Nakamichi

Company profile

Founded in 1948 by Etsuro Nakamichi as a research institute in Tokyo.
In the 50s they manufactured reel-to-reel tape recorders for other suppliers, in 1957 they built their own sound heads and the first own tape recorder.
1967 then cassette devices for other suppliers, among others for Fisher, Elac, harman/kardon, Sansui.
In 1973, the company launched its own cassette machines with the Nakamichi 700 and 1000 types with rearband control/3 heads.
Around 1978 came the 58x decks with test tone generator and bias adjustment, where the tone head misalignment (azimuth) could be manually corrected. This feature was also available on ZX-7 and ZX-9 (1982). Further preamplifiers, power amplifiers and receivers were added to the range.
In 1982 the Dragon appeared, which could automatically compensate the tone head misalignment (azimuth) via servo motors and was built until 1993.
1984 the high-end turntable TX-1000 with probably unique record centering, which cost the proud price of more than four (!) of the ultimate cassette machines Dragon. For the professional sector, the deck MR-1 was offered.
By the late 1980s, the Nakamichi range also included tuners and CD players. Further, the company also entered the car hifi sector.
By 1990, Nakamichi also had a DAT recorder - named the Nakamichi 1000 in reference to the first cassette recorder - and a DA converter, the 1000p. DAT was conceived as a successor to the compact cassette, but did not find desirable use.
Around 1991, Nakamichi showed its MusicBank system: CD changers that were not outwardly recognizable as such, e.g. the CDPlayer 2. This belonged with Receiver1 - Receiver3, CassetteDeck 1/1.5 and CassetteDeck 2 to a series of units with a novel design, which were also available in silver.
In 1993, Nakamichi withdrew from the European market. Nevertheless, the DR cassette deck series (DR-1 with azimuth adjustment of the playback head) appeared.
In 1997, The Grande Holdings, which had acquired Sansui in 1989 and Akai in 1998, took over the company (see Wikipedia article/link).
However, in 1999, Nakamichi DVD players, AV receivers AV-1/2 and the stereo receiver RE-10 were available on the German market. Of the DR cassette decks, DR-2/3 revived as the DR-8/10, albeit now manufactured in Malaysia.
In 2002, the first Gesamtanlage Soundspace.
In 2014, they attempted a re-entry into high-end individual components with the 7.1 AV1/AVP-1 pre/power amp combination.
In 2017, Nakamichi-USA introduced a 7.1 soundbar and the Edge wireless headphones.

Products

• Audio Analyzer
• A/V Receiver
• CD Player
• CD Changer
• DAT Recorder
• D/A Converter
• DVD player
• Power Amplifier
• Total Systems
• cassette decks
• Headphones
• speakers
• record player
• Noise Reduction
• Receiver
• Pickup
• Tuner
• Amplifier
• Preamplifier
• Preamplifier Tuner/Preceiver

Web links

• English homepage
• Wikipedia entry Nakamichi
• Hifi Studio website entry (archive link)
• Naks.com: Shows under "Naks" pictures of very many Nakamichi devices,
• Informative is also audiodata.com [English].
• Nakamichi catalogue 1988, other Nakamichi catalogues: hifi-archiv.info;
• DAT at German Wikipedia
• Nakamichi report just considering early 90s units, at hifi-classic-reparatur.de dated 2 April 2014, retrieved 17 December 2017.
• English Wikipedia goes into more detail about the contexts that caused trouble for Nakamichi,
• report at www.fascinatingtech.com dated 30 June 2014, retrieved 13 April 2020.