Nakamichi Dragon - SUPERDRAGON

Auto Azimuth LED Display

Nakamichi Dragon has neat feature the Automatic Azimuth of playback heads allowing perfect adjustment of heads angel to any imperfect recorded tape on any different cassette recorder. Perfect Heads azimuth of recording means a best playback quality of high frequencies and most dynamic sound, a specially with any noise reduction system like Dolby B or C.

Despite of efforts of perfect alignment of recording and playback heads in every tape recorders, there is always some imperfection in various decks caused by heads and drive mechanism wear. That is why Automatic Azimuth is so important feature.

The Dragon has Automatic Azimuth Mechanism installed deep in a center of the body. The indicator on this device has the little "flag", mechanically moving left or right from center point, depends of tape azimuth. It is only visible with top cover off, and it is only used for tune up purposes. The front directional Arrows indicators were design to blink when Auto Azimuth was tunning to new tape and after process is completed, there is no clue how good the tape was recorded and how big was a deviation of heads on recording deck.

Here is a Demo how it works:

That is a test playback of the tape recorded on different cassette recorded with misaligned head. The light LED indicator corresponds to the " azimuth flag" movement inside Dragon's Auto Azimuth mechanism.

I decided to install extra LED Bar Display in the window of cassette compartment to be visible from any direction and do not destroy original look.

I used multicolor LED Bargraph Display HDSP-4836 made by HP as a display indicator of Auto Azimuth.

The display was installed inside of cassette compartment and all wires were safely glued to the cassette holder frame. To be able operate cassette holder freely, some little cuts inside the plastic frame are necessary to hide wires for LED Display.

As seen on picture above wires are glued to the front of cassette holder and white LED lights are installed for cassette compartment illumination. The front flap cover is off.

The electronic control board schematic is available on line in My Store as the supplement to the Nakamichi Service Manual . That Service Manual contains extra schematics like belt replacement view and ANT4066 modifications by A.N.T Audio.