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Telefunken Magnetophon 302TS Reel to Reel Recorder

After a long while, I'm back with a new review.

And this is not just a review... It's the review of the piece of technology I love the most from my entire collection, which also happens to be the oldest one I have.

It's the Telefunken Magnetophon 302TS portable reel to reel recorder from 1968.




And oh my God, it's simply mindblowing in every way.

It uses 13 cm  (5 inch) magnetic reels to record and play audio.
You can set the speed at 4.7 cm/s for longer playback but less quality or 9.5 cm/s for higher quality.


It can play stereo reels, but won't record in stereo. It also has two buttons for selecting between left and right track. (or both)


People consider reel to reel tape recorders to be the highest quality option for listening to music. Mostly because of the analog nature of the recording method, and the ridiculous speeds at which the tape moves in some higher end Recorders.

Of course, you could consider this a high end recorder. It depends on your point of view. The build quality is incredible, since it looks so beautiful and has lasted such a long time. I also heard somewhere that 9.5 cm/s is a very high speed for a portable recorder. But it won't ever reach the "perfect" sound quality of professional reel to reel recorders.


This is the volume knob, which I also really like. The plastic right under it in the picture is actually a pause button (pauses the tape while it's held down)


This is how it looks when the reels are revealed.


For audio input and output, it uses 5 pin DIN connectors, which I've found an adapter for at media galaxy. Made by hama. Now recording and playing back is as easy for me as connecting it with a standard 3.5mm headphone connector.


This is where the 6 volt power supply is plugged in, but mine is broken, and I use batteries. There is also a port for external speakers, probably, but I don't know what kind of connector that is, so I just use the headphone port which works just as well if I want to connect some better speakers.

Speaking of batteries, it takes 5 enormous type D batteries.
They last very, very long which is a good thing.

Also, this is what the reels look like:




I got the one with tape for about 25 Ron (5 dollars) and the empty one for 8 Ron. You need, of course, an empty one for the tape to be stored while it's playing.


This is how it looks without the reels installed.

I'll do a follow-up to this post with much more info about reel to reel recorders and they're history. This was  just a basic review of my particular model.

Also, in this video I made earlier today you can see it in action:



That's all for today! Have a nice afternoon!🦄

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