The Fi-Cord A1 portable reel to reel tape player came out in 1958 and was based on a similar machine by Stellavox. There was a growing number of miniature tape recorders on the market at the time but the Fi-Cord A1’s were well made little machines and provided simple yet decent voice recording capability. At only 4lbs in weight they were also widely used by the BBC for their reporters, but according to the BBC manual on this machine they were not suitable for broadcast transmission quality.
The machine runs on 8v and the 3.5 inch tape can play/record at either 1 7/8 or 1.5 ips. It has an internal speaker as well as headphone jack and originally came with a Grampian DP4 microphone and external battery pack which are both missing here. Helpfully this Fi-Cord A1 example has been converted to work off of a regular 9v battery.
This has been recapped and new belts fitted and seem to play fine at both speeds and via the speaker. I don’t have a suitable 4 pin mic at the moment to test its recording ability. The two tone grey vinyl case is in decent condition overall with a a little bit of chrome loss to the rear hinges. The vinyl on the very top surface has unglued (I suspect there was a thin layer of foam, now disintegrated). You could re-glue it but would need to undo the seams first to get to it.
Approximate Dimensions: 25cm long x 13cm wide x 7cm high.
This comes with free international shipping.
