Telefunken M-300 (c. 1964–1965)
Little is documented about the Telefunken M-300. What survives is a handful of British tape-recorder reviews from the mid-1960s. It was a half-track battery portable tape recorder. Studio-Sound (August 1964, p.25) listed it in a battery-portable survey at £34 13s, sold in Britain through C. Braddock Ltd., the Tape Recorder Centre in Blackpool.
The February 1965 issue (p.35) printed the manufacturer's specification in full. The machine ran on five 1.5 V leakproof flashlight cells. A Telefunken dry-fit storage battery, mains recharger, or car battery could be used instead. It used ten Telefunken transistors - one AC150, six AC122, three AC117 - plus an AEG10 499 rectifier, with record/erase bias at 63 kHz. Known specs:
- Tape: half-track, 3¾ ips, 5-inch spools; fast rewind
- Frequency range 40 Hz–14 kHz; signal-to-noise 50 dB; wow and flutter ±0.2% (one review) or ±2% (another)
- Output power 1 W; external speaker 4.5 Ω; internal 4 × 22 in elliptical speaker
- Inputs: microphone 0.15 mV at 2 kΩ, radio 0.15 mV at 2 kΩ, phono 0.15 V
- Outputs: 1.5 V from 18 kΩ (preamp), 0.4 V at 5 kΩ (earphones)
- Level meter; dimensions roughly 10½ × 10¼ × 3 in; weight 7 lb
In field trials for the June 1965 battery-portable feature (p.25), Studio-Sound found the internal speaker dull and gritty. That is the usual plastic-cabinet vibration problem. It was still acceptable for monitoring. Beyond these reviews, essentially nothing else is recorded about the M-300. The dates in the title are inferred from the reviews themselves, not from factory records. If you own one, the archive would like to hear from you.
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