Which Nakamichi to choose?

I gave a ton of cassettes away when I concluded the medium was antiquated.

I did the exact same thing when I sold my Naka, also give away many sealed.

But I made a mistake by committing ingenuity, now the cassettes are sold at several dollars on new ebay or used especially if of high quality.

phil9624"It puzzles me that more vinyl folks don't seem to want to make a tape of a favorite LP"

What would be the point of such an excercise it is probable that the tape will wear out before the LP provided each is cared for in similar fashion with respect to the need of the specifix format to be stored properly for reliable archival retrieval.

Its the tapehead that will wear out. Thats what keeps me from playing background music all day with it. Use your tape player judiciously. Sadly it has an expiration date with its heads after being relapped on time. So make its time count. I wonder if ESL labs have any extra dragon heads they would want to sell. I think they will be sitting on them

@mickeyblu79 if CD-1 and DR-2 are the only choices you have then I recommend the CD-1 because CD-1 has manual PB head azimuth adjustment (ala CR-7). Personally I'm not a fan of  Nakamichi decks except for the 1000zxl. I've owned Dragon, ZX-7 and CR-7 and still own the 1000zxl but have not heard the CD-1 so not sure how it sounds. Of the lot  I previously owned ZX-7 is my favorite of the 3 I listed, followed by the Dragon and then the CR-7. The other very underrated Nak deck is the BX-300. It's nicknamed "baby" Dragon. It is that good, again in PB only. I don't have first hand experience on it's recording capabilities.

680ZX comes very close to 1000zxl sound in play back only, in recording 1000zxl is in a league of it's own. I still enjoy recording my vinyl to tape, both cassette and Reel to Reel. You'd be surprised how good a lowly compact cassette can sound if you have the right (read serviced and up to spec) deck. The downside is the cost of maintenance and tapes.