Tandberg 3300X
A medium-price reel deck that Tandberg itself claimed would embarrass recorders costing twice as much.
Overview
Tandberg launched the 3300X as part of a three-machine refresh announced in the spring of 1973. It sat between the flagship three-motor 9000X and the TCD-300 cassette deck. The company's own advertising billed it as "a slightly less sophisticated version of the 9000X," a medium-price deck that carried over the improved Crossfield recording technique from the top model. Keep in mind that the source is Tandberg's marketing copy, not an independent lab test. Audio (April 1973, p.45) and High Fidelity (March 1973, p.10) both ran the same "Tandberg tops Tandberg three ways" announcement, and the language about performance came straight from the manufacturer.
What the marketing asserted was that the 3300X's record/playback response and signal-to-noise ratio at 3¾ ips were better than most other recorders at twice the price and at twice the speed. That means 3¾ ips outperforming competitors running at 7½, and the claim rests entirely on Tandberg's Crossfield head arrangement. Whether it held up in the field is not documented in the sources available here. Treat it as an advertising promise, not a measured result.
The feature set is what separates the 3300X from its bigger sibling. It uses a rugged new transport, and the front panel carries illuminated peak-reading meters. There are slide potentiometers for level control, echo and sound-on-sound facilities, mono mixing, a front-panel headphone jack, and monitoring facilities with a photoelectric end-stop. The end-stop senses the tape's end optically rather than relying on a mechanical switch.
Price is where the 3300X made its case. Tandberg's advertising listed it at $399.90, though one version of the same ad, in Audio (April 1973, p.45), printed the figure as $399.80. Dealer pricing varied too: a Myer-EMCO advertisement in the Washington area listed the 3300X at $429. Either way, it sat well below the 9000X at $649.50 and roughly in line with the TCD-300 cassette deck at the same $399.90. A buyer in 1973 weighing reel-to-reel against cassette would pay the same money for either format.
The 3300X also turns up in the record of how people actually used this gear. A musician's rig described in a 1980s cassette-review column had a home recordist running a Tandberg 3300X specifically for echo, patched in alongside a Teac four-track and mixer. That is a real-world use of the deck's sound-on-sound and echo facilities as a creative tool.
Collectors should go in with clear eyes. The 3300X is a medium-price machine from a company that built to a high standard, and its Crossfield heads and transport are the reasons to seek one out. But no service documentation, production-year range, or current market data is confirmed in the sources available here, and a deck of this age will need attention. Belts, idlers, and the usual mechanical wear come with any 1970s transport. Buy on condition and on whether the transport has been serviced, not on the advertising copy.
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