About the Company
Trio was a Japanese electronics brand associated with Kasuga Radio Co. Ltd, a company founded in 1946 in Komagane City, Japan. In **1960 the company formally changed its name to Trio Corporation, and during the 1960s it produced and marketed a range of consumer electronics products, including radios, communications gear and tape recorders. Before adopting the Trio name, the company’s products had been sold under other labels, and later many Trio products were rebranded as Kenwood as the company shifted focus to that brand in global markets. The transition from Trio to Kenwood reflects the broader evolution of the company’s branding strategy as it expanded internationally.
Trio‑branded reel‑to‑reel tape recorders were manufactured in Japan and were part of the consumer home audio segment rather than professional broadcast or studio decks. The recorded history of models under the Trio name is limited and somewhat sparse, with only a small number of models documented in vintage tape recorder directories compared with larger specialist brands. One known model is the Trio TT‑10, which appears in collector listings as a consumer‑oriented reel‑to‑reel recorder. The machines from this brand typically employed solid‑state electronics, multiple tape speeds (such as 3 3/4 and 7 1/2 inches per second), and the standard two‑track or four‑track formats common for home use in the 1960s and early 1970s, reflecting general market expectations for consumer decks of that era.
Trio recorders were also sold by third parties under re‑branding or distribution arrangements. For example, in the United States and other export markets, many Japanese‑made decks by Trio and other manufacturers were sold through retail outlets like Lafayette Radio, sometimes under alternate model names or with dealer badges, representing common marketing practices of the time.
By the late 1960s the company phased out the Trio brand for many products and concentrated on the Kenwood name, which became much more widely recognized internationally. As a result, Trio‑branded reel‑to‑reel production was relatively short‑lived and limited in the historical record compared with the longer‑running output of Kenwood and other major Japanese audio manufacturers that subsequently dominated the consumer tape deck market.
In summary, Trio’s reel‑to‑reel tape recorder history is that of a Japanese consumer electronics brand active primarily in the 1960s, producing a limited set of solid‑state home reel‑to‑reel decks such as the TT‑10. The company’s identity evolved through a rebranding strategy that emphasized the Kenwood name as its products reached broader global markets, and the Trio label was gradually dropped in favor of Kenwood as the company’s consumer audio business expanded.