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The Ferrograph reel-to-reel tape recorders were just phenomenal!
After having barely skirted by the flimsy products of The Tripletone
company - Ferrograph was a completely different ball-game. Based
at Edgeware Road, London, The Ferrograph Company had built up
their reputation and economy during and right after The Second
World War, delivering tape recorders to the British Defense organisations,
more specifically - to the British Navy. Mr. Les E. Hall, export
manager at the time I first came into contact with them, had
indeed served at British destroyers during the war, using recorders
to record and analyze noise charateristics of enemy submarines!
I signed a contract with them in 1970 to distribute their products
in Norway. It was rather ambitious for our small market, but
with Arnfinn tweeking evey machine before we sent it on we gave
our toughest competitor - the Revox 77 - a real hard time. These
were the modell Sevens, and they were built like battleships,.
even if they had a couple of anomalies. Their quarter-track models
never got completely rid of the over-play from the opposite tracks
(I suspect they had made the head tracks a little over-sized
to achieve maximum signal/noise ratio) and there was always a
tiny bit of throw in their spool bases. But the sound was terrific!
I have a couple of the modell Seven and Super Seven. At the Super
Seven they introduced 10 1/2 in. spools. Signal/noise was excellent
and with a little tweaking the frequency reaponse was totally
flat 20-20000 hz! Which was easy to hoax in the sales literature,
but seldom achieved in practice by our competitors. The Ferrographs
did it! When they started to deliver machines with built-in Dolby
circuits Arnfinn adjusted every one for Maxell UDXLII tape -
Revox never came close. We used approximately 2 hours on each
machine. The buyers were usually hi-fi enthusiasts, sometimes
amateur mucicians. But Revox, being represented by a much larger
company also working Pioneer, Phase Linear, Thorens and brands
like that - always sold more. That and the fact that they were
solenoid-operated did the trick for the 77.
Ferrograph also brought out an integrated amplifier -the 307,
which was a disaster! Most of them burnt out the power transistors
due to inadequate protection and circuit design. It yielded 2x15
watts, 8 ohm, and had a lot of nice features - but very few held
up. At the end of the seventies Ferrograph was bought up by North
East Audio Ltd, an electronic company based in Northern England.
They tried to market a cassette deck that looked rather much
like the slim-line, vertical-oriented Tandbergs, but no luck
The mechanial construction, maybe also production control, was
quite inferior and could not compete with the Far East competition.
The last versions of the Ferrographs imported into Norway by
us was The Super Seven, a machine with provisions for 10 1/2
in. spools. Still a formidable machine. In the meantime Rotel,
KLH and Altec Lansing had taken over as our main profit-makers.
The Ferrograph brand name still exists, now as a company with
considerable success in large-scale informations systems for
airports, rail systems, etc. It is located in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
- Some pictures
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