About the Company
Claricon was a brand name used by World Mark Electronics Inc. of Pittsburgh (USA) around the 1960s–1970s for audio products — including portable reel-to-reel tape recorders.
Claricon — Portable Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorders
Brand Details
Brand: Claricon
Company: World Mark Electronics Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Era: c. 1965–1970s
Products: Small portable tape recorders (often made in Japan and sold under the Claricon name)
Market: Consumer/portable recording, not pro hi-fi decks
Claricon machines were typically compact transistorized recorders intended for everyday recording and playback — likely OEM units manufactured in Japan and marketed in the U.S. under the Claricon label by World Mark.
Example Models
Claricon 48-050: A portable reel recorder with 3¾ and 1¾ ips speeds, battery/mains operation, integrated speaker — typical of small consumer units.
Claricon 48-075: A similar portable solid-state model, also made in Japan and sold around 1965-1967, often for a modest retail price.
Claricon Super Deluxe FT-108: A portable transistor deck with remote-control mic capability, indicative of Claricon’s mid-20th-century consumer positioning.
These machines used small reels (often ~3″) and were built for speech and general audio recording/playback, not high-fidelity music reproduction. They’re comparable to similar small Japan-manufactured units branded under names like Roberts or Magnavox in that era.
What Claricon Was Not
Claricon was not a major reel-to-reel manufacturer like Akai, TEAC, or Uher that engineered and built its own transports from the ground up.
It did not produce large hi-fi tape decks or professional broadcast recorders.
The brand’s reel recorders were consumer-oriented, imported OEM builds that World Mark rebadged for retail.
So while Claricon appears in lists of “tape recorder brands,” it’s best understood as a marketing/brand name for portable machines sold in the mid-1960s through early 1970s, rather than an independent reel-to-reel manufacturer with a distinct engineering lineage.