Hi Trey!
We just had a Dragon serviced here: http://www.eslabs.com/index.htm
They are pricey. If you have the money it is well worth it and you
get a 2 year warranty on the deck.
If you want more details about the repair email me privately.
I am not affiliated with this company.
Erik
Notre Dame Archives
At 11:53 AM 2/8/2007, you 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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