About the Company
Technicorder was a brand name used in the early 1960s for portable reel‑to‑reel tape recorders that were manufactured in Japan and marketed primarily in the United States through companies such as Lafayette Radio Electronics. Technicorder reels were sold for a short period, roughly between 1962 and 1965, and the brand did not develop into a larger multinational manufacturer in the way that Sony or TEAC did. The models produced under this name used tube‑based electronics, reflecting the mid‑century consumer technology before transistors became dominant in tape recorders. Technicorder recorders were aimed at consumer and portable recording markets rather than professional broadcast or studio work. The product lineup was very limited and today is mainly documented in vintage tape recorder directories and collector references. The only well‑documented model from the brand is the Technicorder RK‑126.
The Technicorder RK‑126 was sold in the early 1960s and was marketed as a mid‑high‑fidelity portable tape recorder. It used tube electronics and a half‑track mono format (record/playback) on 1 7/8 inches per second tape speed and supported 5‑inch reels. It had two heads (erase and record/playback) with permalloy head material, typical of consumer machines of that era. The RK‑126 was described in contemporary catalogues as a compact, portable recorder with push‑button controls and accessories such as a microphone, earphone and extension speaker cord. Its construction and features made it suitable for office dictation, voice recording, and basic music or personal audio capture, but its fidelity and performance were modest compared with larger hi‑fi decks. The recorder also included an unusual synchro‑rod accessory that allowed synchronization with 8 mm movie projectors, a feature pitched at home movie enthusiasts.
Because the brand’s production was limited to only a few years and very few models, Technicorder did not build up a broader reel‑to‑reel legacy or large product range before the market shifted toward transistorized designs and cassette formats later in the 1960s. As a result, Technicorder tape recorders are now rare vintage pieces of early consumer portable reel‑to‑reel history, representing a transitional period in recording technology just prior to the widespread adoption of solid‑state electronics.
In summary, Technicorder was a short‑lived Japanese‑manufactured reel‑to‑reel brand sold primarily in the early 1960s in the United States, with products like the RK‑126 tube‑based portable recorder that illustrate the consumer mobile recording segment of that era before transistorization and cassettes became dominant.