Sony TC-40

The TC-40 was a mono compact cassette recorder (cassette-corder) manufactured in Tokyo, Japan, by the Sony Corporation in approximately 1972, and sold for $109.95 retail. It was an earlier design that led to the TC-50, and consequently shares many similarities. They marketed the TC-40 as "Action-Corder", and it had a built-in condenser microphone and tape-end alarm system as its main selling features. It was a portable recorder for the purposes of making dictation notes, and pocket size measuring 50 mm × 178 mm × 111 mm, and mass 770 g with batteries. Some of its main features included built-in miniature loudspeaker, power amplifier with 400 mW output, jack socket for the monitor output, and optional rechargeable battery pack BP-22.

Review

This cassette recorder has that iconic old-style 70s appearance, the type of thing James Bond (Sean Connery) would have had in his hand, as the must have gadget for a spy. Alternatively, perhaps, something that could be taken into space by astronauts. During the time of its introduction, one of Sony’s innovations was the inclusion of the built-in condenser microphone that no other manufacturer was providing. These microphones were extremely sensitive and light thereby making this recorder an ideal tool for reporters to carry with them.

Historically, this lovely cassette recorder comes from a time during Akio Morita’s drive for miniaturisation of domestic audio products. His engineers would have been looking for all sorts of ways to miniaturise the mechanical and electronic components to make tape recorders smaller. In this design, we see some ingenious ways engineers did that. Back then, disc motors would have been difficult to find and here we see (in the following pages) that they were stuck with a large motor that they had to install horizontally to keep the overall thickness of the recorder to 50 mm. This resulted in a vertically oriented motor pulley driving a horizontally oriented flywheel, via the drive belt. Consequently, the size of the motor very much dictates the size of the whole recorder and design of the tape transport mechanism.

The tape transport controls are rather limited in order to keep the mechanism simple. In play mode, the black pushbutton provides cue facility, however in the stop condition; the same button provides fast-rewind facility.

Price/eBay

These units are sometimes for sale on eBay and they come in varying conditions. If it requires a new set of drive belts, then it can be an expensive repair because they are below the main audio board and the whole unit will require dismantling to gain access. This can be very time consuming and costly, and you can see what this involves in the following pages of this article when I took mine apart. If the battery holder has had acid damage, then they are time consuming to repair as well. Consequently, ones that are not operational are not worth much. However, those in good working order, mint condition, together with their accessories can fetch approximately thirty pounds and more in the pre-used market.

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