About the Company
Nakamichi was an early Japanese reel‑to‑reel manufacturer in the 1950s–60s, but it abandoned open‑reel and became world‑famous instead for high‑end cassette decks from the 1970s onward.
Origins and early reel-to-reel phase
Etsuro Nakamichi founded Nakamichi Research Corporation in 1948 as a small Tokyo research lab focused on magnetic recording technology for other companies.
In the early 1950s it developed one of the first Japanese open‑reel tape recorders under the Magic Tone label (around 1951), followed shortly by its own Fidela‑branded reel‑to‑reel decks.
Magic Tone and Fidela models
A specialist directory notes that Nakamichi marketed two early recorders: Magic Tone (c.1951) and a family of Fidela machines, making it one of Japan’s earliest RTR producers.
Documented Fidela models include: 11, 22, 33, 55, Studio 77, Studio 77D, Studio 300D, Studio 300DS, 720, 780, 807, Gem Sonic 807, 860, 920, and 960, covering mono and stereo, consumer and “studio”‑oriented variants.
Tape-head manufacturing and OEM work
By 1957 Nakamichi had developed and started manufacturing its own magnetic tape heads, giving it strong competence in head design and production.
On the strength of this, from 1967 the company became an OEM supplier of cassette and open‑reel decks to foreign brands such as Harman Kardon, KLH, Advent, Fisher, ELAC, Sylvania, Concord, Ampex, and Motorola, often with Nakamichi‑built mechanisms hidden behind other badges.
Transition away from reel-to-reel
With the rise of the compact cassette (introduced 1964), Nakamichi increasingly bet on cassette rather than continuing its own branded open‑reel line.
From about 1973 it launched its famous three‑head cassette decks (1000 and 700), whose performance was explicitly positioned as rivaling or approaching reel‑to‑reel quality, marking a clear strategic shift away from further RTR development under the Nakamichi name.
Place in reel-to-reel history
Historically, Nakamichi is important as one of the first Japanese firms to build open‑reel recorders (Magic Tone, Fidela series) and as a key OEM supplier of tape mechanisms and heads, even though its own RTR line remained relatively obscure.
The company’s lasting reputation, however, rests on cassette: after the early 1970s, its engineering resources went into high‑end cassette decks (1000, Dragon, 1000ZXL, etc.), and it effectively exited the open‑reel market, leaving only its 1950s–60s Fidela/Magic Tone legacy for reel‑to‑reel collectors to chase.