Uher 4000S
A battery portable that broadcasters and field recordists carried up mountains and into jungles - and then had to learn to live with.
Overview
The 4000S is the machine that made Uher's reputation for serious portable tape recorders. The company's own advertising in HiFi-Stereo (March 1965, p.119) called the 4000-S "the greatest little professional tape recorder in the whole wide world," a lightweight under nine pounds that had "traveled everywhere… from the top of Mt. Everest to the bottomless pits of Africa." That is marketing copy, not a verdict. The specs underneath it were real enough. A 1964 distributor listing for the UK market gives the 4000 Report-S four tape speeds (7½, 3¾, 1⅞ and 15/16 ips), a 5-inch spool capacity, and a frequency response of 40 c/s to 20 kc/s ±3dB. Signal-to-noise is quoted at 55dB and wow and flutter at ±0.15%. The same listing records five 1.5V cells good for twelve hours, a meter level indicator with optional illumination, half-track mono format, dimensions of 10½ × 8½ × 3¾ inches, a weight of 9lb, and a UK price of £97 13s.
Those numbers explain why the 4000S ended up in so many field kits. A 40 c/s to 20 kc/s response from a battery portable was a serious claim, and half-track mono was the working standard for interview and location work. Twelve hours on a set of cells was the difference between a machine you could take into the field for a day and one you couldn't. The period advertising leaned hard on travel and durability because that was the actual use case.
The 4000S sat at the head of a small family. The 1964 UK listing pairs it with the 4002, described as a twin-track stereo version of the 4000S at £115 10s, and the 4004, a quarter-track version of the 4002 at the same price. The 4000S itself was the half-track mono original. Another 1977 listing in the same publication quoted a single-speed used 4000S at £89 and a four-speed at £115.
For anyone buying today, the 4000S rewards patience and punishes neglect. The known failure points are the spool drive belt, the regulator zener, the spool retainers, and the motor on early units. All are documented and all fixable, and the period service literature is unusually forthcoming about them. The speed selector remains the ergonomic weak spot, and a buyer should check that the motor isn't left running in neutral before handing over money. A well-sorted 4000S with a good microphone still does what the 1965 advertising claimed: it fits in a shoulder bag and runs all day on five cells.
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