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Gramdeck Tape Recorder, 1959 (Manual)
The pre-amp is a sight to behold as well. It’s built inside what
appears to be a small brown biscuit tin, but the really interesting thing about
it is that is one of the very first consumer electronics products made in the
UK to use transistors, three Ediswan XB102s, which look like tiny black top
hats. Setting it up is quite a palaver and you have to glue or screw a
mounting pillar to your record player, to stop it spinning round. Once in
place, and with the tape threaded – you need three hands for this – you have to
spin up the record player then when you reckon it’s going fast enough, flip a
lever to engage the pressure roller/pinch wheel to start the tape moving.
Rewinding involves more faffing around, and fitting a small handle with a hole
in it (for your finger) to the spool, then you have to twiddle furiously. The
instructions wax lyrical about the possibilities of making recordings from the
wireless or a microphone, it even delves into the intricacies of editing,
brilliant stuff! What Happened To It? Alas the Gramdeck had only a relatively short life as proper reel-to-reel tape recorders became more affordable. I am not sure when it finally disappeared but by the mid 1960s the Compact Cassette had started to take over the home recording market rendering products like the Gramdeck virtually obsolete (not that there were many...). Neverthless, quite a few were made, and a surprising number of them seem to have survived. I found this Gramdeck on ebay a few weeks ago, it cost me a very
reasonable £15, plus postage; they usually sell for quite a bit more so this
was a real bargain. It’s virtually complete, and in fantastic condition, only
the mounting pillar is missing – presumably still attached to a record player
somewhere, but it’s easy enough to cobble up a replacement. The pre-amp was in
its original box, another bonus, and everything works; it even came with the
original sales leaflet and a copy of the instructions, which
you can see in the manuals archive.
GIZMO GUIDE First seen:
1959 Original Price
£13.12s 0d (£13.60) Value Today?
£30 Features: Record from radio or microphone, 4 speed (7.5, 4.33, 3.2 16 inches per second, dependent on turntable speed – 78, 45, 33.3 & 16.6rpm), up to 5-inch spool size, wow and flutter 0.15%, record replay 60 – 10,000cps (cycles per second = Hz in new money) Power req.
9 volt Ever Ready PP9 Weight: 0.7 kg (preamp 0.6kg ex battery) Dimensions:
320 x 170 x 48 mm (preamp 150 x
110 x 115mm) Made in:
England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 8 Craig TR-408 Miniature Tape
Recorder
The controls are very simple, sliding switches on the side turn the single drive motor on and off, and select forward and rewind modes. A switch on the front sets record or playback mode and there are thumbwheels on the side and top for controlling volume and replay speed. Connections to the outside world are via a row of three minijacks for microphone (with remote stop function) and an earphone, and it has its own built in 2-inch speaker. As usual on machines of this type there is no erase head, as such, instead a small permanent magnet swings in to wipe the tape when it is in record mode. These little machines are superbly well built, but the innards are densely packed and a nightmare to fix if there’s been a major fault. One very common problem is corrosion due to leaky batteries, and this one hasn’t escaped Scott-free, though the damage was relatively minor, and easily fixed. Apart from that all this one needed was a few drops of oil and light grease on the hubs, motor bearings and selector mechanism and it was up and running. Normally the electrolytic capacitors on the amplifier board need replacing, though unusually on this one they were all okay. What Happened to it?Although the TR408 was a cut above the usual 60s mini tape recorder it was still a bit of a toy and not really up to serious recording. Nevertheless, it was okay for speech and a lot were sold to US armed forces personnel, for keeping in touch with the folks back home. Even so, tiny, fiddly reel-to-reel tapes just couldn’t compete with the compact cassette, which, was really starting to take off by the late 60s. Not many of these machines have survived and good examples are very collectible indeed. This one, bought on ebay for £10 from a US seller was a real find as it also came with its original leather carry case and microphone, both of them in good condition. If you see a really clean one in its original box grab it! GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1969 Original
Price
£25 Value Today? £50 Features:
2.5 inch reels, rim drive, Play/Rew, variable speed, vol, mic,
eph, rem, carry handle, carry case Power req.
4 x AA
Weight: 0.8kg Dimensions: 145 x 95 x 55mm Made in: Japan Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Fi-Cord 101 Tape Recorder, 1963
It’s a fine piece of
engineering, using tiny 2-inch reels, driven by a sophisticated capstan
mechanism, powered by a precision speed-governed motor, coupled to the deck by
a single belt. The only small concession to economy is a permanent magnet erase
head; otherwise it’s a really high quality design, built on an all-metal chassis.
