Why isn't it surprising to see the words "dragon" and "devour" in the same
sentence?
(Joke.)
dl
andy kolovos wrote:
> Trey,
>
> I've only had our Dragon devour one tape, an older C-120. No surprise
> there, though.
>
> Rule #1 as I've come to understand--when getting a Dragon off Ebay it is
> a very good idea to have it overhauled by someone who knows what he/she
> is doing. I've had excellent experience with Electronics Service Labs
> in CT:
>
> http://www.eslabs.com/
>
> They are not cheap, but they're good. And they do mail order service.
>
> andy
>
> Trey Bunn wrote:
>> I have a Nakamichi Dragon cassette deck. This is the model with the
>> auto azimuth correction, and I noticed recently when playing some old
>> (25 years) tapes in it that the sound was mysteriously fluctuating
>> between the left and right channels, sometimes moving all the way over
>> to one channel and staying there. All the while, the blinking light
>> on the deck indicating its azimuth adjustment was working. If I
>> stopped the tape and started it again, the sound became normal for a
>> bit but then would start going strange. After taking the tape out and
>> looking at it, I saw that it was wrinkled, but I assumed that this was
>> the condition the tape was already in (as I said, these were old
>> tapes, many of which got wrinkled like that due to being played so
>> much and in various consumer brand machines).
>>
>> But today I played a much more recent tape and found the same problem,
>> and I realized that it's the deck itself that is chewing up the tapes.
>> Has anyone else had this problem with this model? I don't know if
>> it's just a deck that has crapped out on me (yes, I believe that is
>> the technical term...), or maybe if this is related to the
>> auto-adjusting "feature." (And yes, I know now that I should have
>> gotten the one with manual azimuth adjustment instead. But I didn't
>> also buy a time machine, so there's no way to fix that now.)
>>
>> When I was growing up with consumer brand tape recorders, this was
>> usually the point when I'd pronounce a machine dead and get a new one,
>> but I'm wondering if there's a way to repair this problem. This
>> Nakamichi deck was, after all, what these wacky kids these days would
>> call hella expensive. And because I bought it used off of eBay almost
>> a year ago, I doubt I can return it (especially because it worked fine
>> for months). Do electronics guys typically work on this problem and
>> have a way to fix it? Am I going to have to track down someone who
>> works specifically on Nakamichis? Will replacement parts be
>> impossible to find?
>>
>> This hasn't been a good day.
>>
>>
>> ------
>> Trey Bunn
>> Folklife Archivist
>> Alabama Department of Archives and History
>> Montgomery, AL
>> 334-353-4711
>>
>
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