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Top 10 vintage cassette decks

Howdy folks!

Would like to add an excellent vintage cassette deck to my setup. Luxman PD444  and Victor TT-101 make up my vintage vinyl setup. It would be cool to include a badass old timer cassette deck don't ya think. Also researching 70's, 80's R2R's. There's another thread on that one. Anyway, I appreciate your knowledge and experience with a killer top ten vintage cassette deck. Bam!

knollbrent

Showing 2 responses by inna

inna
7,923 posts
 

I think I saw ZX-9 on Reverb for about $5k. It will take at least $1k cables and Maxell Vertex tapes, currently about $250 a piece, to sound its best. Anyone wants this ? 

inna
7,923 posts
 

Even though I use aligned and calibrated by a pro Nak 682ZX with Maxell Vertex tapes on an almost daily basis, I do not recommend spending a lot on any cassette deck, including relatively high cost of maintenance. I think, 682ZX and ZX-7 are audiophile best values. 1000ZXL is a masterpiece, ZX-9 is excellent.

Yes, some say that Tandberg 3014A was the very best of them all.

My Nak has served me well for over 20 years but I really take care of it.

Oh, and I use $2600 cables with it, by the way. Yeah, I tried everything starting with Nakamichi cables, then going up Purist Audio line to Neptune, and finally settled on Wywires Diamond. It did take 20 years. I use Diamonds with phono too.

Anyway, if you want great performance - go for two track R2R.

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