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Vintage Tape (Audio), Cassette, Wire and Magnetic Disc Recorders and Players Open-reel tape recorders, cassette recorders, 8-track players etc.

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Old 20th Jun 2016, 9:26 am   #1
camtechman
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Default What Is It?

I've found a good web site for old magazines and whilst browsing one of them, December 1963, in a section on new products was this announcement:

What was it? (See pic)
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Old 20th Jun 2016, 9:31 am   #2
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Default Re: What Is It?

By the way, the web site is American but has good reference to UK magazines too. For example:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/...cording-UK.htm
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Old 20th Jun 2016, 9:33 am   #3
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Default Re: What Is It?

Philips Compact cassette.
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Old 20th Jun 2016, 9:38 am   #4
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Default Re: What Is It?

But which model ?
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Old 20th Jun 2016, 9:57 am   #5
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Default Re: What Is It?

The timing is certainly right for it to be the Philips Compact Cassette.
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Old 20th Jun 2016, 9:58 am   #6
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Default Re: What Is It?

As others have said it sounds like the Compact Cassette. Possibly the Philips EL3300 recorder?
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Old 20th Jun 2016, 10:54 am   #7
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Default Re: What Is It?

They were earlier than the compact cassette.
I have a machine that is 1/8 inch format and the tape does play in a later machine if you transfer it to a modern shell. The tape is housed in a two part plastic shell and not the later single part shell. I would be prepared to date the machine to the mid 1960s so not too far off that date.
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Old 20th Jun 2016, 3:41 pm   #8
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Default Re: What Is It?

That is a format intended first and last for dictation, and therefore unknown to the domestic market. The trick with office machines seems to have been to make them of unique format and inflated price, so as to lock a tax-deductible expense stream into your product.

Late '63/early'64 sound about right for the Compact Cassette - I remember the TV ads not much later than that...and some research indicates that the first showing was in August 1963 in Berlin, which fits nicely with a December cover date for something not imminent to the market.

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Old 20th Jun 2016, 4:27 pm   #9
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Default Re: What Is It?

Ta Dah !.......EL3300 it is. The magazine: Tape Recording Magazine also had this photo on the new year edition (pic 1), Philips placed only a half size advert (pic 2), unlike other companies. eg Sony, who placed full page or double spreads

Then there was the test review (pic 3) of the EL3300 and, although not dismissive, I think this "young upstart" was considered to be a flash in the pan for the author and the prestigious magazine.

If only they had a time machine !
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Old 20th Jun 2016, 4:38 pm   #10
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Default Re: What Is It?

By the way, reading through the Tape Recording Magazines, they had a regular section for : Local tape recording clubs, A "Tape Pal" section and the small ad section is a real nostalgia fest for all the tape recorder companies & shops.....now long gone.....
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Old 20th Jun 2016, 4:56 pm   #11
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Default Re: What Is It?

The advert confirms that the Compact Cassette was initially marketed as a 'cartridge'.
I wonder what the reviewer was comparing it with to have been so impressed with its reproduction of music?
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Old 27th Jun 2016, 7:44 am   #12
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Default Re: What Is It?

I've never really liked the Compact Cassette format (although I recorded lots of cassette tapes in my pre-teen years) but I always had to conclude that the recording quality on cassette always seemed better than reel to reel at the same speed.

Since the EQ curves are the same for both formats, it must be related to something else. I don't know if it is because 1 7/8 is always a lower prioritized speed on a reel to reel recorder, so the tradeoffs made for multi speed operation will always be in favour of higher speeds, so that 1 7/8 will always sound worse on a reel to reel recorder for this reason. Or if things like thinner tape and the enclosed format mean that there's much fewer dropouts, resulting in a smoother and better HF response for the cassette format?

I've noticed a similar phenomena when dubbing recordings originally made on the analog audio channel of VHS tape - while the noise level was high, the HF response was not all that bad considering the tape speed involved (0.921 ips Wikipedia informs me, or just shy of 15/16 ips).
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Old 27th Jun 2016, 11:52 am   #13
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Default Re: What Is It?

I think you're right ricard. R2R was never optimized for the low speeds.
Pluss, a major reason cassettes became accepted was the vast improvements in one field - the recording tape itself. The same thing was tried with R2R in the 80s with 'EE' tape whcih gave extended top end at 3 3/4ips.
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Old 27th Jun 2016, 12:48 pm   #14
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Blimey though, blank cassettes were 19s/6d when they first appeared! That's nearly a quid each! 19 Guineas for the recorder was fairly cheap, relative to other early cassette recorders. My dad had an EL2202. Sound quality was dreadful until you plugged in a speaker (it had a 2 pin DIN speaker socket) and then it was suprisingly good. The downside was battery only operation.

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Old 27th Jun 2016, 3:45 pm   #15
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Default Re: What Is It?

Re the 1 7/8 ips Reel-to-reel sound quality.

I think that one of the reasons was that most domestic machines did not optimise the bias for this speed. Series 7 Ferrographs did - and the sound was quite acceptable (within the tape speed - frequency response constraints).

Thinking back to the later '70s / early 80s I got the impression then that many cassette tape formulation improvements never made it into the reel-to-reel formulations.
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Old 27th Jun 2016, 7:59 pm   #16
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Default Re: What Is It?

I think that many of us who struggled to get acceptable recording quality at 1 7/8 on reel to reel were astounded by the results achieved by the better cassette recorders. I think part of the answer lay in the successful scaling down of all dimensions and parameters, including tape particle size. It was similar to the move from large format cameras to 35mm. Everything was properly re-engineered, including lenses and film grain size.

When I started serious tape recording in the early 1960s, I used EMITAPE at 7 1/2 ips on the basis of the claim that Abbey Road used it for its professional work. But it was absolutely dreadful at 1 7/8 ips - poor HF and terrible modulation noise. German tapes such as BASF seemed much better optimised for low speeds - presumably due to finer grain size.

That development progress on analogue tape recording carried on into the professional sphere, particularly with the advent of digital recording providing serious competition and consequent improvements from companies like Studer and the major tape manufacturers.

But improvemints took a while. AFAIK, Abbey Road didn't stop using EMITAPE until 1977 when it proved inadequate for reliable recording of SMPTE code for mixing desk automation.

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Old 27th Jun 2016, 9:02 pm   #17
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Default Re: What Is It?

I wish they had started with 32" per second rather than 30, would have made calculation a lot easier! But hey, that's hindsight for you.
 
Old 27th Jun 2016, 10:47 pm   #18
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Default Re: What Is It?

As the reel to reel tape recorder was originally an AEG Telefunken invention, anyone know what speeds they used. I wouldn't have thought that 38/19/9.5 cm/s would have sprung to mind.

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Old 28th Jun 2016, 10:04 am   #19
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The first Magnetophons were DC-biassed and ran at 1m/s. The introduction of AC bias allowed the tape speed to be reduced to 77cm/s, and this was the speed adopted by the first clones, the EMI BTR-1, the RGD and the Rangertone. This is equivalent to 30.31ips. Ampex amended this to 30ips and the rest of the industry followed. Subsequent developments allowed speeds to be halved and halved again. The simple division factor obviously made things such as high speed duplication less complicated. Some manufacturers produced machines with odd speeds, such as 4.5ips, possibly to fit in with cine reel lengths.
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Old 4th Jul 2016, 5:14 am   #20
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I would think too that at the time they started using 30 ips, they couldn't imagine that anything useful could be acheived at even half that speed, thus having a speed which would be easily divisible (numerically) by two would not have been on anyone's mind.
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