Power comes from a pair or AA cells, which is quite unusual on a device that
old since, as I recall, they were quite a new thing back in the early 60s. It
has an impressive array of features, including the built-in microphone and
speaker (the cylindrical object below the take-up reel, it also has a simple
mechanical counter and the clever push-button controls provide both fast
forward and rewind functions, though they’re quite tricky to master and avoid
spewing tape all over the place. What Happened To
It? During the early 1960s the highly specialised dictating machine market rapidly embraced the much more convenient compact cassette, and later the micro-cassette, and ingenious as the 101 was, it just couldn’t compete with the fiddle and fuss-free tape format. By the end of the sixties tiny open reel to reel machines like this had all but disappeared This one came from ebay and it was a real bargain at £25, a fraction of what I would have expected it to sell for – they are quite rare, especially in good condition and I have seen them going for more than £100. This one also came with its original leather carry case and some spare tapes, all of which are in as-new condition. The icing on the cake is the fact that it still works, though with a tape speed of 1 7/8th inch per second audio quality is only suitable for speech and the volume level through the ‘speaker’ is very low – it’s meant to be used with headphones. Apart form a simple clean up it worked straight out of the box, and shows every sign of being good for another 40 years at least. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1963 Original
Price
£60 Value Today? £100 Features:
Record, Replay, Fast Forward, Rewind,
tape counter, built-in microphone and speaker, 2-inch spools 1/4-inch tape
running at 1 7/8th inch per second Power req. 2 x AA cells Weight: 0.7kg Dimensions: 150 x 85 x 43mm Made in: Switzerland Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 8
Craig TR-408 Miniature Tape
Recorder
The controls are very simple, sliding switches on the side turn the single drive motor on and off, and select forward and rewind modes. A switch on the front sets record or playback mode and there are thumbwheels on the side and top for controlling volume and replay speed. Connections to the outside world are via a row of three minijacks for microphone (with remote stop function) and an earphone, and it has its own built in 2-inch speaker. As usual on machines of this type there is no erase head, as such, instead a small permanent magnet swings in to wipe the tape when it is in record mode. These little machines are superbly well built, but the innards are densely packed and a nightmare to fix if there’s been a major fault. One very common problem is corrosion due to leaky batteries, and this one hasn’t escaped Scott-free, though the damage was relatively minor, and easily fixed. Apart from that all this one needed was a few drops of oil and light grease on the hubs, motor bearings and selector mechanism and it was up and running. Normally the electrolytic capacitors on the amplifier board need replacing, though unusually on this one they were all okay. What Happened to it?Although the TR408 was a cut above the usual 60s mini tape recorder it was still a bit of a toy and not really up to serious recording. Nevertheless, it was okay for speech and a lot were sold to US armed forces personnel, for keeping in touch with the folks back home. Even so, tiny, fiddly reel-to-reel tapes just couldn’t compete with the compact cassette, which, was really starting to take off by the late 60s. Not many of these machines have survived and good examples are very collectible indeed. This one, bought on ebay for £10 from a US seller was a real find as it also came with its original leather carry case and microphone, both of them in good condition. If you see a really clean one in its original box grab it! GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1969 Original
Price
£25 Value Today? £50 Features:
2.5 inch reels, rim drive, Play/Rew, variable speed, vol, mic,
eph, rem, carry handle, carry case Power req.
4 x AA
Weight: 0.8kg Dimensions: 145 x 95 x 55mm Made in: Japan Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 6
Tinico Tape Recorder 1963?
