A look at the world's first stereo cassette tape recorder, introduced in 1966 in Europe as the Philips EL3312 and in North America as the Norelco Continental 450.
Thanks for the demonstration! Even with this basic deck you could tell that Philips wanted the cassette to be more than a low-fidelity tape format. I'm glad American and Japanese electronic and tape companies saw the cassette's potential and developed better recording decks and tape formulations in the 70's. Because of its limitations the 8-track never had that high rate of development that cassettes did.
This brought back a few memories. I was given a hand-me-down Philips N2400 back in the early 80s. Very well built and lasted me for years. The connectors on the back were DIN (UK model) and I could plug the Commodore 64 straight into it!
It was 160$ Canadian, my grandpa bought one back in the 60's he kept the box and receipt, we gave it to a telephone museum (along with various tech from the same era) and they closed back in 2011, wonder were is it now.
I purchased the Philips portable player EL 3302 around 1970 and it played beautifully, the Philips compact cassette was a great invention. I owned 8 track before this which were fine for pre-recorded Music but tapes were prone to jam and it was hard to record songs due to the tape loop change half way though a track. I ended up with a lot of 8 track tapes before switching to cassette which made it easy to copy LP's and CD's to play in the car. Really interesting Video, thanks.
The germanium output transistors AC 178/AC 188 were the workhorses for low power audio amplifiers back then. They mostly were sold as matched pairs with similar characteristics, probably hand measured at the factory, because the production tolerances were so high that only matched parts delivered an adequate sound quality.
That is great. I didn't realize that stereo cassette decks went back to 1966. For the time it had great frequency response too. I only listened through my phone speaker but I can tell a good recording through it and both of those line level playbacks sounded fantastic. Thank you for sharing.
I have a cassette deck that is very similar to this one made by Teac. I bought it in 1970 and it is still in very good physical condition. The model number is A-20. It is a deck only though and has on the rear panel line in and out rca jacks and a DIN audio connector. The vu meter on the front is a dual needle stereo vu meter. I still have the manual too. Nice video. You always give good information.
You've got to get it working and play your 50 year old tapes on it. If you do, please be careful as such an action may disrupt the time/space continuum or open up a wormhole or something.
@@pablorai769 Time is a filter, many things from the past were rubbish too, we just don't remember them because they aren't worth remembering, in 50 years time we'll look back at today with the same fondness for much our of modern technology
Thanks you for posting this 😊. I just came across the instruction manual in the drawer just now for it. I knew it was old. I remember playing around with it when I was younger, and I’m sure I no doubt destroyed it, as I did with most things. I remembered the violent eject! And those strange little speakers 🔊. 1966. Thank you 🙏🏻 😊🏴
First of all, congrats! You have a beautiful unit, both inside and outside.Iit is not too often that we (I, at least) see no visible rust in old equipment metal plates, and this one is so clean I wish it had transparent case! I have at least three working EL3312 units and plus an extra "carcass" that was bought with missing parts - for a fair price - so I keep them running the best I can. One small remark about both EL3312 and its monophonic counterpart, the EL3310: both have practically the same mechanics (the EL3310 has a AUTO/MANUAL mode switch for recording purposes while the EL3312 must have the recording level set and monitored by the user) and this particular mechanics has a feature I find most exciting: both the motor and the line transformer are built as one single piece. Of course, if you loose the line transformer you loose the motor as well, but chances are that in this case, you are going to find a way to disassemble the transformer/motor, rebulid the primary - and secondary, if applicable - coils and bring both back to life. AFAIK, the EL3310 (the monophonic counterpart) is the only Phlips monophonic cassette recorder that does not offer battery operation. Just to remember: as it happens with the EL3312, the EL3310 motor needs AC line to rotate, so... no battery operation (f anyone knows about any other, please, share...). There is a Philips stereo cassette player - N2500 - that also has this motor + line transformer assembly as a single pice, but it uses a different motor, also used in both N2502 & N2401 - both cassette changers - but this not exactlly related to this video... Thanks for sharing!!!
Very nice recorder and good video! I've always had a fondness for Norelco tape recorders. I used the 450 with its speakers I got on eBay as an unboxing video to show how a good seller packages things. It's in my "5 videos in 5 minutes #4" in 2015. His packaging was excellent.
That is a very well built machine. Incidentally the "60 hertz" began being seen on electronics in the United States around 1970, so not too far away from when this machine was made. Would love to see a video of it if and when you decide to restore it.
