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Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats. |
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Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats. |
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In Reply to: Nakamichi 550 question posted by Pelican on November 17, 2005 at 23:57:22:
Getting the deck serviced by a Nak expert is the best idea but you can
try these things:1. Get another cassette deck to do your fast winding. The fast wind
speed on a 550 is quite slow in comparision to most other decks. You
can pick up a used deck with a good transport on eBay for not much
money.2. Make sure to tighten up all slack tape by hand. If you don't like
using your fingers, a pair of old-fashioned wooden pencils works quite
well.3. When you insert a tape, push the cassette and the ejector plate
down slowly with your fingers rather than by pushing the door. Make
sure that both spindles are properly engaged with the splines between
the pegs on the cassette reels.Having used a 550 to tape concerts for many years, there are a few
other things I can tell you about it.1. Keep the pinch roller fresh. Apply some MG Chemicals Rubber Renue
or a similar product with a swab to remove the oxidized rubber. (You
can also use lacquer thinner, which is what offset press operators use
to keep their rubber rollers fresh.) At first, the swab will come away
black with oxidized rubber. As you turn it, the amount of black coming
off will diminish. Watch the surface of the pinch roller and stop when
all the shine is gone. You will never get a perfectly clean swab
because you'll be removing live rubber, not dead.2. Get used to the idea of opening up the deck and learn where the
bias pots are. They're clearly marked if I remember correctly. Being
able to bias the deck yourself will save you a LOT of money. I posted
something about how to do this a while back.3. The record level meters on a 550 are quite deceptive. You pretty
much have to the pin them at +5 to get the best performance out of it.
Experiment with it until you get a feel for where different sounds
begin to oversaturate. You won't believe how much headroom it has.4. Although the s/n ratio of a 550 isn't all that great, don't record
with Dolby B unless you absolutely need it. Even though I used the
built-in calibration tone generator fastidiously, I've had a heck of a
time trying to get proper Dolby playback calibration when playing 550
tapes on another Nakamichi cassette deck, including a Dragon. There
was something different about the Dolby codec on a 550.5. Don't even try to play back a 550 tape on a different brand of
cassette deck. It will sound like crap. The record head gap on a 550
is extremely narrow and requires a similar playback head. The reverse
is not true. A 550 can play back pretty much anything.6. If you're recording live music, don't waste time experimenting with
the "blend mike" center channel. It does nothing other than to reduce
your stereo image.I'll probably think of more things later.
Barry
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Follow Ups
- Re: Nakamichi 550 question - Barry Rogoff 08:33:28 11/21/05 (0)
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