Harman Kardon CT-1

The Harman Kardon CT-1 is a stereo cassette deck from the late 1970s. It has 2 heads and a manual transport, and it was advertised in 1979 at US $279.95. It's a plain analog deck. It never got the fame of Harman Kardon's Citation gear, but it's a decent example of the company's cassette line from that period.

Documentation on the CT-1 is limited but consistent. The service manual describes a 4-track, 2-channel stereo deck running at 4.8 cm/s, with a record/playback head and a separate erase head. Tapeheads.net specs list two motors, though the service manual references 1 capstan motor. Wow and flutter is rated at 0.18% WRMS. Line output is 0.4 V, and line input sensitivity is 70 mV. Period brochure material mentions a front-panel mic input and a DIN/phono output.

One point is unclear. Most sources, including the service manual, list Dolby B and C noise reduction, but at least one period advertisement mentions ANRS instead. Whether the CT-1 offered both, or whether ANRS showed up on an earlier version, isn't resolved in the record. The noise reduction labels on the front panel of a given unit would show which one it has.

Beyond the basics, the record is thin. No frequency response, signal-to-noise ratio, or THD figures have surfaced, and there's no documented production run, lineup positioning, or contemporary review coverage. High Fidelity covered Harman Kardon's cassette decks in the mid-1980s (March 1986, p.39) with a test report on the later TD-292, but the CT-1 itself doesn't appear to have received a full lab review in the major audio press. HiFI-Stereo (November 1969, p.22) noted Harman-Kardon's expansion of its stereo receiver line with the Nocturne Eight Twenty.

Known specs: