Part of those forgotten lineups between the end of the "silver" era and the beginning of the "black plague" - by way of the "Communication Series".
Still silver, still flat, too, with lit pictograms and little graphs but a much more open design - at least one can see the tape being played :)
The mechanism itself is borrowed from the previous CT-9R, just as the JT-216 wired remote-control and quite probably so were the Ribbon Sendust heads.
However, the monitor/source switch was not deemed necessary - very strange for a high-end unit !