Chasing A Childhood Dream, Nakamichi DR-2 Cassette Deck

 

The Nakamichi DR-2. Love those amber display illumination!

If you have followed my hifi journey long enough, I had always talked about one particular childhood experience that started me on the road to audiophilia. That was when I was a young teenager, visiting my friend's house for the first time, he played Papa bear's hifi system, which was set up in the family lounge. It was a simple set up comprising a Nakamichi(an RX series I think) cassette deck, a Sansui amplifier and a pair of Bose 901 speakers. That system really sounded out of this world to me then. Since then, I always wanted 2 items from that system, a pair of Bose 901 speakers, checked! And that elusive Nakamichi cassette deck.

I could never bring myself to afford one and eventually settled on the Teac V-670 that I wrote about sometime ago. For more than 30 years, that Teac 3 head cassette deck had served me well. My recent refurbished Teac had gave me hours of fun, rekindling with the cassette format. I was a happy bunny until I saw this Nakamichi DR-2 on a local hifi classifieds, which I told my self, it's now or never. 

The simple line in and output RCAs typical of a cassette deck. The rear panel and chassis bottom is double layered!

And so here I am, a proud owner of a Nakamichi DR-2. It had all the right specs I wanted in a cassette deck, like 3 heads(a must), 3 motor, dual capstan transport design, illuminated cassette compartment and if possible a remote control! Dolby S never featured highly on my wish list, as B & C was more then enough for noise reduction. This Nakamichi is a 90's product, made from 1992 till 1996. The DR series comes after the well loved CR series from the 80's. In the Nakamichi scheme of things, the DR-2 wasn't considered particularly high end either. Well, it certainly was no Dragon, or the 1000ZXL or the ZX-9, BX-300(a.k.a. baby Dragon) or the CR-7 either. Those are just some of the best tape decks ever produced by Nakamichi, not forgetting to mention the RX-505 which was an auto reverse playback stunner, but as a recorder, not so great. 

The 3 head, 3 motor, dual capstan transport is originally developed by Nakamichi in the 70's and first appeared on the 1000ZXL model. 

The Nakamichi DR-2 had great build quality, not flagship level but luxurious enough to include a metal cassette door, the opening action of the said door is well dampened, satin black finished aluminum face plate, dual layer back plate & chassis. Weighting at 5.6kg, it's almost twice as heavy compared to my Teac V-670. Some of the flagship feature omissions include lack of peak hold VU meter, no auto tape type selector(only the flagship DR-1 had that), non-motorized cassette door and a remote control. I would say this DR-2 had all the basic requirements of a good tape recorder & playback, but gave up on luxurious features for market price point. In cassette time line, the 90's was already sun setting for the format, so if one wanted a top player, the 80's would be a good time line to start. Mid 80's flagship cassette decks from Japan like Teac V-980 & Aiwa AD-F990 had all the best features that looked like a dream list.   

The 3 motors that drive the transport can be clearly seen here!

As with any Nakamichi, the tape transport is an in house design, and not one of those standard of the shelf Sankyo solutions used by many other manufacturers. The 3 motor design, incorporating idler wheel for tape spool is very complicated and the transport design is multi layered. Also new in this generation of Nakamichi is the pressure pad lifter system. What's this you ask? If you look at the cassette on the side with the exposed tape holes, you'll find a sponge like pad in the middle as the tape head contact area. Nakamichi believes this pressure pad contribute to variable sound quality as each tape is using different material and density for the pad! Nakamichi was very confident that their dual capstan transport drive was powerful and accurate enough to give proper & constant pressure to the tape in contact with tape head, that the pressure pad was no longer needed during playback. This gives the DR-2 very low wow & flutter during playback as direct result. You can see from the naked photo below, the power supply transformer is over sized and has more than a few regulator circuits in a separate PCB from the audio section on the left. The internal build quality is typical 80's -90's Japanese thru hole PCB type for easy repair. And no, for some reason Nakamichi didn't see fit to give gold plated RCA sockets either!

The internals of the Nakamichi DR-2 cassette deck shows much attention to detail.

Lastly we come to the sound, I was not disappointed at all, once I plugged the DR-2 in to my system and start the first tape playback. The first thing I notice was a total lack of hiss or white noise, which is always good for sound quality. Next comes the rich, layered with full bodied tonality and that dynamic transient of the snare drum! Bass was ripe, full and tuneful. In comparison, the Teac V-670 sounded neutral in tonality, and offering more clarity yet conjured a more 2D version of the musical proceedings. The Nakamichi does lives up to it's sonic superiority promise. Every cassette I put in sounded good, even those pre-recorded original tapes. The better the tape type, the better it sounded.

The Nakamichi DR-2 is a very nice addition to my hifi collection indeed and it enhances my cassette playback experience too. Simply love it!