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1932 To
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BSR produced reel to reel tape recorders from 1961 to 1966 which were manufactured in United Kingdom. These tape recorders targeted the consumer market. The early models of BSR tape recorders used tube electronics and later on they transitioned to solid-state tape recorders. The company produced both 2 and 4 track machines available in 220-240v voltages.
Birmingham Sound Reproducers was founded in 1932 by Daniel McLean McDonald (ex British Thompson-Houston) and began producing transformers. Soon they were manufacturing the BSR ‘Ampligram’ self-contained gramophone/amplifier and direct cut disc recorders.
During the war (1939-1945) they developed an oscillator-based acoustic mine detonator and in conjunction with Decca, an early form of ASDIC.
After the war they moved into gramophone motor production, communications systems and eventually in 1959, the first tape deck, the Monardeck TD1 – an inexpensive machine with a 5¾ ; inch spool and a single speed which was used by many of the small British tape recorder manufacturers springing up in the late 1950s like Elizabethan, Fidelity, Dansette, Bush and Perth. The improved TD2 of 1961 and the two-speed version TD4 of 1962 were followed by a 7″ reel version, the TD10, in late 1963. By the time the TD20 was released in 1966, BSR could proudly claim that they were “the world’s largest manufacturer of tape decks and record players”.