with tariffs, the US would be "Western Britain" to this day.

But on used household goods, like a used tape deck? Totally different market, different rules apply.


On the Teac deck, they say "Frequency response: 40 - 15,000 Hz (CrO2); " and if I may be blunt, that's crap. That's typical for the high speed dubbing decks sold on the consumer market, and I'd get better results playing the tapes on my high-end Walkman. (Yes, there are such things, matching the line levels is a pain in the butt though.)

I'd like to see 30-18,000 nearly flat in a replacement deck. Anything that tops out at 15,000, is "FM radio" quality, no better. (The Naks were closer to 20-20,000 using metal tape.)