I love the aesthetics of wood grained electronics from the 60’s/70’s even though that was WAY before I was born

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.

Hooray! A new Techmoan video!

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.

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.

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!

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.

It’s fun to watch this video just days after vwestlife uploaded the video of the first pre recorded cassette

This was my first cassette deck i bought it at the px in Germany in 1967 .

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.

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.

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 🙏🏻 😊🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Very nice! Electronic stuff was built like a tank then!

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.

Great video! Pure Nostalgia! I simply love these machines from the bygone era.

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.

damn even with the pops and the slight hiss , AND NO NOISE REDUCTION that thing sounds crisp af...I definitely hope you get back to it one day

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.

Man, Philips wasn't foolin' when they built this.

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.

OH MY GARRISON KEILLOR! Loved that show! Old electronic parts - 1964 Sony TV goes ~ blEEp ~blEEp, must be that.

As an aside note here in Canada it was never called Norelco, always Philips. Beautiful machine, thank you for the video

Interesting piece of kit. Fun to hear an excerpt from Lake Wobegon again too. Not heard any of those for years!

Excellent! Very good! This is the quality content YT was created for.

I wonder what these went for when I was looking for a cassette recorder back in 1968. Very interesting video.

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.

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.

I saw my first tape recorder in 1967 as a three year old... it was a miracle then!

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.

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...

I'm glad Tony from cassette comeback gave me the hookup for this channel. I would have never clicked a vwestlife picture and would have missed out

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.

Had the AMPEX version when I was a kid with speakers and mics I absolutely loved it!

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.

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.

Really great video. Keep up the good work.

So cool! Havent had mobile to watch . Til yesterday . This is very cool!

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.

I love that deck. Really solid looking and it sounds great from what I can hear through my computer.

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.

Cool find and great video!

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!

I really love this, an excellent addition to an audio system.

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".

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.

Thank you very much for this review.

Philips would also own Magnavox and later branded products as "Philips Magnavox" in the 90's.

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. :)

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.

thanx 4 a lot of nostalgic emotions, i've sinked into my childhood 4awile.

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 :)

The layout of this reminds me of the early top loading VCR's. Funny to think they used this design for the small cassette.

I have this Norelco 450 stereo continental cassette recorder, no speakers microphone however.

Good video. Never seen this model in real life. It looks great.

In those day's Philips made great mechanisms all steel and aluminum. Great quality.

OMG! Well done

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.

what a really nice well built machine

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. 😉

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.

What a find!

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.

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.

Very nice machine.

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 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.

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. :)

Very nice example of this unit. 👍

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?

Das ist ein sehr gutes Video, Dankeschön :-) This is a very good video, thank you :-)

Весьма не плохо для 66-го года!

nice. in Soviet Union we had very same item named Tonika 310

That baby looks absolutely fine

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.

Very cool.

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?

excellent - I have the previous model of these - a mono version

What a view looking at that mechanism. Looks about as overbuilt as a Panasonic aluminum diecast mechanism in an early 90s VCR.

Cassettes. I love them...

Wow, the left channel sounds really good even as it is - it's really worth restoring this. Probably just some bad caps ;-)

+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.

For an American, how come you have the thermometer set on Celsius, at 8:40 ?

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 always enjoy your videos VWestlife I like how your very descriptive on any format of technology but I have one question, what was the name of the very first cassette you played of the classical music at 8:35

Is the deck still available for purchase? My dad had an Ampex micro 85 that I used to play around with as a kid back in the 80s. Been looking for one in good condition to restore, but the wood paneling on the Ampex units didn’t hold up well over time. This would be a good option for me. I checked the “about” section on your channel page, but didn’t see an email address, so I figured I’d reach out in the comments.

Where did you get belts? I would like to replace belts in my Continental 450

9:03 what song is that i used to hear that on my fathers music playlist

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.

They don't make them anymore but. you can find it in your pawn shop some where.

That is excellent. The connections will all be DIN on the European model. It has the large holes for them.

Excellent video! Where did you obtain the belts that you replaced? I have a Continental 450 that needs the same two belts, it would be great to get it running.

Sounds like a couple of transistors aren't working quite correctly as you suspected. Wouldn't bad capacitors introduce mains hum into the signal?

Nice! Which was going to be my entire comment but now I have to ask what the cassette right at the end was and, if it is a recent release, where should I try to seek out a copy?

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?

This seems like a job for radiotvphononut. He does a lot of vintage electronic repair. Might be worth getting in touch with him.

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?

So let's say you wanted to record something on the radio back in the 60s with this unit. Did you just put the microphone up to the radio speaker? Or was there a way to connect the radio directly into this recorder?