Grundig TK2200 - Review Including The 'Fault'.
For the technically minded, look at the last sentence in the penultimate paragraph of the review below. By 1968, although I had Physics 'O' Level I possesed no real technical knowledge at all. I wouldn't have understood what was being talked about and it didn't seem to be relevant as my TK2200 produced excellent recordings.
After the TK2200 was sold to Mr Fairey I would play the tapes recorded on it back on the new Uher 4200, but they never seemed as good; I very much regretted selling off the Grundig. Then the tapes didn't get played for many years and when I left home all 'my' tapes, still photos and movie film were left behind with my dad.
In the interveaning years I did build up a good electronic technical knowledge; I even passed out top in UK in the City & Guilds Advanced Colour TV Exams. My dad died in 1987 and the tapes came back to me in the 1990s. On playing tapes back on the Uher that were recorded on the Grundig the same problem was still there as it had been all those years before. But this time I knew about azimuth adjustments and guess what? Altering the azimuth on the Uher brought the Grundig recordings back to the excellent quality they had been when played back on the TK2200.
On reading my old Tape Recorder magazines recently for the first time in over 30 years I read the sentence about the azimuth fault. It is clear that it wasn't just the magazine review machine that had been set up incorrectly in the factory. For the non technically minded, if you record and playback on the same machine that is out of azimuth alignement the problem will not show up, there is no 'fault'. It is only when you playback on a different machine that you can tell things are wrong; it just took me over 30 years to sort it out!
