Concord F-400

From HifiWiki

The Concord F-400 was a stereo front loading portable cassette deck available from 1968-1971. This unit featured a belt driven transport in which the tape inserted upside down to facilitate the top mounted transport buttons. This deck included two speakers integrated to the sides of the deck which provided excellent stereo separation as well as separate volume and tone controls for each channel which also controlled the record levels indicated by dual VU meters on the top panel. This is a dual powered unit which can be operated on AC current or with 6 D Cell batteries with an automatic AC/DC solenoid switch.

As this was an early unit, this deck does not feature auto stop, pause, noise reduction and is only compatible with normal bias tape. The F-400 also did not have an internal monitoring circuit, so to achieve proper levels when recording, the internal speakers had to be switched off to avoid playing the unit at top volume. This deck featured an option to record with automatic level control, but only in mono, stereo recordings had to be manually controlled. All of the F-400 decks had a tendency to run slightly fast compared to most decks on the market. This pitch error, common to Matsushita manufactured decks, can be resolved with an adjustment on the circuit board.

This deck was manufactured in Japan by Matsushita Electric and also was sold under the National Panasonic (RS-255S) and Penncrest (JCPenney) names.

Front view of a 1970 Concord F-400 (US Model)

Top view of a 1970 Concord F-400 (US Model)

Transport and heads of the Concord F-400. National RS-255S with updated pinch rollers shown. (Japanese Model)