About the Company
Norfield was a small British manufacturer of domestic reel-to-reel tape recorders active for only a few years, roughly 1959–1962, with products aimed at the consumer/home hi‑fi market rather than studios.
Company and timeframe
A specialist directory lists Norfield as producing reel‑to‑reel tape recorders between 1959 and 1962, manufactured in the United Kingdom and explicitly targeted at consumers.
This places Norfield in the same early‑1960s British tape‑boom period as brands like Ferrograph, Fidelity and Magnafon, before Japanese imports reshaped the market.
Norfield Consolette and design
A 1960 issue of Tape Recording magazine describes the Norfield Consolette as a “unique British‑made recorder,” calling it a good domestic‑class instrument with an elegant, free‑standing form factor thanks to detachable legs.
The article notes features typical of mid‑range home machines of the era: built‑in amplifier and speaker, bass and treble controls, monitoring through the internal speaker or headphones, mixing of microphone and radio/gram inputs, external speaker output, and the ability to use the unit as a standalone amplifier.
Technical character
The Consolette is described with performance figures such as frequency response around 50–9,000 Hz at 3¾ ips and 50–5,000 Hz at 1⅞ ips, plus facilities like magic‑eye level indication, relay‑actuated pushbutton transport control, automatic tape‑end stop, and a detachable lid housing a 10"×6" speaker.
These specs indicate a single‑motor, quarter‑inch domestic deck optimized for long‑play speech and casual music, not a high‑speed professional recorder.
Scale and disappearance
Beyond the Consolette, no extensive Norfield model ladder is documented, and the very short 1959–1962 production window suggests low volumes and limited distribution compared with larger UK brands.
As imported Japanese machines and improved British competitors emerged in the 1960s, Norfield appears to have exited the market without transitioning to more advanced or transistorized designs.
Place in RTR history
Historically, Norfield represents one of many small British firms that briefly offered respectably engineered domestic tape recorders during the early consumer hi‑fi era.
For collectors, surviving Norfield Consollette‑type machines are niche curiosities valued for their distinctive cabinet styling and “time‑capsule” British design rather than for groundbreaking technology or studio‑grade performance.