About the Company
Incis was an Italian audio equipment maker best known for producing consumer reel-to-reel tape recorders beginning in the early 1950s. The company’s products were typical of early European consumer recorders: tube-electronics, modest performance, and aimed at everyday home use rather than professional studio work.
Founded: 1953 in Saronno, Italy, by the Seregni brothers.
Country: Italy.
Era of DDR production: mid-1950s through at least the 1960s based on surviving models; the brand itself continued in various audio products into the late 20th century.
Market: Consumer home audio tape recorders.
While Incis did produce reel-to-reel tape recorders, it was never a major global manufacturer like German or Japanese audio brands. Its machines are rare today and mainly of interest to vintage audio collectors.
Reel-to-Reel Production History
1950s – Foundation and Early Tube Models
Incis started designing and producing tape recorders shortly after its founding:
The Incis Hobby 100 is a late-1950s Italian reel recorder with tube electronics, permalloy heads, and support for 1¾″ and 3¾″ ips speeds on small reels.
This unit used a simple transport with idler wheel and friction drive typical of lower-cost recorders of the era.Another early model appears in collector archives as the Incis Magnetofono TK1, believed to date from around 1960, with tubes, a built-in speaker, and mains AC power.
These early units reflect Incis’s position as a consumer-oriented Italian tape deck maker, selling basic open-reel recorders before solid-state designs became widespread.
1960s – Continued Consumer Tape Decks
During the 1960s, Incis continued producing reel recorders. Known designations from this period include models like TK 6, a mono tube deck with a bigger 7″ reel capacity and standard playback/record speeds.
Some units were marketed abroad under other names:
In the UK, models labeled Incis “Harmony” and “Melody” were distributed (e.g., by Truvox), sometimes appearing in retail catalogs of the early 1960s.
This suggests Incis machines made it beyond Italy into limited export channels.
1970s – Late Era Analog Tape Products
By around 1970, Incis machines continued to appear, though recordings suggest the company’s focus was shifting with the times:
The Incis V12 from about 1970 is documented with tubes in a more modern case design.
The Incis V34 from circa 1975 shows a more modern transistorized tape machine with multiple speeds (4.75 cm/s, 9.5 cm/s, and 19 cm/s) and 4-track capability, indicating stereo operation and broader tape speed flexibility — similar to mainstream consumer decks of the mid-1970s.
Though these later models are still listed under the general “sound/video recorder” category and sometimes share parts with other Italian recorder lines, they confirm that Incis persisted in reel-to-reel products into the 1970s, even as cassette tape and transistor technology became dominant.
Technology & Market Position
Incis recorders were always consumer-grade rather than high-end or professional:
Electronics: Early models used vacuum tubes, later units included transistor components.
Formats: Full-track and quarter-track reel formats (mono and stereo).
Target audience: Home listeners and hobbyists, not broadcast or studios.
Export: Some machines were re-branded and sold in markets such as the UK.
The performance and sound quality of Incis recorders were modest compared to premium brands, and their rarity today reflects limited production scale and niche market presence.
Decline & Legacy
As cassette recorders rose in popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s, open-reel tape decks became less central to the consumer market. Incis appears to have adapted by producing other tape-based products and possibly other audio equipment (e.g., portable tape playback units and later cassette modules), but reel-to-reel recording under the Incis name largely remained a 1950s-1970s phenomenon.
Incis reel-to-reel decks are now rare vintage items, often only documented in specialized audio equipment databases and enthusiast collections.