Tandberg 3500x

[teac3440]

Today i am picking up a Tandberg 3500x with 12 tapes for $20. what is teh value of this deck and what decks does this tandberg compare to. thanks.

[jdurbin1]

These 3000-series RTR from the '70s (not to be confused with the later 3000-series components from the '80s and '90s) are an inbetweener for Tandberg. They have the older fully mechanical figure 8 belt transport with joystick control, but the chassis design is closer to the later full logic 9000-series decks. They have the typical Tandberg crossfield head design so fidelity is above average.

Market is really soft on these; you'd probably see the older tube models like the 64 or 64X outsell this one, as will the newer 9000-series decks or 10X/10XD and TD20A decks which also are better performers.

The 3500X is a bit less common than the 3300X or 3400X, but less valuable than the 3600XD which was one of only two open reel decks Tandberg made with Dolby.

Comparison to decks from other brands at the time? Not sure but in general Tandberg decks had above average-to-excellent sonics comparatively. Mechanically, there may be more advanced decks from that same period as the figure 8/joystick mechanism was pretty long in the tooth by then.

John

[scotchtape]

I owned one from new (1976) until about 1993 when poor performance and failing belts, etc, coupled with Tandberg pulling out of the UK made me take it to bits and keep anything useful.

I have recently bought Akai GX4000d and earlier (1960s) 1721 and I have to say they are far, far better engineered mechanically. They are playing as new IMO.

The joystick on the Tandberg was very crude and rough to operate. I never had the thing serviced by anyone else. I just kept it lubed, the heads, etc. clean, but knew nothing about adjusting tensions. Sonically I think the deck was very good. I can still play 7.5 reels from 1976-93 on the Akais and the recordings really jump to life.

Strangely, my original owner's hand book is on ebay just now - only a couple of quid!

[jdurbin1]

I would defend the joystick design, it's actually fairly elegant and simple and if it's working correctly, shouldn't be rough to operate. I've got some 64x decks here and have overhauled a pair of 3000X and none of them left me with that impression.

However, it was past its time by the point the 3500X was produced. To me it's similar to the situation Sony put themselves in with the Trinitron TV; it was so good that they produced it far longer than they should have, and almost missed out on the flat panel TV market trend altogether.

Tandberg had this mechanism mastered after having built decks based on it for 20 something years, and probably perpetuated it longer than they should have. One piece of evidence is that they jumped from it directly to a full logic mechanism without exploring any other mechanical transport designs in between, which seems odd.

Probably another reason why this particular series doesn't hold its value very well.

John