Nakamichi 1000dat

Extra-rare digital recording deck, when DAT still was new, exciting and still had a bright future ahead... despite high retail prices and the then upcoming SCMS copy protection system.

Nakamichi, then heralded by brother Niro, produced few high-end items in the late 80s but made each really outstanding.
The 1000dat is the better known of these items and, for once, wasn't dressed in boring all-black fashion hiding the angular design intricacies but in shiny aluminium of the thick'n'heavy kind - beautiful.


Inside is plenty but the center wasn't developed by Nak' : the DAT drive came from ALPS/Alpine and can also be found in the Teac R-1 and quite a few others. Dubbed "FAST" by Nak', this drive allows to load the tape much faster with the help of a quicker loading arm and a simplified tape path ; the latter also allowed to FF/RW at 600x speed (as opposed to the 400x of Panasonic's RAA1001 drive used in the SV-DA10 or SV-4100). Also present are two dual fixed tape guides keeping the tape in its more-than-exact position when loaded.
The drive itself is a 4DD / 4heads with damped mechanical resonances - apparently not serviceable anymore nowadays...

Where the 1000dat really was new (if only for regular consumers), was with its a/d and d/a plug-in cards : six were made, ranging from analogue-only to digital or both or balanced (analogue) terminals. If they were mostly useful for the 1000p processor, one could actually turn the 1000dat into a player as it was originally delivered as a "drive" only !
The bit-war was still raging in 1989 and this system promised an absence of d/a obsolescence... At least in theory.

Nakamichi however spent a lot of research on the d/a and a/d circuits and came up with a very complex set which separated the digital signal in two, treated each separately, and summed the results up in the end within two 20bit / 8fs resolution ICs.
I won't go into details (quite tiring) but there's a multibit Digital ROM calibation attached to error detection (long-term temp stabilized, too), the split between the main 14bits and the lower 6, loops between all, 2bit margin room (20-16 = 4 ; 6-4 = 2 etc), dual PLL loops named "Digitlal Data Stabilizer" by Nak' and a "Glitch Eraser" to suppress the switching noises of all those bits and pieces, no sample/hold circuit but a load comparison loop - and more.

The enclosure is a biggaenormous diecast aluminium shell all copper-plated inside, an non-resonant Koffer housing a big toroidal trafo worthy of a powerful integrated amp.

The cute (but small) 32-point level meters are precision items, accurate to ±0,2dB (but small).
The 1000r remote is covered on its own page and so is the 1000pro version of the 1000dat.


Really - stuff only the pre-bubble bursting years could afford.

Nak' probably lost a lot on the 1000dat / 1000p / 1000r series.

Production run is unknown but should not exceed 2000 units.

I want one.



Real 1000dat here and here.