I’m not aware of the Tinico ever appearing on the big (or small screen) but that does nothing to diminish my admiration for this remarkable little gadget. It’s quite possibly the smallest reel-to-reel tape recorder ever to go into production. Yes, there were even smaller machines but these were never available to the public – real spy stuff -- or they were toys, dummies or props that didn’t work. To give you an idea of how small it is that’s an ordinary matchbox next to it, and the specially made reels containing standard 1/4-inch tape, are just 4.5cm across. The machine is only 16cm long and it fits comfortably into the palm of your hand. It uses a simple rim-drive mechanism so recording quality isn’t very good, in fact it’s piss-poor, but it could be used as a dictating machine, or for covert recording and there is enough tape to last for around 20 – 30 minutes. I haven’t been able to find any significant references to it so if anyone knows more about its origins or exact age I would be very pleased to hear from you. The mechanism is push-button controlled – quite sophisticated for the time -- and it is powered by 2 AA cells and a 9-volt battery. There’s not enough room for a speaker (see the Star-Lite Pocket Mate variant), and the simple 2-transistor amplifier is used to drive an earphone; there is no volume control. The same 3.5mm minijack socket is also used for a microphone when recording. The tape transport functions are Play/Record and Rewind, a simple permanent magnet is used to erase the tape before recording; this swings into contact with the tape when the recording button is pressed. I don’t think it was in production for very long and these machines are extremely rare. I have been after one for several years and they only come up on ebay once or twice a year, which is where I bought this one. I paid what I consider to be a very fair price for it (around £75 with shipping); on a good day with two or more determined bidders it might have fetched twice as much. It was sold as-seen and had a couple of small faults but they didn’t take too long to fix and after a quick oil change it was up and running. Cosmetically it is in excellent condition and apart from some slight wear on the name badge on the transparent cover it looks like new. What Happened to it? By the late 1960s reel to reel tape recorders had started to disappear as the Compact Cassette, introduced by Philips in 1963, gained its foothold in the home recording market. At the time miniature tape recorders were mostly either high quality dictating machines, or toys; this one is somewhere in between but the lack of a speaker and relatively poor recording quality almost certainly limited its appeal at the time. Tiny tape recorders live on in the shape of micro-cassette
dictating machines, though these are gradually being replaced by digital voice
recorders, but no matter how small or clever they become, they can’t even begin
to compete with the quirky and erratic charm of little machines like these and
I doubt very much that many of them will still be working in 40 years time. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1963? Original
Price
£20 (a complete guess) Value Today? £100 Features:
Play, Record, Rewind Stop buttons,
headphone/microphone jack Weight: 0.3kg Dimensions: 160 x 60 x 65mm Made in: Japan Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 9 Kyoto S600 8-Track Player 1970?
The natural home for the
8-track player was in the dashboard of a car but a few, like this Kyoto S600
were designed for home use, and the slightly kinder environment did mean the
tapes lasted a little longer, but not much… This player is about as basic as they come with just the standard track change button, four track indicator lamps, volume, tone and balance controls. It is mains powered and the only other connections to the outside world is a headphone jack on the front, and two phono sockets on the back, for connection to a pair of small speakers. There’s no on/off switch, pushing a cartridge into the slot turns it on. It’s housed in a real wood case (well, laminated chipboard...) and a little label on the back boasts 12 transistors and 8 diodes. It really works, though the track change mechanism could probably do with an overhaul, and the case needs a good polish but even after all these years the sound is surprisingly good on the small handful of cartridges I have in my collection, though, because of their age I’m reluctant to play them too often. What Happened to it? The big problem with 8-track
cartridges was the single-reel ‘endless loop design, which puts a lot of strain
on the tape, and the drive mechanism, but it’s big advantage over cassette was
that there was no need to rewind the tape, and you could switch tracks (4 x
stereo) at the press of a button, though without any means to fast-forward or
rewind you usually had to wait to hear a favourite tune come around. I haven’t been able to find out much about the Kyoto brand, which sounds Japanese but the ‘Made in’ label on the back says Taiwan. I suspect it quietly disappeared in the 1980’s, especially if manufacturing 8-track players was its only business because that’s when the format finally died out.
8-Track lingered on in the US for a few years but it was killed by the smaller, cheaper, more convenient and yes, more reliable compact cassette. 8-Track never had any real impact on the home hi-fi market so players like this are probably quite rare. This one was found at an antiques fare and it cost £15 with half a dozen cartridges, of which two actually worked. This is definitely a technology worth collecting, prices are still very low and if you can get hold of some tapes home players like this one are fun to play around with. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1970? Original
Price
£25? Value Today? £15 Features:
Volume, Tone, Balance and Track change
button, 12 transistors, 8 diodes, headphone jack and speaker output Weight: 2.8kg Dimensions: 260 x 230 x 110mm Made in: Taiwan Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Philips EL3302 Cassette Recorder 1968
Two thumbwheels on the side
control output volume and recoding level and beside them is a bank of sockets,
for the supplied microphone, line input and output and an external speaker.
This was, perhaps the most annoying aspect of this machine in that it used DIN
type sockets, rather than the near universal Jack connectors used on virtually
every other audio device at the time. Philips and its then partners Grundig
stuck grimly with DIN connectors until well into the 80s, much to everyone’s
annoyance… This was a mono machine –
stereo cassettes were still some way off
-- and the sound through the built in speaker wasn’t very good but hook
it up to an external speaker or a hi-fi system and it didn’t sound half bad.
