Revere T-2200 (1960–1961)
Twenty-five pounds, eight watts, and a reel big enough to hold a full hour of music on a single side.
Overview
The Revere T-2200 looks modest on paper. Revere Camera Company, the Chicago and Los Angeles firm better known for its 8mm movie cameras, built it as a 4-track stereo tape recorder. The company's own advertising was blunt: four-track stereo recording and playback, thinline, lightweight, and only 25 lbs. That last figure is the one that sticks. A portable stereo deck at that weight was genuinely unusual in 1960, and it separates the T-2200 from the boxy, furniture-grade tape recorders that dominated the period.
The T-2200 records stereophonically on 2 or 4 tracks, and it also records 4 monaural tracks for doubled time. A 4-track mono recording gave you twice the mileage out of a single reel, which for a home user in 1960 was the difference between one evening of music and two. It plays back all 2 and 4-track pre-recorded tapes, and it will make stereo tapes from stereo records or broadcasts. It can also record microphone on one channel with record or radio accompaniment on the other, and owners report using that more than you'd expect. It's a crude form of overdubbing, and a genuine selling point for anyone who wanted to sing along with a record and keep both parts.
The amplifier is rated at 8 watts of maximum output on the upper channel. That's not a lot by any standard, and the T-2200 was never meant to drive big speakers in a big room. It was meant to be carried, set up, and used. Revere's own advertising billed the 8 full watts as enough to double as a public address system, which tells you what kind of output they thought it was: adequate for a room, not a hall.
The frequency response is quoted at 40-18,000 CPS. That's a respectable figure for a 1960 home deck, but it comes from the companion-unit literature rather than a lab report, so treat it as a manufacturer's claim rather than a measured one. The companion unit is a separate box that adds its own controls, amplifier, and microphone, and it's what turns the T-2200 into a real stereo system. Revere's copy is explicit that the companion matches the recorder in both appearance and performance, and that the point of the separate box is speaker spacing. You can put the two channels wherever the room wants them instead of wherever the recorder's chassis forces them. That's the reason collectors go looking for the pair rather than the recorder alone.
High Fidelity (November 1960, p.25) ran the T-2200 in its new-products column under the headline "It's 4-track! It's thinline!" — the same three claims Revere led with everywhere else, which suggests the magazine was working from the company's own release copy rather than from a bench test. The same advertisement-style notice reappeared in High Fidelity (October 1960, p.12) and again in High Fidelity (May 1961, p.8), which is a useful reminder that the T-2200's magazine presence was bought space, not independent measurement. Buyers in 1960 would have seen the same list of capabilities repeated across the audio press without a single reviewer having put a meter on it.
The T-2200 did have a thoughtful tape-handling design. The advertising for the companion-unit package calls out a patented, self-adjusting braking system that eliminates tape breaking. That was a real annoyance on cheaper decks, where a fast wind followed by a hard stop could snap a tape in half. Revere also leaned on the 3M Company connection in its later advertising, noting that the recorders were backed by the research and experience of 3M, producers of "Scotch" Brand Magnetic Tapes, and pointing to lubricated-for-life moving elements. By the time that copy ran, 3M had purchased the Revere Camera Company outright, which explains why the brand's later advertising reads like a 3M product announcement with a Revere badge on it.
The T-2200 also turns up in the period's tape-editing literature. A contemporary writer was working through a scheme to squeeze a full hour onto a single 7½-inch reel by removing one flange from a standard plastic reel and extending it with card stock. The Sony stereo recorder he first tried couldn't quite manage it, but the Revere T-2200 "turned out to be almost made for the job." With only minor changes, he reported, the Revere was ready right then for full-hour recording. That's an unusually specific endorsement. The T-2200's reel clearance and transport geometry were, apparently, generous enough to swallow an oversized reel without complaint.
That same source notes that the T-2200 was "especially adaptable" to the 7½-inch-diameter reels, and shows the deck running with the upper flanges removed from standard plastic reels so the tape pack is visible. It suggests the buyers were people who recorded a lot, who cared about squeezing every minute out of a reel, and who were willing to modify their hardware to do it.
The T-2200 was sold alongside the T-2000, a 2-track monaural model, and Revere's advertising positioned both as "moderately priced." The actual numbers, from the companion-unit literature, are more useful: the T-2200 was priced under $240, the companion unit under $70, and the pair together under $310. For a 4-track stereo recorder with a separate stereo amplifier and microphone in 1960, that was aggressive. It's also why the machine shows up in the period's year-end roundups as one of the new stereo recorders in the medium price range.
Two things are worth flagging for anyone considering one today. The first is that the T-2200's reputation rests almost entirely on manufacturer copy and one enthusiast's hands-on report. There is no independent bench test in the record that anyone has surfaced. The 8-watt and 40-18,000 CPS figures are Revere's, not a reviewer's, and should be read that way. The second is that the companion unit is the whole point. A T-2200 without its companion is a mono recorder with stereo heads. Collectors looking at a listing should check which one they're actually being offered.
What the T-2200 represents, in the end, is a specific moment: the point at which 4-track stereo recording stopped being professional equipment and became something a family could carry into the living room. It isn't a legendary machine. It isn't sought after the way the big studio decks are. But it did a job that very few machines at its price could do in 1960, and it did it at 25 pounds — which, for a stereo tape recorder of that era, is close to remarkable.
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