Nakamichi MR-1b
The Nakamichi MR-1b is a quiet overachiever in the company's cassette deck lineup. It delivered much of the performance of Nakamichi's flagship 1000/700 series and the Dragon, at a much more accessible price. It was the improved successor to the original MR-1, and sat above the MR-2 and MR-3 in the MR series. As one owner put it, in its day there weren't many Nakamichi decks in this price range. If you wanted genuinely good performance, you were otherwise looking at the 1000, the 700, or a Dragon.
The MR-1b is built around a quartz-locked, dual-capstan transport that Nakamichi called the CRT-3. It's the same mechanism family used in the 480, 580, and 680 models. The dual-capstan approach gives the deck its "naturally balanced" tape handling without the added complexity of Nakamichi's more elaborate mechanisms. Owners do note the transport is a bit more involved to service than a simple single-capstan design. It's a three-head machine with a Nakamichi-designed playback-only head. It has user-accessible bias and record-level trimmers, plus a calibration oscillator for fine-tuning recordings. The transport is driven by dual Hall motors.
Stereo Review published a test report on the MR-1b, and the measurements have aged well: wow and flutter measured at 0.03%, frequency response at 35 Hz–20 kHz ±3 dB, and signal-to-noise at 72 dB (weighting basis not specified in the surviving record). Those figures, cited decades later, earned the deck an “excellent” rating from the publication (Stereo Review, via Hi-Fi Engine). Forum owners echo that assessment, describing the MR-1 (and by extension the MR-1b) as an excellent-sounding deck that, in good condition with a good tape loaded, always delivers great sound. The honest caveat from the same community: it was something of a stopgap in Nakamichi’s broader lineup, and by modern standards it isn’t the highest-performing cassette deck ever made.
Documentation on the MR-1b is thin. No production years have surfaced, and neither has an original price for the "b" revision specifically (the original MR-1 was around $500, though the source wording is ambiguous about whether that figure carries over). No dimensions or weight have turned up either. What the "b" revision actually changed relative to the MR-1 isn't recorded in the available material.
Known specifications:
- Three-head configuration with Nakamichi-designed playback-only head
- Quartz-locked dual-capstan transport (CRT-3 mechanism, shared with 480/580/680 series)
- Dual Hall motors, logic transport
- Calibration oscillator with user-accessible bias and record-level trimmers
- Wow and flutter: 0.03% (per Stereo Review test report)
- Frequency response: 35 Hz–20 kHz ±3 dB (per Stereo Review)
- Signal-to-noise: 72 dB (per Stereo Review)
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