About the Company
Uroko was a Japanese producer of consumer‑oriented reel‑to‑reel tape recorders active in the early to mid‑1960s. The brand’s recorded production span is approximately 1963 to 1966, and its machines were manufactured in Japan for basic home and portable recording rather than professional studio use. Uroko decks used solid‑state electronics, a relatively modern approach for consumer tape equipment of that era when transistor designs were replacing older vacuum‑tube circuitry. The company’s presence in the reel‑to‑reel market was quite limited, and only a few models are documented under the Uroko name.
One of the best documented Uroko models is the UT‑50, available roughly between 1963 and 1966. This recorder was a compact consumer deck designed to be battery powered, using five transistors in its circuitry and capable of handling small three‑inch reels of tape at a single speed of 1 7/8 inches per second. It operated in a half‑track mono format with two heads and used permalloy head material, typical of portable tape decks of the period. The UT‑50 could record for up to about 40 minutes on the small reel size and included a remote‑control microphone with start/stop and record switches. Its overall audio performance — frequency response and mechanical stability — was modest, reflecting its positioning as basic consumer gear rather than high‑fidelity or professional equipment.
Because Uroko’s output in the reel‑to‑reel segment was limited to one or a very small number of models, and because the company did not grow into a major international tape recorder brand, its production history is relatively obscure. Its machines are described mainly in vintage reel‑to‑reel directories and collector references rather than in broad corporate histories of audio technology. By the late 1960s, as cassette tape formats began to gain popularity and consumer tape recorder design became increasingly dominated by larger Japanese electronics makers, Uroko’s presence in the open‑reel sector effectively ceased.
In summary, Uroko was a Japanese manufacturer of consumer reel‑to‑reel tape recorders active around 1963–1966, producing solid‑state portable decks such as the UT‑50. Its market focus was compact home and portable audio recording, and its limited model range reflects a brief participation in the mid‑20th‑century reel‑to‑reel tape recorder era before industry consolidation and format shift led to the decline of such small brands.