It's probably the AC187 and AC 188 transistors they've used. I have just repaired a record player that uses them. They are very prone to fail and ideally need replacing as a matched pair. That's a very nice cassette you have there mind, interesting that the AC motor has the twin groove pulley, a feature shared by many reel - to - reels at the time. The light - up cassette well's a nice touch too.
I bought mine in Salisbury England a few days after they were released. it is slightly different to the US version, it has din plugs not jacks and the speaker connections are a wide and narrow prong. I still have the receipt somewhere. I also bought some pre recorded and blank tapes. Still have all of the tapes including Pet Clark and Joan Baez and they still work well. The player was last used about 10 years ago and is now in a nice safe place and asking to be used again whenever I open the cupboard door. It misses its trips around the world when I worked on the liners of the past and it was very handy size wise with the Isophon elliptical speakers I had, as my alternative music was a heavy AKAI M8 with huge clip together speakers.
It's interesting how the user interfaces/controls/etc evolve very early on with things like this. And there's something unique about hearing more modern material being played on vintage players. :) Thanks for another interesting video: the channel with everything from camcorders to cars to [phono] cartridges to console stereos (how I found this channel) to CDs to cheap Chinese crap to classic computers to cassettes to, not the least bit surprisingly, C-QUAM.
I like how this is stylished to match the looks of turntables of the era with the nice wood casing looking like a plinth! Really hope this does get finally restored to its former glory.
Never saw this cassette recorder before. There was another one prior to this was the Carry-Coder from 1964. "CassetteMaster" made a video about it a long time ago where he was explaining the details about the Norelco Carry-Corder, and it was also the first ever shoebox cassette recorder. But this one was the very first stereo cassette deck from 1966, just two years after the Carry-Corder was introduced. Awhile back you did a video about cassettes that are over 50 years old, but this is a pretty good addition to you collection. It will play pre-recorded cassettes that are 50 years old including the original albums that are Ampex licensed. I also have my Ampex 2100 series reel tape recorder that I finally restored, because I got it for $10 back in June and I did some work, new belts are replaced, because the original was disintegrated, and also replaced it with O-Rings and and it works perfectly. I will make a demonstration of my Ampex 2100 since I haven't upload yet.
Looks like a wonderfully well built machine. Kind of amusing that we're basically back to this kind of 'standard' stereo recording with modern decks, and all the very fancy Dolby NR came and went through the years, albeit with much poorer physical quality now.
Too cool! I started messing around with cassettes recently thanks to you. I'm looking for a decent cassette boombox with Dolby right now, but maybe years down the line i will look into these early stereo recorders.
The explanation for the 1/4" microphone and line-output jacks. They were originally 'DIN' sockets which were the standard in Europe _(Philips land)_ and I guess these were replaced for the USA market. Also the use of that type of jack and not RCAs is due to the metal housing accommodating the larger plug efficiently and not the smaller RCA type, easier to replace etc. Here in Australia this model had the 'DIN' type sockets. The speaker sockets were also DIN here. Phono was the same however. Great Vid BTW :)
This is exactly what I was thinking. Not enough space to fit all of the RCAs required so the 1/4 plug had to do. Good to know I was on the right track.
RCA sockets are smaller in diameter than either quarter-inch phone sockets or those stupid DIN sockets so a left/right pair for input and left/right pair for output would easily fit in the space occupied by those DIN sockets and make hook-ups just as easy, but will be far more reliable in the long run.
DIN is foolproof but I hate these too, they survived as MIDI convectors for music equipment. I remember how hard it was to find the right angle, confusion like USB but there are 3 wrong positions and you damaged the plug.
Sounds pretty good without restoration, though it does need to be restored. I'm always amazed to see really old gear work with modern stuff, shango006 seems to be always repairing TVs from the 1970s and stereograms from the 1930s, getting them into working order and either connecting the old TVs up to his digital set top box or tuning the old stereogram into a modern station. I wonder if my grandchildren will have the same reaction when they see digital audio players from the turn of the century playing MP3s from their time? MP3 has already been around for nearly 20 years, certainly long enough for all of the patents to expire.
My parents had the smaller Carry Corder 150 that is at the left of the advertisement shown ...It was very well built. Had the unique one button to control everything...
Oh man I saw a Philips branded one at the thrift store once, with the speakers. I probably should have bought it, but it had some insane price on it so I didn't think it was worth it at the time. It's interesting how little cassettes and cassette decks have changed in 50+ years. They also survived a myriad of other tape cartridge formats. It shows just how perfect the cassette design was.
