Grundig TK 35
A three-speed monaural portable with a superimpose button. Grundig's mid-line workhorse, sold by the guinea in London and by the dollar in Chicago.
Overview
Grundig's British dealers listed the TK 35 at 82 guineas. That put it between the TK 30 at 72 and the four-track stereo Harting at 86 in the same shop-window price sheets. It was a monaural three-speed portable. One feature set it apart from the cheaper TK 20 and TK 25: superimposition recording. You pressed a button and laid a new voice over existing music on the same tape. Majestic International Sales, the Wilcox-Gay division that handled Grundig-Majestic in the United States, announced it with exactly that pitch - "impressing your voice over music, by simply pressing a button" - alongside a permanent built-in dynamic speaker and flywheel drive.
The response figures change with speed. Majestic's own announcement gave 50 to 8,000 cps at 1⅞ ips, 50 to 16,000 cps at 3¾ ips, and 40 to 20,000 cps at 7½ ips. Those are optimistic numbers for the day, and collectors treat them as manufacturer's claims rather than bench results. Still, the curve shows what the machine was for. At 7½ ips it was a serious home recorder. At 1⅞ it was a dictation and speech machine, and the response rolled off accordingly. Maximum reel size was 7 inches, so a full 1,800-foot tape at 7½ ips gave roughly 45 minutes per track.
The switchboard carried tone and monitoring controls, a tape counter, and a recording-level indicator. Nothing extravagant, but nothing missing that a home recordist of 1959 needed. These machines were built to a price and shipped in volume, so a survivor today should be checked carefully before money changes hands.
The TK 35 sat in a crowded Grundig lineup. The same dealer price lists that carried it at 82 guineas also listed the TK 20 at 52, the TK 25 at 62, and the TK 30 at 72, with the TK 60 further up. A 1961 Audio-Collection (p.67) report from the International Audio Festival and Fair noted Grundig exhibiting the TK 1, TK 20, TK 24, TK 35, and TK 60. The TK 35 was an established model in a range that ran from a small transistorized battery portable at the bottom to the big TK 60 at the top. In 1959 a Catford tape club demonstration used a Truvox and a TK 35 side by side, which says something about how common the machine was in amateur circles within a year or two of its introduction.
Abroad, the arithmetic was harsher.
The machine itself is not rare. The microphone, the spools, and the original leads are the parts that go missing, and a complete set is worth more than the sum of its pieces. Expect to find the pressure roller and the heads in need of attention, and check the counter reset and the auto-stop before assuming either works.
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