Eumig FL-1000

Eumig's swansong and all-out effort on the cassette format, available in two versions : with Dolby or with Telefunken's great, excellent, High-Com noise reduction systems.


Albeit looking like a regular feature-packed 1978 recorder, the FL-1000µP is mechanically entriely different than any other deck ever produced by anyone : no capstan flywheel(s) but a photo-etched disk holding 2500 points, allowing to correct speed 15,000 times per second !
That's an opto-electronic capstan, set in a fully diecast aluminium base and allowing a reported 40ms response time.

The rec and play heads are on a separate, removeable, block, but no details are given about their nature.
But since the smaller FL-900 was an Alpine AL-300 in disguise and since Eumig's related separates have a distinct Luxman flavor (C-1000 & M-1000, both LUX T-tagged, plus the T-1000 which probably came from Sonic who was making the Luxman tuners at the time), it is likely the heads of the FL-1000µP came from Alpine.

This programmable three-head deck also had more high-end features than what the competition offered in 1979, japanese competitors included : full-tilt programmability and "go to" function plus a discretely shown EU bus which allows to chain 16 FL-1000µP by way of 4-bit address code and have each of them act naturally and operated by way of any 8-bit home computer.

Computer did you say ? Thanks to its technology, the FL-1000µP could also handle computer data backups if 5.5" floppies weren't big enough. Yes.
The FL-1000µP naturally was reaching for broadcast applications.

Last arrived on the market, Telefunken's High-Com reduction system was the best of all and was even prefered by Etsuro Nakamichi (vs. Dolby or dbx), but dbx never made it against Dolby and neither did High-Com, alas.

Bias and level trims are up for the Dolby version (400Hz & 14Khz), Bias only for the High-Com version but with a -9dB position added. Setting works with a test switch and two LEDs, all three making the "Balance-scope".

Also in were a MIC/line mixing with reverb/echo effect (or without), MPX filter, input limiter, display dimmer with peak hold and -6dB switch, tape/source monitoring and, of course, 1979 oblige, Type IV tape compatibility !

What else ? Nothing. Nobody else did as much in 1978/1979, not even Sony, Matsushita or Pioneer !

Available in black or silver, both cost a fortune to buy. And to make : added to Eumig's efforts in the failed Polavision adventure, FL-1000µP put too much of a strain on the little Austrian brand... it went down in 1981.

By which time the FL-1000µP still was unmatched. Even by Sony or Matsushita or Pioneer or whoever.



More about the FL-1000µP here and here (with nudies !).