Nakamichi Dragon Tape Deck, Fully Restored and Amazing

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Working Dragons are becoming more and more difficult to find.

While legendary for the performance, they age over time and will eventually need service.

Servicing a tape deck of this complexity is particularly difficult. Truly a labor of love. Just getting the mechanism out is a long endeavor!

We're lucky to have a stash of some original Nakamichi spare parts, enough to do a handful of decks over the past year. (Sorry we don't sell parts or offer repairs so click here if that's what you need).

This particular unit received just that; a complete and thorough full service, official calibration, and in-depth post-restoration testing.

We also replaced each and every consumable component in need. Then this example was cleaned, lubricated, demagnetized, and fully tested for performance.

Condition is very good with very little signs of use.

* Please note two meter LED's (second from bottom) are out. These do not affect performance since they are right at the bottom.

** This listing is for the deck itself. We may also have one very rare and working original Nakamichi RM-200 wired remote control. If you'd like to add this to your order for an additional fee please call us before placing your order.

Some excellent related Nakamichi videos from our YouTube:

Click below to add our recommended matching cables from Kimber Kable, all brand new as SkyFi is an official Kimber dealer.

Kimber Kable - RCA Interconnects

Please see our last listing photos or the linked items below for full specifications and details on this incredible vintage tape deck:

Nakamichi DRAGON Tape Deck - Original Sales Brochure

Nakamichi DRAGON Tape Deck - Manual

More from its dedicated Wikipedia entry:

The Nakamichi Dragon is an audio cassette deck that was introduced by Nakamichi in 1982 and marketed until 1994.

The Dragon was the first Nakamichi model with bidirectional replay capability and the world's first production tape recorder with an automatic azimuth correction system; this feature, which was invented by Philips engineers and improved by Niro Nakamichi, continuously adjusts the azimuth of the replay head to minimize apparent head skew and correctly reproduce the treble signal present on the tape.

The system allows the correct reproduction of mechanically skewed cassettes and recordings made on misaligned decks.

Apart from the Dragon, similar systems have only been used in the Nakamichi TD-1200 car cassette player and the Marantz SD-930 cassette deck.

At the time of its introduction, the Dragon had the lowest-ever wow and flutter and the highest-ever dynamic range, losing marginally to the former Nakamichi flagship the 1000ZXL in frequency response.

Competing models by Sony, Studer, Tandberg and TEAC that were introduced later in the 1980's sometimes surpassed the Dragon in mechanical quality and feature set but none could deliver the same mix of sound quality, flexibility and technological advancement.

The Dragon, despite inherent issues with long-term reliability, remained the highest point of compact cassette technology.