Build quality was excellent and the only thing to go wrong was the rubber drive
belt, but these were (and still are) cheap and readily obtainable. What Happened To It? The EL3302 and its many variants were produced until the early 70s when they were replaced with much cheaper (and nastier designs) and eventually this type of large portable or table top cassette recorder gradually declined in popularity as the personal ‘Walkman’ style of player took off and cassette decks were integrated into stereo systems and car radios. After almost 45 years the cassette is now dying out, a remarkable achievement for such a simple technology, and it will be sorely missed, even if it was noisy and unreliable. Recorders like the EL3302 are very thin on the ground now and could become a very decent investment, especially if you can find one in good condition, with its original leather carry case and microphone. GIZMO GUIDE First seen: 1968 Original
Price
£18 Value Today? £10 Features:
Fast forward and rewind modes,
level/battery meter Weight: 0.4kg Dimensions: 200 x 115 x 55mm Made in: Austria Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 5
Until the early 1960s
most tape recorders were found not in the home, but in offices where they were
used as dictating machines. Grundig has been a major
player in this market and over the years has produced some highly innovative
designs, usually based around clever and exotic cassette formats. It’s worth
remembering that before the Philips Compact Cassette took off in the mid 1960s
there were scores of cassette systems in use. This particular model uses
a Cassette 30 pack, is a single-track design that only works in one direction,
as it were, and unlike a reel-to-reel tape or cassette it cannot be turned
over. The tape has to be fully rewound, whereupon it can be used again. It’s an
ingenious design, though, and the end of the tape is attached to a tab, which
slots into a notch on the fixed take-up reel; when the cassette is removed the
tab clips to the edge of the cassette, so it won’t get lost inside. The Grundig Memorette is a bit of a odd-ball design, half cassette, half reel-to-reel, but it’s role as a dictating machine is in no doubt, as can be seen by the chunky styling, idiot-proof controls and features like the linear time-readout meter, showing how much tape had been used, and how much remains. It’s also a portable machine, powered by a battery pack containing three DEAC packs. Incidentally DEAC (Deutsche Edison-Akkumulatoren Company, now owned by Varta Batteries) were pioneers in nickel cadmium rechargeable battery technology back in the 60s, but that’s another story. It’s superbly well built and the mechanical components are a good example of German precision engineering. The electronic too are a sight to behold with the innards dominated by a large printed circuit board sporting pairs of OC71 and the rare 0C74 germanium transistors. This particular example is in excellent condition and almost certainly works, though the re-chargeable pack has long since expired and until I can find a circuit diagram, to find out what its voltage requirements are I’m reluctant to power it up. What Happened To It It’s a toss-up whether
electric typewriters and word processors or the Compact Cassette consigned
dictating machines to the dustbin of history. True, you can still buy
voice-recorders, but this weighty machine and its ilk belongs to a bygone era,
of secretaries and typing pools, when it would have been unheard of for a boss
or middle manager to actually master the complexities of a typewriter. Dictating machines were
usually high quality items and expensive too, they were also made in
comparatively small numbers so they are fairly rare. Nevertheless this is a
largely unexplored sector of the collectible electronics market and there are
still some real bargains to be had, but maybe not for much longer… GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1968 Original
Price
£100.00 Value Today? £10.00 Features:
Cassette tape, record, playback, remote
control, retractable carry handle Weight: 2.8kg Dimensions: 150 x 260 x 80 mm Made in: Germany Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 5 Talkboy Cassette Tape Recorder 1990
Following the film’s
release a lot of people asked where they could buy the fictitious toy, so Tiger
Electronics in Japan licensed the design from 20th Century Fox and made it a
reality. It quickly became very popular, despite the high price. Sales were
spurred on by a clever ad campaign showing kids using the machine’s voice-changing
slomo mode for various pranks. Tiger also went on to develop a pink version
called the Talkgirl. Technically it’s nothing
special, just a fairly ordinary cheapo cassette recorder but very cleverly
packaged, with an extending microphone and the half speed switch on the
handgrip. This one is in great shape
and it’s a runner; it was discovered at a boot sale a few years ago selling for
a fiver (bargained down to £3.00). There’s not much to go wrong with them but
as with all battery powered gadgets condition is everything. Any corrosion in
the battery compartment is a very bad sign; the corrosive chemicals can damage
internal components, making the device practically worthless. What Happened to It? As with most toys this
one’s lifespan would have been fairly short. Most will have been broken or
thrown away within a year or two of purchase, moreover, because of the fairly
high price it’s unlikely many were sold in the UK. Boxed Talkboys in good condition are
fairly thin on the ground and they have been spotted on ebay selling for as
much as £50, though £10 to £15 for a really fine example is nearer the mark.
