Somewhere around 1966, my brother Harry gave me a tape recorder exactly like this one.
I loved this tape recorder, the Aiwa TP-40. (Amazingly, someone posted a video of the unit in its original packaging!) It was my first real electronic device. It had a microphone and an ear plug and a built-in speaker. I actually used it to record music from the radio. If you didn’t have the record back then, that was the only way you could hear a song over again when you wanted to, short of buying the record.
So this was the tool of my first act of musical piracy.
I’ve always liked the looks of the reels turning around. I’ve even toyed with the idea of picking up a used Nagra recorder for the pure visceral thrill of seeing a finely crafted machine actually do something, visibly. The television show “Mission Impossible” used to use a Nagra for the famous “your mission, should you decide to accept it…” sequences at the beginning of each show. It was cool.
The Nagras, however, are such marvels of engineering that even though they are completely obsolete they still command very high prices on eBay. I saw one for over $1000. That makes no sense– you can buy a very, very good digital recorder for $150.
I have a little minidisc recorder which, compared to my little Aiwa, is a Boeing 747 compared to a Spitfire.