Nice video! Ampex originally got their cassette recorders from Philips as was obvious by their design and the early units even used the DIN connectors.
Norelco had just introduced the Carry-Corder in the previous year, 1965, I believe. The 450, a stereo unit with adjustable level control and line-level inputs meant for home use, would seem to indicate that, as early as 1966, Philips/Norelco was already envisioning cassettes as having hi-fi potential.
And speaking of Norelco cassette recorders,I also have another cassette recorder which is an Audiotronics Classette 148B classroom cassette recorder, and it’s a pretty good cassette recorder. The reason why I got my Audiotronics cassette recorder, is because it was made for the educational market, and it can use used in schools like elementary schools, kindergartens, nursery schools, etc. It has a neat feature along with a built-in condenser microphone, a switch where you can switch from play to ALC Defeat which is a manual level control, play for automatic level control, and pause where it cuts off the power. Underneath the unit, it has an external microphone input, auxiliary input, a headphone/external speaker jack, and a set of 4 headphone jacks where you can connect up to four people, so kids in a classroom can listen and read their read-along books. It can also be used for audiobooks as well, and it plays music both educational and non-educational use. The Audiotronics 148B did beats out the Norelco Continental 450, and I enjoyed them a lot.
Pity I wasn’t able to hear what it sounded like. I had a Phillips tape recorder back in the 90s. It had a built-in mic and a variable speed control. You could also adjust the treble and bass independently. I used to have hours of fun with it when I was a kid. For what it was, the quality was really good!
Grundig reel to reel recorders were produced in Poland in license and also the Telefunken Mr. Hit record player - why not a Philips cassette deck too in Soviet Union?
@@robfriedrich2822 Philips products were also manufatured under license in Sweden, first branded Aristona, and later, Dux. In Denmark, Philips products were sold in coop stores under the brands Major (for radio, tv, and other entertainment products) and Majorette (for kitchen appliances).
I actually owned one of these. My father worked for the midwest USA Norelco distributor. I used to record rock music off of FM radio. Got it in 1969 I think.
Philips pioneered 1-7/8 ips technology back in the '50's. Their Continental model of open reel portable recorders used 1/4" tape and ran exclusively at 1-7/8 ips. The quality was remarkable for the time. What a forward-looking company.
I wonder if the National Panasonic RS255S/Concord F-400 was the first Japanese stereo tape deck as it came out in 1967/68. Interesting fact about this Philips deck, this was used to record the guitar intro in the Stones "Street Fighting Man" and the Small Faces "The Universal".
How to Cue/Review a tape with a piano key deck. Press pause, hold down play and fast forward or play and rewind at the same time and release when you find a blank spot (if they get stuck, hit stop when you get to a blank spot on a tape). Then disengage pause, and then press play.
I wish they would put more heart and quality into making these things nowadays like they did then! I bet a component that is made now wouldn't play after 5 years, let alone 50!
Nice video, I had a model similar but a bit later than this, the Philips N2400. Before that I had the Stella ST471 portable reel to reel machine. Both were bought new in the UK. Stella were basically Philips models. I don't remember Philips being sold here as Norelco. A useless bit of info, my late Dad re-designed the Philips Factory in Croydon. This is how we got below trade prices on Philips and Stella in the 60's to 70's.
Very nice, good enough to restore. I suspect you're right, the right channel distortion is probably down to bad caps or maybe a germanium transistor getting tin whiskers. Worth fixing though, it'll probably give a very good account of itself once it's back on form.
Great video, thanks for posting! 3:58 Either the Norelco version is different from the Philips version, or a previous owner made some changes: The Philips version had DIN sockets for the inputs and outputs and (different) DIN sockets for the speaker outputs. Philips (at least in Europe) didn't start using RCA (cinch) connectors until the 1980s as far as I know; before that, it was all DIN. The Service Manual also shows only DIN connectors. I think just like many other Philips products, these were made in my home town of Eindhoven, The Netherlands but at some point in time Philips moved all the tape and cassette recorder production to Austria. I think that was around halfway into the 1970s.