Talkgirls are even rarer, though without the movie association it’s unlikely
they’ll become collectible anytime soon. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1990 Original
Price
£25.00 Value Today? £15.00 Features:
Cassette tape recorder, slow-speed
switch, integral speaker, volume control and earphone socket Weight: 400g Dimensions: 180 x 115 x 90 mm Made in: China Hen’s Teeth (10
rarest): 4 Shogun Music Muff 1982
The Tuner is on one side and the tape deck on the other, with the batteries (3 x AAA) held in a sliding draw that fits into the underside of the radio. Despite the weight (around 500g with batteries and tape) it is surprisingly comfortable thanks to the soft ear cushions and padded and adjustable headband What Happened to it? The radio works well enough but it all goes horribly wrong with the tape player. It’s a cheapo design and apart from the poor sound quality it’s clearly impossible to avoid motor noise when it’s only a few centimetres from your right ear. The other, more fundamental problem was the complete lack of pre-recorded micro cassettes. Back in those days micro cassette recorders were rare and expensive so there wasn’t even the opportunity to make your own. It had a relatively short life -- probably on sale for less than 6 months -- few were made and hardly any will have survived and those that have could be worth a few bob to collectors of odd-ball tape recorders GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1982 Original Price £79.99 Value Today? £40 Features: Stereo microcassette player, FM tuner telescopic antenna Power req. 3 x AA Weight: 0.5kg (ex batteries) Dimensions: 110 x 85 x 120mm (very approx) Made in: Japan Rarity: 8 (1 = common, 10 = Hen's teeth)
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I have been after one of these for ages; it’s the Gramdeck, a
truly bizarre gadget manufactured in the UK from around 1959 by Andrew
Merryfield Ltd of Wright’s Lane Kensington. It’s ingenious, you mount the
contraption on the spindle of your record player turntable and hey-presto, you
have a tape recorder! A rotating disc on the underside spins with the turntable and drives the capstan and
take-up spool via a belt. A lead from the tape head plugs into a coaxial socket
on the companion pre-amplifier, which in turn connects to an amplifier. It is a
wonderfully Heath-Robinson affair, but beautifully built, based on a sturdy
die-cast metal base and clearly meant to survive nuclear attack.
Made in Japan by Sanyo, this miniature reel-to-reel tape
recorder appears under a number of guises, including Channel Master. It’s a
classic 60s 
Fi-Cord or Fidelity
Recording was a UK company, formed after the Second World War that built up a
business producing high-end tape recorders, counting the BBC amongst it
customers. The Fi-Cord 101, which we have here, is actually made in Switzerland
and is a compact dictating machine, hence the unusually complex design, high
standard of construction and materials. It really is very small, measuring just
150 x 85 x 43mm or just a shade larger than a transistor radio of the time.
If you’ve had a look around the Dustygizmos site you may
have noticed that I have a bit of a thing going for 
I always remember my old
mate Mick, back in the mid 1970s, during a heated debate over the virtues of
8-track versus compact cassette, telling me that the quarter-inch tape inside
the cartridges must give a ‘bigger’ sound than the 1/8th inch tape in compact
cassettes. All I knew is the damn things never lasted more than half a dozen
plays, which is why I quickly gave up on the format.
Philips invented the
Compact Cassette format in 1963 and it was an almost immediate success, quickly
overtaking reel-to-reel machines and ousting the many rival cassette formats
which were appearing at about the same time. The EL3302 was one of the very
first machines to use the new format and it was the first cassette recorder I
ever owned. This one, bought recently on ebay for a fiver, is a slightly later
model as it has a clear plastic cassette lid but otherwise it is identical with
the same three-way transport switch, press to record button and recording
level/battery meter.
It’s tempting to think that
tape recorders have always been about recording music and entertainment but the
real driving force behind the technology is more mundane.
I was in two minds about
including the Talkboy since it is so recent – it first appeared in 1990 -- but
it has an interesting history, and with the last audio cassette machines about
to disappear from the shops, the format is now all but obsolete.