About the Company
Tape‑Athon was an American brand that produced reel‑to‑reel tape recorders in the early 1970s, with its operations rooted in background music systems and professional‑style transport designs. The brand emerged from the Tape‑Athon Corporation, which was founded in 1954 and headquartered at 502 S. Isis Avenue, Inglewood, California, USA. Initially the company built tape systems and duplicates for background music services, operating one of the largest tape duplicating facilities on the West Coast during the 1960s and offering pre‑recorded or leased music libraries. It was eventually taken over by Telex. The reel recorder products appear in documentation from about 1970 to 1974.
The Tape‑Athon reel‑to‑reel machines were primarily consumer and background music oriented, designed for extended use in commercial environments such as retail stores, offices, churches, schools, hotels and other facilities where continuous music playback was needed. These decks employed solid‑state electronics rather than older vacuum tube circuits, reflecting the technology standard of the era.
A documented example of a Tape‑Athon model is the Tape‑Athon 702, which was sold roughly between 1970 and 1974. This unit was a solid‑state auto‑reversing reel‑to‑reel deck with half‑track mono/2‑track capability, supporting multiple speeds (1 7/8, 3 3/4 and 7 1/2 inches per second) and reel sizes up to 7 inches. Its transport and mechanical design were built for long, low‑maintenance service, which was a priority for continuous background music playback. The deck featured permalloy heads and had typical frequency response and wow‑and‑flutter figures for consumer‑grade gear of the period.
Tape‑Athon’s reel‑to‑reel products were not marketed as high‑end hi‑fi studio equipment, but rather as durable, serviceable machines for applications where reliability was more important than audiophile performance. Their presence in the vintage reel‑to‑reel landscape is modest and limited to a short production window, and Tape‑Athon recorders are uncommon in general collector references compared with larger audio brands of the same era.
In summary, Tape‑Athon was a United States‑based brand active in reel‑to‑reel tape recorder production during roughly 1970–1974, producing solid‑state consumer and commercial background music tape decks like the 702 model. Its machines reflected the company’s broader background music business and were designed for extended use with minimal maintenance rather than for high‑fidelity studio recording.