Hooooooly moly! $200.00 bucks in 1966 equals to today at $1,536 bucks! Inflation has not been good. And man, they were raggin' on the Ford Edsel only 6 years after they were made! 😂 I have to also add, I dig the all lower case text labels on the old machine there. It really makes it look modern. And hooooly cr@p! That's built to last beefy construction. That fly wheel looks even bigger than a VCR head. Awesome demo music! Now you made me dig up my Jacques Offenbach CD I got in 1988 to listen to it. :)
Hey VWestlife. :) I really like the way you've done this video. I feel that you did a super fine job in making & posting this video. I really like the tape recorder you decided to do this video on. :)
I acquired one of these machines (Philips branding) and fixed it (didn't test recording yet but it plays great and works for hours). (and yes I also didn't replace the counter belt) At 6:50 you see these small blue cylindrical capacitors. The ones with the smallest diameter developed a leakage current that was nearly unmeasurable. But they are used in the preamplifier stages as some kind of auto-bias circuit so the transistor basically pulls the signal into its comfort zone without requiring potentiometers or matching resistors to the transistor to bias it... this leakage current pulled the signal out of the transistor's comfort zone so one channel only made sound for a few seconds after powerup and the other was distorted. Judging from the distortion this is exactly what is happening to your machine too. Replace the 1.5µF caps and this should get rid of the distortion. You probably won't need to touch the other caps. Usually Philips branded caps hold up pretty well. These were manufactured to optimize for space so to make them smaller they had to make them less reliable and durable. Ah right I now remember these are 1.5µF caps. I don't have these so I just used three 4.7µF in series. Looks ugly, takes up lots of space, but well if it's stupid but it works it ain't stupid, right? Just one problem my machine has - it runs a tad bit too fast. If I set it to 60Hz of course it runs way too slow but at 50Hz it runs fast enough to almost be annoying. Definitely fast enough so I don't want to use it to record music with it. Is there a way to adjust these AC motors?
never know the first one came from 60s! surely that sounded modern at that time! btw i love how old stuffs are well-made and in high quality compare to nowadays we have like cheap plastic.
it would make sense since the cassette tape was invented in the 60s as well. the walkman on the other hand came out in 79. at least 10 years later then the cassette tape
Nice find! If you decide to overhaul it yourself, please do a video about it, would be very interesting. Also it would be useful for other people owning a similar player.
+VWestlife In this video, you say that you think the transistors in this cassette recorder are germanium types... Well, i looked up the transistors in the parts list, and found out that the following ones are indeed germanium types: AC187 (NPN) AC188 (PNP) AF124 (PNP) - the AC187/188 are complementary by the way, typically used in a class-A configuration amplifier circuit. On the other hand, *ALL* transistors marked BCxxx are silicon types.
You have the same weather station, as me. I bought it in Tesco for about 4€. Anyway, great looking deck, looking forward for Part 2 after a full restoration. 😉
Thanks for the explanation of the Norelco branding.... Aint copyright and patent law funny? Literally in Europe... nobody would have ever known what Philco meant. Now Fellow brits, Anyone know what pifco stands for?
Huh, the technical specifications at 7:46 contain a spelling error. Frequency response should be "Frequenzbereich", not "Frequenzbereicht". That's interesting, because it looks like a mistake a Dutch person who has learned German as a second language would make. Pretty neat, actually. If the Phillips engineer who wrote that is still around?
Nice video, thanks, still operating and Dutch! The sound issue is definitely a transistor problem, it cuts off the sound wave (causes the distortion, very typical distortion sound) , maybe caused by degradation of the specs or defective. When recording the distorted sound with a wave program (Audicity or something else with wav visualisation) you can clearly see what's going on. The right channel is very different at distortion, the bottom (negative side) of the wave is chopped off (and something in between when a threshold is reached). However, the left channel seems to do to the opposite, sometimes it is a little stronger at the negative side of the soundwave however can be an issue of the low channel separation (30db is not that great). This could be a simple and cheap fix because they have used many (just a few) of the same transistors. Save history in a great shape.
Interesting. In USS of R in the70s-80s there was mono recorder - Electronica 312, with motors made by.... Samsung. Because, apparently, with all that might of a military complex you can't produce a single motor that runs steadily.
I have this exact Norelco cassette desk, still functional, although it needs a new pinch (pressure) roller so it will stop eating tapes. Any idea where a pinch roller 12 mm in diameter and with rubber 5 mm wide could be found?
The frequency response of my 1982 Sony M-1000 stereo microcassette recorder is 80-10,000 Hz, so 60-10k Hz for 1966 isn't that bad especially for dictation.
Not that anyone could tell the difference in the real world, unless you listen in some 99% sound proof booth and have perfect hearing like an 18 year old
