![]() The 600 cost £350, no small sum for any piece of hi-fi, let alone a cassette deck. It was available in a choice of silver or black finished brushed aluminium, and had an optional perspex dust cover. A stylish new ‘ski-slope’ fascia – surely inspired by Mario Bellini’s stunning Yamaha TC-800GL from 1974 – completed the picture. The 500 was relatively short lived, for it was soon replaced by the 600 you see before you, which ushered in near-1000 levels of build and performance from a redesigned 2 head transport. First was the 500 Dual Tracer, bringing a two head transport for the first time, and the accompanying 550 ‘Versatile Cassette System’ which was essentially a portable version and some say the first real ‘walkman’. In 1974, two new machines joined the fray. This stunning bit of kit was partnered with the 700 Tri-Tracer, a downsized but only slightly sonically inferior machine offering Nakamichi sound to a few more buyers. The motors, transport and heads were all bespoke items that you simply couldn’t find anywhere else – even an Aiwa OEM parts catalogue. The answer was the machine’s supreme engineering depth – everything had been designed up to a performance level, rather than down to a price. This was impressive, but it didn’t explain the stunning sound. The 1000 was a three head, dual capstan, two motor machine running Dolby B noise reduction and DNL (Dynamic Noise Limiting). The fact that it used tiny tape running at a measly one and seven eighth inches per second was mind boggling – how could Nakamichi squeeze a quart out of the proverbial pint pot? Accepted audio wisdom just couldn’t have predicted it… Suddenly cassette was a credible, high fidelity music carrier, capable of mixing it with the top reel-to-reel decks of the day. It’s hard to understate the importance of this company to audio’s great pantheon – the 1000 went in and ‘scorched the earth’, changing everything. But then Nakamichi launched the 1000 Tri Tracer and the world would never be the same again… Serious tape users had Revoxes – specifically the A77 – or one of a growing number of top notch Japanese decks from the likes of Sony, Akai or Technics. The idea that it could offer real hi-fi performance was laughable. Back in 1973, Compact Cassette was still viewed as a mere convenience medium, designed by Philips a decade previous for dictation purposes only.
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