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Nakamichi 550

Posted by Marantzguy (P) on November 21, 2005 at 18:00:48

In Reply to: Nakamichi 550 question posted by Pelican on November 17, 2005 at 23:57:22:

Hi, David:

Congratulations on your recent purchase of a Nakamichi 550.

I have owned one before and I wanted to say a few things about the deck from just a slightly different perspective.

First of all, not to sound too discouraging, but did you ever wonder why Nakamachi went out of the portable cassette manufacturing business?

The answer is simple:

The Nak 550 was perhaps one of the heaviest and most cumbersome cassette decks ever made. For a "portable", it weighed a ton and most of that weight was due to the batteries neeeded to power it.

Everything about the 550 was extremely "over-built". Have you opened it up yet to see how it is constructed? You will be amazed at the high quality of the parts in there and also will be astounded at the almost 50% of the space which was given over to hold just the batteries! The machine is a beast.

Portable it was, but only if you lifted weights for a hobby.

Even the shoulder strap is way over designed. I have been in Volvos which pale in comparison to what Nakamichi provided the user.

Other than this, it is a pretty cool collectible but not a deck I would in any way seriously consider using for good recordings on a portable basis.

Now, the answer to my question as to why Nakamichi quit manufacturing these "portable" decks (and I also include their Model 350):

Competition!

The answer is (ta da!) The Sony TCD-5M!

That is the deck which made Nak 550 users generally give up their beastly monsters for a much better performer (at least I have always kissed the ground on the basis of owning one!) When properly biased and equalized for a specific brand of tape and Dolby-calibrated, it is hard to beat. And, guess what? It is really quite a light machine and runs on only two batteries, as I seem to recall.

So, if you want a good portable deck which will give reliable results, get a TCD-5M or even a WDM-6, its little brother, which is also a great deck, provided that it is properly maintained.

Tapes made on these Sony decks will play properly on other brand decks and I have NOT had any problems getting a Dolby B tape to track on other decks.

I should end this note by saying that my Sony TCD-5M once belonged to an Ethnomusicologist who took it to France and to Asia. Carrying around a Nak 550 would kill a person or at least give someone a serious backache under such circumstances.

In any event, there is probably some need of re-lubricating some of the moving parts in your deck and perhaps some rubber wheels are in need of restoration, as well.

Dig those big beautiful meters and what can you say about the row of pushbuttons on the 550?

Neat!

Have fun

Richard Links
Links Sound
Berkeley, CA

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