Grundig TK.60
Fifty-four pounds of gray plastic, two clip-on speakers, and a stereo tape deck that a 1960 reviewer found genuinely hard to fault.
Overview
First, the name on the lid. The period documents that survive for this machine - the 1960 Studio Sound review, the survey listings, the service-manual extracts - all call it the Grundig TK.60. It was made by Grundig (Great Britain) Ltd. and sold through Grundig's London address on New Oxford Street. The TK-60 is filed here under Telefunken, but anyone hunting for one should search the Grundig name, because that is what the badges, the manuals, and the magazine reviews all say. If a "Telefunken TK-60" turns up, look twice at the front panel before handing over money.
In 1960 this was one of the few domestic tape recorders that could record and replay in stereo and still carry its own pair of power amplifiers and a pair of detachable loudspeakers. Grundig's specification, as printed in the review, quoted two speeds - 7½ and 3¾ i/s. Frequency response was 50-15,000 c/s at the higher speed and 50-10,000 c/s at the lower, both within ±3 dB. Wow and flutter was claimed at less than 0.2% at 7½ i/s. The deck took 7-inch spools at maximum, and a magic-eye level indicator handled modulation. Price was £134 8s, which put it in the middle of the stereo field: well above the Brenell Three Star at £93 9s, comfortably below the EMI TR 52D at £245 and the Ampex 960 at £189.
The physical package is where the TK.60 divides opinion. The complete unit with speakers clipped on weighs about 60 lbs, and the two speaker cabinets account for roughly 15 lbs of that. Strip the speakers off and you have a recorder measuring 15½ × 16½ × 10¾ inches at about 45 lbs. That is still a two-hand lift, but it is a lot of high-quality equipment for that envelope. The case is finished in two shades of gray plastic with lacquered brass clips and locks, and the lid can be locked, which the reviewer noted as a real advantage in a house with children. The lid lifts off its hinges for unrestricted access to the deck. It has no storage clips inside the lid for spare spools, and the reviewer flagged that. Owners will notice it every time they change reels.
The detachable speakers are the machine's best feature and its biggest inconvenience. They clip to the sides of the cabinet, adding about 9½ inches to the overall width when fitted, and the whole assembly is awkward to move as one piece. Detach them and you can space them into two corners of a room, which is what a stereo machine of this era needed. The reviewer ran the TK.60 through a pair of Goodmans Sherwood enclosures and found the undistorted volume from the two nominal 4-5 watt output stages surprising. It was more than adequate for an 18 × 14 ft room, even for a family that likes it loud.
On the bench, the numbers held up better than the paperwork suggested. The manufacturer claimed a 40 dB signal-to-noise figure without saying whether it was weighted or unweighted.
The mechanical behavior drew praise. The machine ran smoothly and quietly with little vibration, and spooling wound tape evenly and tightly even on fast wind and rewind. Rewinding 1,800 feet took about 3½ minutes in either direction. The brakes were judged good, though they left a couple of inches of slack when the transport was stopped with only a few feet of tape on the left-hand spool. The reviewer said some professional machines fail that acid test. Replaying commercial stereo tapes, the virtual stage extended across the space between the speakers, with images relatively sharp and well defined. Two other expert listeners present for the test agreed.
The service documentation shows the stereo layout in more detail. The two channels are similar from input to output except for the oscillator. Bias and erase current at 40 kc/s goes to the left channel directly from V5, but passes through a buffer amplifier, V6, on the way to the right channel. The service notes give bias current as 200 mV across 200 ohms, erase current as 380 mV across 10 ohms, and a recording current of 16 mV across 200 ohms, with the magic eye adjusted to close on each channel in turn. Playback response is set by trimming L5 and L6 for a 7 dB lift across 1-15 kc/s at 7½ i/s, and R135/R235 for a 13 dB lift across 1-10 kc/s at 3¾ i/s. Grundig also sold a self-contained deck version, the TM60, with the pre-amplification and equalization for feeding a separate stereo amplifier. That is a different machine and should not be confused with the TK.60.
The connections are a small trap for anyone restoring one today. The TK.60 used the SL.33/S lead, which is color-coded differently from the SL.33 used across most of the Grundig range from the TK5 to the TK.55. Don't assume a spare Grundig cable will drop straight in. The machine also shipped with a multi-purpose four-way-plus-screen lead. Earlier Grundig machines and many Philips radios of the period used a two-pin-plus-centre-connector plug, and extension leads for those ran 12s. 6d. through Philips dealers.
The verdict from 1960 has aged well. The reviewer called it a good tape recorder for either monophonic or stereo tapes, singled out the light-touch control keys, gentle tape handling, the push-button counter reset, the tape-foil auto stop, and the microphone stop-start switch as things he liked, and found the sound forward and well balanced with low mechanical noise. The snags he logged — bad tape, head alignment, pressure-roller wobble — he judged teething troubles of early production rather than design faults, and advised buyers to check them carefully with the dealer before purchase. Collectors should take that advice literally: a TK.60 that has sat unused for decades will likely need the heads checked and the transport exercised before it earns its place in a stereo stack. When it is running right, it is a rare thing — a domestic machine of the period that actually delivered stereo, amplification, and speakers in one lockable grey box, and measured better than its own spec sheet promised.
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