Harman Kardon TD-392 (c. 1986)
Not much survives on the Harman Kardon TD-392. What does survive is solid: the deck got a full test report in HiFI-Stereo (June 1986, p.39), which pins it to mid-1986. It was a cassette deck with separate record and playback heads, and the features list leads with that. The reviewers ran it with factory-selected, center-of-the-line TDK AD (ferric), TDK SA (chrome-equivalent), and TDK MA-R (metal) tapes. The report also described LED indicators and a display that could be switched between a flat measurement and one weighted for the lower-treble saturation limits of audio cassettes. That gives a better read on real tape performance than the electronics alone.
Past that test report, the record goes quiet. No original price, no full specification sheet (frequency response, wow-and-flutter, THD), and no production years have turned up in surviving period sources. The wider context is Harman Kardon's own advertising. An Audio (April 1986, p.75) campaign for its "Ultrawideband" cassette deck line claimed response across the full audible range, 20 Hz to 20 kHz ±3 dB, from the least expensive model to the most sophisticated. The TD-392's individual numbers can't be confirmed from the surviving review text. It is a real, mid-1980s Harman Kardon deck, documented by exactly one thorough magazine test.
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