About the Company
Veritone was a United Kingdom-based maker of consumer reel-to-reel tape recorders active from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. Machines under the Veritone name were manufactured in Britain and were aimed at the consumer market with features and styling typical of the era’s home audio equipment. The company’s reel-to-reel production was relatively short-lived and limited compared with larger specialist brands, but it produced several notable models during its tenure. Veritone machines were tube-based designs, as transistorized consumer decks were only becoming common later in the 1960s.
One early example from the brand is the Veritone Venus, produced from about 1958 to 1961. This was a console-style tape recorder built into a mahogany or veneered cabinet with integrated speakers and an internal amplifier. It supported half-track stereo recording/playback at the two standard speeds of 3¾ and 7½ inches per second, and featured a three-head transport, solenoid braking, direct off-tape monitoring, sound-on-sound (echo/superimposition) facilities, and separate record and playback amplifiers — features that were comparatively advanced for consumer machines of the late 1950s.
Veritone also produced portable machines, such as a portable version of the Venus introduced around 1959, offering a single speed with a simplified feature set, microphone accessory and basic portability for home and informal field use. These early units demonstrate that the company attempted to cover both stationary and portable recorder segments within its limited lineup.
By the early 1960s, Veritone introduced models like the Veritone 16 (produced from roughly 1962 to 1965). This deck accommodated slightly larger reels (up to eight inches), offered variable tape speeds including 15 inches per second — a speed associated with wider frequency response — and used a three-motor transport design. The Veritone 16 was described in trade sources as “hand-built to professional standards” with components such as the company’s own “825” deck and premium mechanical features that extended performance beyond strictly basic consumer decks.
Veritone machines were typically sold through British audio retail channels and promoted in trade publications alongside other contemporary home audio recorders. Period advertisements and press coverage emphasize the company’s efforts to provide tape recorders with multiple features such as monitoring and superimposition, which were still unusual in lower-priced consumer tape decks of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The production run for Veritone reel-to-reel tape recorders effectively concluded by the mid-1960s, as the market shifted toward transistorized designs and as international competition from larger Japanese and European manufacturers expanded. Veritone’s output remains a notable example of British tape recorder manufacture in the analog era, though it was modest in scope compared with major brands.
In summary, Veritone was a British reel-to-reel tape recorder brand active roughly from 1958 to 1965, producing tube-based consumer machines like the Venus console and the mid-1960s Veritone 16. Its products combined multiple operational features aimed at advanced home audio applications for the time but were part of a short-lived presence in the broader history of reel-to-reel audio equipment.