Grundig TK-14
The cheapest machine to leave the Grundig stable. It had a plastic cabinet and a two-fingered record button, and it still managed a genuine 40-12,000 c/s tape.
Overview
The TK-14 was Grundig's bid for the bottom of the domestic tape market, and the press was candid about where the money was saved. Studio-Sound (September 1961, p.8) advertised the machine as sturdy, reliable, easy-to-use, quality-built and sensibly priced. The review treated it as an exercise in seeing what could be trimmed without wrecking the specification. The answer, per that same review, was the cabinet. It is almost all plastic, finished in a grey fabric that matched earlier Grundig machines closely and - the reviewer conceded - was harder wearing and easier to clean than most materials. The deck underneath was described as brand new.
The headline numbers hold up better than the price suggests. Grundig quoted a frequency response of 40-12,000 c/s at +3/−5 dB, a signal-to-noise ratio better than 50 dB, and wow and flutter under ±0.2% at 3¾ i/s. The single two-pole induction motor driving the transport is where the review turned critical. Mechanical noise ran higher than on earlier machines using Papst synchronous motors, and speed constancy was not as good as the dearer units.
The valve complement is an ECC83, an ECL86, an EM84 magic eye for recording level, plus two metal rectifiers. Output power is quoted at 2.5 watts into a multi-octave elliptical loudspeaker measuring 51 × 41 in. with a ceramic magnet. A 1,200 ft L.P. spool of Grundig TLP2 tape gives an hour per track in the international top-track, left-to-right recording sense, and a full-spool fast rewind ran approximately 21 minutes. It runs on mains only, 200-220 or 220-240 volts at 50 c/s, drawing 55 watts maximum. The whole thing measures 141 × 111 × 61 in. and weighs around 20 lb.
The interface is the best part of the TK-14. A Studio-Sound (August 1965, p.6) advertisement highlighted the piano-key controls as offering simplified operation. Setting up to record took two fingers, because the recording button had to be pressed simultaneously with the start key. Stop the transport and the circuit automatically reset to playback, so there was no chance of an accidental erase on the next pass.
The supplied microphone was the Grundig GDM 18, a high-impedance moving-coil unit. The related TK 40 shared the GDM 18 microphone, though its sharpest criticism concerned a "raw" pentode output stage with no negative feedback, which is less welcome if you wanted body on wide-range music. Inputs on the TK-14 are microphone at 2 mV into 0.5 meg, and radio/gram at 80 mV into 1 meg. Outputs are 500 mV into 15K plus a 5-ohm speech-coil tap. The built-in speaker switch is on the top panel alongside the recording level/volume and tone/mains controls.
Pricing moved around with the dealer, as it did on most British-market Grundigs. The manufacturer's specification quoted £36 15s. including the microphone. Studio-Sound (September 1961, p.8) advertised the machine at 35 guineas with the moving-coil mic included. By 1965 the price had dropped. Amateur-Tape-Recorder (July 1965, p.7) ran a Currys promotion offering the TK-14 at 27 guineas, and Studio-Sound (August 1965, p.6) carried the same 27-guinea Currys price. Urrys, in a Studio-Sound (August 1965, p.6) advertisement, listed it at £28 7s. cash or on hire purchase at £32 17s. 6d. - with the moving-coil microphone, 1,200 feet of Grundig L.P. tape, a spare spool and a radio recording lead thrown in.
One caveat on period reviews of this deck: the TK-14 was reviewed more than once, and the December 1961 Studio-Sound piece appears on a page that also carries a Ferrograph Series 5A specification, so the spec block printed alongside is not the Grundig's. The closely related TK 40 is worth reading for context on shared parts, since the GDM 18 microphone turns up on both. But its sharpest criticism, of a "raw" pentode output stage with no negative feedback that sounded terrible driving a wide-range speaker directly, is a comment on the TK 40, not automatically on the TK-14. Grundig's own chief engineer, answering a reader in Studio-Sound (November 1961, p.28), was explicit that the TK-14 could not monitor its own recordings through headphones or the built-in speaker the way the dearer TK 20 could. He said this was one of the facts that let Grundig hold the TK-14's price below the TK 20's.
For a collector, the TK-14 is the entry point to Grundig reel-to-reel rather than the destination. It is also the machine that carried the Grundig name into households that could not stretch to a TK 20, and the piano-key transport and record interlock are genuinely pleasant to use. Belts and the pressure roller are the usual suspects on a deck this age, so check the rubber first and expect to service the transport before trusting it with a tape worth keeping.
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