First impressions

[efung]

efung:
I bought an excellent condition Nakamichi cassette deck DR-1 a few years ago. I recapped the electrolytic caps and replaced all the NJM opamps except the one for the headphone output with very good and pricey opamps. How do I use the cassette tape deck? Recording vinyl records!

I owned a Dragon in the late 80's. The best cassette deck ever. Had a Tascam as well. So maintaining the signal in analog is the way to go. But where do you get blank TDK or Maxell cassette tapes?

hifinet, Dragon has the best mechanical drive system; much lower wow & flutter. But, it is difficult to maintain. I made an offer to an Audiogon seller a few years ago to buy a Dragon with contingency that the deck must be fully functional. The seller did not come back to me. After that, I bought 2 DR-1 from ebay sellers. The DR-1 is easy to maintain and upgrade. I bought many FUJI ZII and DENON HD8 tapes from ebay a few years ago. These are type-II tapes. Denon HD8 is the best non-metal type. I have an Ortofon LOMC (0.09mV output) with a DIY 30x gain step up transformer. My tube phono EQ AMP is housed in a 2U steel chassis. In addition to the rotary input selector, I installed an old fashion flip switch for tape source input/monitor. Just for your information, if the design is done properly, modern delta-sigma DAC chip like PCM5122 and AK4493 grade can play back sound in detail almost as good as my analog playback system.