What Is It?

[emeritus]

I remember a very enthusiastic review of an early Philips cassette recorder in a photography or cine camera magazine where the reviewer had managed to test his by playing it back though the sound system of London's Odeon Leicester Square cinema. Certainly the clarity of playback from my EL3302, especially for live recordings via the mike, was a revelation. This was a marked improvement over my older reel-to-reel portable recorder, a Philips EL3585, which always suffered some electrical noise, I suspect from sparking at the motor brushes, during playback.

[TonyDuell]

Interestingly the EL3585 (and the later EL3586, which I have) and the compact cassette are somewhat similar, both being 2 track mono machines (one track in each direction) running at 1+7/8 ips. I seem to remember there are considerable similarities in the circuitry between the reel-to-reel and early cassette machines, but I don't have the service manuals to had.

['LIVEWIRE?']

IIRC the circuit of the Philips battery Operated reel to reel Tape Recorder was identical to that of their first cassette machines.

[Jimmyhaflinger]

some open reel machines designed to operate at 17/8 ips like the Philips EL3586 and EL3553 etc. actually sound better than more expensive machines at that speed as they're optimized for it