About the Company
There’s very little documented history about a reel‑to‑reel tape deck manufacturer called Dejur — and current authoritative sources don’t list “Dejur” as an established, standalone reel‑to‑reel brand with a continuous production history like Akai, TEAC, Uher, etc. What does appear in historical records is that:
DeJur Was Associated with Tape Recorders
Equipment labeled DeJur or DeJur‑AMSCO did exist and shows up in vintage equipment catalogs and registries (e.g., a DeJur TK‑820 recorder attributed to DeJur, DeJur‑AMSCO of Long Island City, NY, likely from the mid‑ to late‑1950s).
The DeJur name also appears in association with portable tape recorders of the 1960s, including a DeJur‑Grundig branded portable dictation machine — though that specific unit used its own proprietary tape cartridge format, not a standard open‑reel system.
DeJur Was Not a Major Reel‑to‑Reel Manufacturer
Unlike larger reel‑to‑reel producers, there is no clear evidence that “DeJur” represented a company that designed and marketed a full line of open‑reel tape decks over many years. Instead:
The DeJur label seems to have been used on some standalone tape recorders (e.g., the TK‑820), possibly made by or for DeJur‑AMSCO, a small U.S. electronics firm operating in the 1950s.
Later references (such as DeJur‑Grundig products) reflect brand partnerships or rebadged portable machines, but these were not standard reel‑to‑reel tape decks in the consumer hi‑fi sense.
The Smithsonian Institution’s catalog describes a DeJur‑Grundig portable recorder using a specialized tape cartridge format, not conventional open reels.
What DeJur Likely Represented
From the available data we can say:
DeJur was a small U.S. electronics/recorder brand in the 1950s–1960s that appears on some tape recorders, but did not have a well‑documented manufacturing lineage or broad product lineup the way larger reel‑to‑reel brands did.
Known examples (like the TK‑820) are rare and lightly documented, suggesting that DeJur machines were likely low‑volume or transitional products, not widely distributed consumer hi‑fi decks.
The link to Grundig on some devices (e.g., DeJur‑Grundig portable recorders) likely reflects rebadging or co‑branding rather than a single continuous DeJur manufacturing operation.