Grundig 400 (1960s)
Little is documented about the Grundig 400. What survives comes from a single owner's account and a lone eBay listing, not from any manufacturer literature. It appears to have been a compact, consumer-grade German mono reel-to-reel recorder from the 1960s - a luggage-style desktop machine with a carrying handle and a built-in speaker, made for home voice and music recording, not professional use.
Here is what the record shows. It is a full-track mono deck running at 3.75 and 7.5 ips, with a single record/play head, a separate erase head, and room for 7" reels. The amplifier stage uses tubes. The owner believed the three tubes were ECL86s but was not certain. One function knob handles record, play, rewind, and fast-forward. There is a DIN input socket and an external microphone input. The same owner reported that it "sounds surprisingly good for what it is," with a warm, round tone from the tube output stage that suits voice recordings, while freely admitting it is "not hifi by any stretch."
The usual vintage German deck ailments apply here. The rubber pinch roller on this example had melted and needed replacement. Idler wheels are typically hardened or cracked, and the capstan belt may need attention after fifty-plus years. Grundig no longer makes direct replacement parts, so third-party suppliers are the only route. The owner found theirs at a pawn shop for $100. A separate eBay listing asked $149.99.
Production years, original price, dimensions, and all conventional performance specs (frequency response, wow and flutter, output power) remain undocumented. There is also an unresolved naming question. Some sources call this model the Grundig 4000 rather than the 400, and the exact designation has not been confirmed. Studio Sound (April 1967, p.43) reviewed the related Grundig TK340 around this period, but no period review of the 400 itself has surfaced.
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