I'm a big fan of the pre-AI Nikkor as well, I've got the last, multi-coated version with AI cosmetics (often seen advertised as an AI lens as it was available from the factory with the AI conversion already installed). It's an absolutely superb portrait lens and does very well for general short and mid distance shooting. It doesn't have the cross-frame sharpness to do really well at longer distances though.
There are three versions of this lens. The Nikkor-H (Single-coated, old-fashioned cosmetics), Nikkor-H.C (Multi-coated, old-fashioned cosmetics) and the Nikkor 'K' version (Multi-coated, new cosmetics, labeled only as a 'Nikkor') which is what I have.