Tandberg Model 64
A three-speed, four-track deck that Tandberg's own advertising sold as the standard of tape-recording excellence - and priced at $498 when that was serious money.
Overview
The Model 64 is a four-track stereo tape deck built into a teak base, measuring 16 by 12 by 6½ inches and listing at $498. That price bought three speeds - 1⅞, 3¾, and 7½ i.p.s. - plus a four-digit counter, three heads, a stop-start pause button, level meters, and a hysteresis motor. It also bought the features that separate a serious deck from a consumer toy: sound-on-sound, echo effects, track adding, direct monitor, and automatic tape stop.
The numbers matter here. At 7½ i.p.s. the frequency response runs 40 to 16,000 c.p.s. with two decibel variance, wow and flutter is better than 0.1 per cent, and the signal-to-noise ratio is at least 53 db. Those are the specs of a machine meant to be installed in a high-fidelity system rather than parked next to a console. The hysteresis motor is a synchronous design, and it's why the speed stability held up well enough to keep wow and flutter under a tenth of a percent at the top speed.
Tandberg's advertising copy was not shy. The company billed the Model 64 as "the highest rated record/playback deck available," which is a claim no manufacturer should be taken at face value on. The feature list does back up the ambition: three separate heads, direct monitor facilities, a microswitch-operated tape stop, free position tape load, and a built-in filter for FM multiplex recording. That last item is period-specific. It let the deck handle FM stereo broadcasts when multiplex was still a relatively new thing to record at home.
One bit of housekeeping that trips people up: Tandberg's own literature states plainly that the Model 64 is the same as the Model 6-44 and represents a change in nomenclature only. A 64 and a 6-44 are the same machine under two names.
The deck was built to slot into an existing system. It could also be used as a completely portable recorder, which is a strange claim for something with a teak base, but at 16 by 12 by 6½ inches it's plausible enough that owners did exactly that. Contemporary coverage described it as easy to install into high-fidelity systems, with precision laminated individually gapped heads - one each for record, playback, and selective erase.
One period account describes a den setup built around an AR turntable, a Dyna PAS-3 preamp, a Dyna Stereo 70 power amplifier, an Eico HFT-72 FM-AM tuner, and a Tandberg Model 64, feeding a pair of Jensen speakers. The owner used the deck constantly for weekly voice correspondence with children and grandchildren.
Tandberg's magazine presence in the mid-1960s leaned hard on the reliability-and-natural-sound pitch. Amateur-Tape-Recorder (September 1965, p.38) ran the company's copy promising "reliability and precision" alongside "natural sound reproduction," and High Fidelity (October 1967, p.43) carried a Tandberg advertisement that challenged readers directly - record a voice or instrument, play it back immediately, and judge whether it sounded like the source. That's marketing, not independent measurement.
The Model 64 came out when the home tape deck market was crowded and competitive. Contemporary roundups placed it alongside the Benjamin PD-100, the Concord 550, the Freeman 200, the Revere-Wollensak M-20/M-30/M-3 cartridge systems, the North American Philips Continental 301, the Roberts 770 with its Crossfield head, and the Superscope 600. The Roberts 770's Crossfield head was the notable technical rival of the moment - a design intended to prevent high-frequency erasure. The Model 64's answer was simpler and more traditional: three discrete heads, individually gapped and laminated, with selective erase.
The Model 64 does not chase the low-speed end of the market. It has a 1⅞ i.p.s. setting, but the headline specs are all quoted at 7½. At 3¾ and 1⅞ the response narrows considerably, as it does on every deck of the era. Buyers who cared about fidelity ran it at the top speed.
Collectors like the usual Tandberg virtues: solid mechanical engineering, a hysteresis motor that tends to outlast the electronics around it, and heads that were built to last. The usual caveats apply too. A machine of this age will need its belts and idlers attended to, and the teak base, while handsome, offers no protection against decades of dust in the transport. Expect to service one rather than plug it in and go.
It was overbuilt for its price point, and it does the unglamorous things, like holding speed and running quietly, extremely well.
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