What is up with Nakamichi?

[serpico]

My wife was asking me about a dream system she always wanted and brought up the name Nakamichi. I always knew about the name but never hear or read anything about them. Did something happen that they are not regarded as high as they used to be? Did other brands just step up and individuals just stopped choosing Nakamichi? Or am I in the wrong forum and just keep missing something?!

 

[bigshot]

Nakamichi made great cassette decks. Back in the late 70s, it was a viable recording format instead of going the reel to reel route. In our digital age with CD burners, tape based recording decks are pretty much kaput. (But I'm still happy I have my glass head Akai R2R for playback.)

See ya
Steve

 

[Kees]

It was discussed here not long ago.
And yes, they used to be REALLY good (I had one of their cassette decks: awesome), but it seems they lost it somewhere.

 

[serpico]

Thanks for the link to that other thread, Kees. I knew friends who had car decks back in the 80's but wondered what happened to them.

 

[Nick 214]

Nak' also made one of the most sought after turntables of all time, The Dragon.

The Dragon line also featured the cassette deck to have also called "The Dragon"

I believe a Nak' TX-1000 table (which is the step down from the Dragon) recently went through Audiogon at a price upwards of 10k.....

NK

 

[swt61]

Nakamichi saw the writing on the wall many years ago, and started focusing there efforts on multi channel audio/video systems, and spouse friendly small, stylish systems not unlike B&O.

Sadly they're really no longer a player in high end audio.

 

[serpico]

Now I can tell my wife to stop dreaming about them and join me with another dream system!

 

[mrwinick]

NIRO - Product - 420 System
Nakamichi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Niro Nakamichi (brother of Etsuro, founder of Nakamichi) set up a new company that makes one speaker surround sound. Very interesting technology.

 

[mofonyx]

AudiogoN ForSale: Nakamichi TX 1000 Super Rare

Oh?

 

[double LL]

Quote:

Originally Posted by serpico /img/forum/go_quote.gif My wife was asking me about a dream system she always wanted and brought up the name Nakamichi. I always knew about the name but never hear or read anything about them. Did something happen that they are not regarded as high as they used to be? Did other brands just step up and individuals just stopped choosing Nakamichi? Or am I in the wrong forum and just keep missing something?!

In the early 80s they came out with some very desireable high end expensive stereo equipment. Nakamichi was best known for their cassette decks,and after the early 90s you did'nt hear much out of them anymore.They had a turntable that would compensate for a imperfectly centred lp.It was weird looking ,but it must have worked.I never owned one ,but I remember reading about it in 81 or 82 in a Rolling Stone magazine article.There stuff is still plentiful on ebay ,so give one of there cassette decks a try.Make shure it's a three head unit,and check out different models.Maybe you should look at the Studer Revox electronics ,thier stuff is known to be as good as you can get.Double LL

 

[colonelkernel8]

What is that secondary arm on the turntable? Is that to maintain perfect speed or something?

 

[jsmithepa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by serpico /img/forum/go_quote.gif Now I can tell my wife to stop dreaming about them and join me with another dream system!

Nakamichi is the Kodak of audio, they missed the digital boat!

But hey, a nice massive Mark Levinson amplifier never goes out of style!

 

[colonelkernel8]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jsmithepa /img/forum/go_quote.gif Nakamichi is the Kodak of audio, they missed the digital boat! But hey, a nice massive Mark Levinson amplifier never goes out of style!

Well Kodak still dominates the developing/printing side of things, and they make pretty good point and shoot cameras for the less tech-savvy (dock system and easy-to-use software). Off topic, I know...

 

[jsmithepa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by colonelkernel8 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well Kodak still dominates the developing/printing side of things

My point exactly.

Who develop these days? and if yer talking about industrial printing, they got plenty of competitors in that area too.

 

[stevenkelby]

I used to have a mate with a Nak in car CD player. It was a single DIN unit, looked just like a normal front loading CDP with the slot and everything, but you could many discs in there at the same time. It took at least 3, it may have been 6, I can't remember. I don't know how it shuffled them around in there but it did, and sounded pretty special too.

This was mid 90s.

I always wanted one. Never saw another and don't know what happened to his now.