[Ted Kendall]

The EMI deck takes 7" spools, as did the earlier SP4, which was a different and, to my mind, much better animal. Styled in the best continental fashion, with integrated electronics and an excellent in-house two way deck design, it was left behind by the advent of stereo. That said, sales of stereo tape machines in the UK were pretty sluggish throughout the 1960s - J.W. Merrick of Ferrograph stated in 1964 that the home market for their machines was 90% mono, whilst the US market was 90% stereo. Expense undoubtedly was a factor in this, as was the slow introduction of stereo broadcasting.

Simon were evidently caught in this double-bind - why else would they make a stereo machine and then omit a small proportion of the circuitry in the standard version? Hindsight knows no myopia, of course, but from this distance it seems nonsensical. Add in the questionable EMI deck and the fact that for close to the same money you could buy a Tandberg 6, offering integrated stereo and superb performance in a compact and elegant package, and the demise of the SP5 is easily understood.