High Quality Cassette Deck

[p0llen_p0ny]

I'm doing some cassette transfers for a client and I'm looking for some advice on purchasing a cassette deck. I've been looking at the Tascam 130 and a few Teac decks but I'm open to anything. I hear Nakamichi decks are the best. Basically I need a low noise, wide frequency range deck with very low wow/flutter. A deck with DBX NR would be a plus.

Any suggestions?

 

[o2x]

The best deck you can get - bar none IMO is the Nakamichi Dragon.

However - they aren't made any more so tracking one down will be very difficult.

Even used they fetch around $1k.

If its for duplication - the Tascam 202 MkIII. It's basically 2 units in one box (both decks record.)

 

[CoyoteTrax]

No doubt, yup. I agree.

The Nakamichi Dragon was unbelievable. Crazy signal/noise ratio with amazing wow and flutter specs.

 

[p0llen_p0ny]

Yeah I saw a few Dragon's on ebay. Quite pricey, but if they're as good as everyone says I might go for it.

Thanks!

 

[AudioGaff]

The Dragon was a good unit. I went with the Tascam 122 MKIII. 12+ trouble free years and it matches my Tascam TU-690 FM Tuner and Tascam DA-30 right above it in the same rack..

 

[Cucco]

The Dragon is the Rolls Royce of tape decks. I cut my teeth on one of these until we went to a DAT (which was to my and others dismay as the Dragon sounded FAR better than the first generation or even later/current DATs). Bear in mind though, there is a lot of maintenance involved in keeping a Dragon up to spec. (Such as picking its scales, keeping fuel in it's mouth for fire-breathing... Oops, wrong dragon...)

A very good and much cheaper alternative is the Technics RS-TR575. It's a full logic deck with Dolby B and C and an auto-calibrate feature which is worth its weight in gold. (It auto adjusts level, azimuth, bias, etc.) Plus its metering is excellent too!

You can pick these up for a decent price if you can find them. Most people who have them won't sell them. (I'm one of them. I have one and NEVER will I sell it!)

J.