This is another great review! Thanks. It is amazing that it still performs so well. I remember Julian Hirsch testing and giving his highest praise to the Dragon way back in the 80s. Your review brought me back to those days! This deck was kind of incredible at the time! And on my fantasy wish list!

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Thanks Scott- your comments mean a lot and give me encouragement to continue. The deck from the video was sold by my friend not to long ago. Kinda wished I could have rationalized purchasing it, but at the time I was happy with the CT-9R, which died a few weeks ago, but still have a few other decks to use.

It is a masterpiece, collectable classic piece

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Indeed it is- thanks for commenting!

@reginaldbowls7180

2 ай бұрын

Too bad it’s so ugly.

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

@@reginaldbowls7180 I beauty like this is certainly in the eyes of the beholder as they say.

日本人です。 Nakamichi 1000があったからNakamichiがあり、DragonがNakamichiの金字塔でした。 Nakamichiは時代的な波を超えられず、Nakamichiだけが持っていた数々の技術やノウハウは残念ながら永遠に失われてしまいました。 Nakamichi Dragonを愛用している世界中の皆さんに感謝します。

@vintageaudioreview

27 күн бұрын

I appreciate your comment and am glad Google could translate it

Hats off to those who still have their deck - as they go for a pretty penny right now.

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for the comment and you are correct- the owner of this deck sold it for a very reasonable price, somewhere around $2000. I am glad I got to review it first.

Nice to see you do my deck as well

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for the comment- I have one other cassette deck to do at some point....

I still have mine. I bought it in 1984 while in the Navy. Dont use it much today.

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Glad you still have it, but you should put in a tape and make sure it is still working correctly..thanks for taking the time to comment.

We have a late model (22,000 S/N) dragon in our $100k plus system. Totally agree with you on the sound. Really sounds great for a cassette deck. There are better decks out there but the Dragon just does so many things well and is arguably the most well known of cassette decks. As you said, it is a classic. Thanks for posting.

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for the comments and it would be interesting to hear about your system. The Dragon in the video was sold by the owner a few weeks ago, so I am glad that I got to do a video on it before it left the state.

Hi and thanks for your videos. Very interesting stuff. Just a quick one. I have a Dragon and I purchased it as is with a "known fault" and what it is doing is that the sound is quite muffled and not clear. In your experience, would you have any idea what could be causing this ? I know there are potentially many variables, but any idea would help.

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Am Glad you like the videos. Muffled and not clear could be that the head alignment is off. Possibly the head did not auto-reverse correctly and is off that way. Could be any number of electronic issues. There are probably some good forums on Dragon repairs, but that is not something I would undertake most likely. There are probably some folks who only repair/recondition these, so if it is beyond your skillset and you want to keep it, I would try to find one of them...

@2:22 - I'm not going to lie - I feel like a cat trying to follow that laser around the screen. The second I zero in on it, it's gone.

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

I appreciate the comment and I am doing things differently now so no laser pointer- I had someone else complain as well. I would say the pointer should disappear within the month.

Off topic .. are you going to post the live stream you did a week or so ago ..thanks

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for your interest! So, there was only one person that was asking questions, which was ok as there was enough contest for the 30min livestream. At the very end, my wife entered the room I was doing it from in her underwear as she had been sitting in the dirt weeding and took her pants off before she entered- she was not aware I what I was doing. I thought I would be able to edit the video and cut that part out, but the comment part of the stream did not show up, so I deleted it. When I hit 3000 subscribers I will try another one.

Couldt quite afford the dragon back in the day soni had to settle for the rx 505. Miss that peice, so cool

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing your memory and maybe you will find a Dragon that you can afford at some point!

Grail cassette deck back in the day. The only limitations it had in terms of audio were that of the cassette/media available, and the inherent limitations of the format. Cassette’s have a bit of a cult following these days but there is a very limited and expensive range of tapes available. But why somebody would shell out the kind of money the Dragon commands used is beyond me. If you have a huge library of tapes, they have likely degraded with time and there is no reason to spend so much on the deck. But hey, for collectors it’s still a grail

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments. Most of the cassette tapes I recorded in the late 70's-early 80s still sound ok- for a cassette. The Dragon is definitely a "Grail" deck. My friend sold it to someone who was going to be in town, but lives out of state, and I think paid a reasonable amount for it. I am more an audio gear person and would have been interested in it if I did not have a few other nice decks, though the CT-9R reviewed here died a short while ago. A lot of similarities to "car guys"- that old VW bug while not much fun to drive around a lot, would still be nice to have in the garage and take for a spin every now and then....

@ManFromLaBamba

2 ай бұрын

@@vintageaudioreview Glad to hear your tapes have held up … must be stored well in low humidity , kept reasonable cool and in dark conditions. Often the pressure pad that presses the tape against the head degrades because there are made of foam or some similar material. Apparently one can buy replacements to glue onto the leaf spring.

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

@@ManFromLaBamba I live in the desert so it is certainly dry, though the case the tapes were stored in was in the garage. There are now in cassette storage containers that you would buy from Radio Shack or wherever that I picked up at a garage sale. The tapes that have gone bad typically break at the beginning or end and at this point, I just throw them away. I appreciate your commenting!

Why won't they make them today? They can use the same old designs. Nothing to reinvent. All the research has already been done and paid for. Nakamichi also manufactured one great turntable that would detect how off center a record was, and then make the necessary adjustments by pushing the record on the edge to reduce or eliminate the defect for playback. The center spindle would drop thus allowing the unit to adjust the position of the record on the mat. That was done with almost all analog technology and no other manufacturer has reproduced it. Sadly, Nakamichi joins the likes of General Electric, Sanyo, Relaistic, Emerson and RCA: Brands on the edge of crapola.

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

I appreciate your commentary. I had not heard about the Nakamichi TT, bet they are rare. There is not much of a market for cassette decks these days and not many folks working on them. There are probably a few companies like Tascam that I think are making them....

@craigenputtock

2 ай бұрын

I wish they would remake some classic nakamichi decks too, but the problem is also tooling up for them, and finding suppliers for parts, etc etc, and all that would cost money on which they probably wouldn't make up a profit unless they sold the machines at impossibly high prices. But who knows, maybe they could make a profit at it and still sell the machines at a reasonable price.

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

@@craigenputtock As I commented in the earlier post- there is not the market for them. Best thing to do is find a classic deck that has been restored or get it restored. I appreciate your taking the time to comment.

I think it's an ugly cassette deck that looks chaotic. But it's about the sound quality. It seems like buttons are missing?

@vintageaudioreview

2 ай бұрын

I would agree that its look may not be the best for some folks. There are no buttons missing, and the sound quality was very good, for a cassette. My friend sold it fairly quickly so there is definitely a market for those decks.