Philips EL3547 vs N4404

[suebutcher]

Are these two machines roughly similar in quality and capabilities? I need to make a decision whether to spend some money repairing my EL3547, or look for an N4404, which is from Philips' tasteful teak-perspex-aluminium era with the additional nostalgic appeal of being the machine I used to play around with at school. Is this a no-brainer?

[ricard]

Well, they are rather different beasts, being from different eras (1962 vs. 1969). The main differences, apart from the different eras, would be that the EL3547 takes 6" reels and has 1 7/8 / 3 3/4 speeds whereas the N4404 takes 7" reels and has 3 3/4 / 7 1/2 speeds. So, if you already have a lot of tapes recorded at 1 7/8 these won't play on the N4404.

The N4404 is probably a better machine, but is from the 'goo' era where the rubber parts including the pinch roller will have turned to 'goo' by now, whereas it seems only the fast wind idler tyres in the EL3547 suffer this fate.

The EL3547 is based on a simpler chassis probably to keep costs down in order to offer a complete stereo recorder for as little money as possible. As you know, wind speed depends on the speed selector for instance.

I think it really comes down to personal preference. Since you have nostalgic connections to the N4404 you'd probably be happier with that. Personally I don't like the late-1960's Philips styling so would go for the EL3547, or possibly the contemporary EL3534 which takes 7" reels and has 4 speeds, from the same time period.

[suebutcher]

Thanks. In that case, I'll probably persist with the EL3547, and look out for a good N4407 which has all three common tape speeds and similar styling to the N4404. There was one for sale recently on Ebay Australia, but it was at least slightly "gooed" and some of the trim was missing. Tempting, but missing trim usually means buying a second machine for spares and this gets expensive.

[ricard]

Yes, it's a bit annoying not to have 1 7/8 on a home machine I find. Even if not used everyday sooner or later you'll come across a tape recorded at this speed. A bit of a strange omission for Philips, especially considering the speed selection is electrical on these machines so it does not require a lot of mechanics. Perhaps they wanted to give the machine a more up market appearance by omitting the lowest speed.

[Jimmyhaflinger]

the N4404 like the N4407 has a mechanical speed selector.

They probably omitted the lower speed on the N4404 to save on equalization circuits or maybe even to force more people to buy the similar but more expensive N4407

[ricard]

Sorry, you are right of course, I was confusing them with the N4418 et al.

I would think the lack of the lower speed would be for marketing reasons as you suggest. Surely the amount of components needed for the EQ the lower speed can't have been excessive?

[hsbhachu3d]

I have had both decks and it's hard to choose.. they both take the same reel size and give capabilities of 18,000hz which is above hearing level. the quality is quite good.

They are both 4 track but the difference is that the EL3547 is 4 speed.. having one extra speed which is 15/16- it's half of 1 7/8 and with a 3600ft 7 inch reel, you can record on 4 tracks for 48 hours. quality will be low though . radio stations use this for logging.

Both decks give good quality and have solid state germanium transistors but the n4404's transistors are mostly modern type Silicon with few germanium and are more easily sourced or available if your deck needs a replacements. This makes the n4407 easier to service. It also has more modern capacitors unlike the EL3547's paper capacitors.

The n4404 uses a smaller head but made of same material as the el 3547. On my machine I noticed the n4404 head showed more wear compared to the el3547. (I might be wrong but I've got some experience with these machines)

Both have speed equalisation circuits in the speed change switch and auto stop using the aluminium foil on the end of the tape.

The N4404 has lower s/n ratio compared to the el3547 but the sound on the el3547 sounds deeper and richer.

[Maarten]

I would think the EL3547 is mostly equipped with polyester capacitors (mustard). Maybe one or two paper ones in the mains filtering and around the motor that might also be present in the N4404. Examination of the service manual will be necessary to be sure.

[ricard]

hsbhachu3d: I think you are confusing the EL3547 with the EL3549 or EL3534. The EL3547 is two speed / 6" reels, whereas the latter two both are four-speed machines based on the same chassis taking 7" reels. All machines have the same early 60's grey/white styling though so it's easy to confuse them, although the EL3547 has a function knob for tape transport control, whereas the other two are push button operated.

Also I concur with Maarten, the capacitors in the EL3547 are all the 'mustard' i.e. polyester variety. The motor is a shaded-pole variant so no capacitor there either. I don't think there's a single paper capacitor in the whole machine.

[suebutcher]

I've now bought a spare EL3547 for repair purposes, but it wasn't needed. The big problem with my original EL3547 was no output from the right channel. I couldn't find a fault in the wiring, and gave up after a while, but the fault was in fact the lever for Switch 4 being disengaged from the switch slider. Of course, I found this out just the day before the spare machine arrived, but the spare's useful for cosmetic repairs, anyway. It was sold "not working", and the odd thing is it had the same Switch 4 fault as mine! I expect the switch catches and gets disengaged when the chassis is removed from the case. I wonder how many got thrown away just for that?

By the way, any ideas why Philips decided to put the right channel speaker in the front of the case, when there's a spare hole for a speaker on the right side? It seems illogical. I'm tempted to buy a couple of modern speakers and mount them left and right in the normal way you'd expect for a stereo machine.

[ricard]

I don't think moving the speaker will work, I think the motor (or some part of the chassis) is in the way on the right hand side.

I've also been wondering if the reason for keeping a hole on that side of the case is to let air in or out for cooling the motor. On the other hand, most other machines don't have that hole so perhaps it has nothing to do with it. Or perhaps Philips was trying to be overly careful, the EL3547 was one their first transistorized machines, and they could have been wary of too much temperature change affecting the transistors.

I agree the arrangement is a bit odd, on the other hand, if you position yourself diagonally in front of the left corner of the machine, you get a nice stereo image with the two speakers at 90°, 45° to either side of a center axis. With one speaker on each side of the machine you get a rather odd stereo image, you wouldn't mount two ordinary speaker cabinets that way.

[Jimmyhaflinger]

also you won't find any modern speaker with the same pleasant, superb tone of these old Philips speakers

[suebutcher]

You're right, it sounds fine; I don't think I'll mess with it. But there is room for a second AD2400 speaker on the right side, and on my 1963 machine there's even predrilled holes for the mounting bolts. Perhaps there was a variant or clone with two AD2400? Speakers-at-the-sides arrangements were common on stereo gramophones, the idea being to put them in the corner of a room and use the walls as reflectors. But you'd generally use a taperecorder on a tabletop, I suppose.

[Jimmyhaflinger]

many tape recorders like the Philips N4407, Grundig TK600 etc. had the speakers on the sides of the cabinet, they're usually dual cone speakers or coaxial speakers with dome tweeters though, a single cone speaker such as the AD2400 would perform poorly if mounted on the side, so maybe that's why Philips choose to mount one of the speakers in the front of the machine instead

[ricard]

Curious: Why does a single cone speaker perform badly in when facing sideways, compared to a dual cone one? I would have thought the more treble the speaker was capable of generating (i.e. dual cone or concentric tweeter), the more sensitive to direction it would be, rather than the other way around.

[Jimmyhaflinger]

the purpose of the smaller inner "whizzer" cone in dual cone speakers isn't just to generate more treble, it's also there to act as a diffuser for the treble generated by the main cone and improve off-axis treble dispersion