About the Company
Peeters was a brand of reel‑to‑reel tape recorder made in the Netherlands, active in the era when magnetic tape decks were sold to home audio enthusiasts. Its known products reflect the tube‑electronics era of consumer recording equipment.
Origin: Dutch tape recorder brand
Country of manufacture: Netherlands
Market segment: Consumer / portable reel‑to‑reel machines
Electronics: Tube‑based (valve) electronics, typical of pre‑solid‑state decks.
Track configuration: 1/2 track (record/playback)
Typical tape speeds: 3¾ and 7½ ips (inches per second)
The available documentation is limited, but Peeters shows up in collector‑oriented reel‑to‑reel catalogs as a smaller, regional brand rather than a large multinational manufacturer.
Timeline & Production Context
Mid‑20th Century – Tube Tape Era
Peeters appears to have produced portable or tabletop tube‑based reel‑to‑reel recorders most likely in the 1950s and 1960s, a period when many European companies offered consumer tape decks before solid‑state designs became mainstream.
The brand is especially noted in Netherlands‑made equipment listings, which suggests local manufacture for domestic/EU markets, not broad international export.
Peeters Petrovox Model
The Peeters Petrovox is the primary documented reel‑to‑reel model in collector listings. It was a portable tube recorder with typical specs for its era:
Tube electronics
Full‑track mono record/playback on ¼″ tape
Portable/classic design — used for home or general recording
Standard power (220–240 V) for European usage
Single motor transport system
The Petrovox illustrates that Peeters machines were designed to be straightforward and easy to use — not professional studio decks but everyday recording/playback units for the domestic market.
Market Position & Legacy
Peeters was not a major global player like Akai, Sony, TEAC, or Uher; its presence was regional and limited.
It represents part of the post‑war European consumer audio boom, when smaller local brands offered reel‑to‑reel decks for home use.
Tube‑based designs like Petrovox were typical of early reel‑to‑reel machines, before transistor‑based solid‑state equipment became standard by the mid‑1960s.
Today, Peeters equipment is mostly of interest to vintage audio collectors and historians exploring regional tape recorder manufacturing.