Grundig TK-60
A stereo reel-to-reel that British dealers were blowing out at 89 guineas against a list price several times higher. It was the bargain-bin Grundig that still had the goods.
Overview
The TK-60 was Grundig's push into genuine stereophonic recording, and the period advertising said so right away. A December 1959 spread in Studio Sound (December 1959, p.6) billed the machine as "the first fully stereophonic tape recorder." That is a big claim, and the magazine's own review pages later had to sort out what the deck actually delivered.
The pricing history is the most vivid thing about the TK-60. When it landed, British dealers listed it at 128 guineas. That is a serious sum, well above the TK-30 at 72 guineas and the TK-35 at 82, and in the same bracket as the Ferrograph 808 Stereo at 105 guineas. Grundig clearly meant it to compete with the better British and Continental stereo decks. Then the market moved. By December 1962 a dealer was advertising "brand new boxed Grundig TK60 stereo recorders" at 89 guineas against a list price the ad coyly declined to restate (Studio Sound, December 1962, p.3). A few months later the same channel was calling the TK-60 "by far the cheapest high quality tape [recorder] on the market" and inviting buyers to request reprints of the reviews (Studio Sound, March 1963, p.28). Whether that was a genuine closeout or a dealer's aggressive margin play is hard to pin down. Either way, the flagship got discounted hard within a few years of launch.
The Studio Sound review itself gives the clearest picture of how the deck behaved in use. The April 1960 issue carried a continuation of it. The reviewer wound 1,800 feet of tape through in roughly three and a half minutes in either direction, which is brisk for a domestic machine of the period. He singled out the brakes as good, though they left a couple of inches of slack when the transport was stopped with only a few feet of tape on the left-hand spool (Studio Sound, April 1960, p.37). The TK-60 mostly passed that test, with a caveat.
Owners who used the TK-60 as a working stereo machine describe a two-track configuration running at 3¾ and 7½ ips. At least one American taper's listing in a period tape-exchange directory confirms the two-track, dual-speed setup. That is a sensible domestic spec: 7½ for serious music dubbing, 3¾ for spoken word and longer sessions. The deck accepted detachable speakers. At least one British owner selling a used example in early 1965 advertised it complete with two microphones and the detachable speakers, called it the "professional model" and asked £60 against an original cost of £140 (Studio Sound, January 1965, p.?? - classified section). That £140 figure lines up with the 128-guinea list price once purchase tax is folded in. It is a useful anchor for dating a surviving example or judging whether a current asking price is sane.
Judging by the period record, reviewers did not treat the TK-60 as a reference deck. The Studio Sound coverage is thorough on transport behavior but thin on measured performance in the surviving text, and no independent lab numbers turn up in the material available here. The deck's reputation rests on its role as a well-built, genuinely stereo domestic recorder that British dealers pushed hard on price.
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