Lenco is mostly remembered for their turntables but in 1977 they introduced a totally unexpected model, a very special 3 discrete head cassette deck. The deck features a 2 motor transport with an a.c. servo-controlled direct drive motor for the dual capstan transport and an asynchronous motor for reel drive. The direct-drive capstan motor is provided with a 3 mm capstan spindle and controlled by servo. It drives the pre-capstan - which is designed as a flywhell - by means of a belt. If the pinch rollers are not engaged the two capstans rotate at approximately the same speed. Only when the pre-capstan is braked by means of the rubber pinch roller the flat belt allow a slip of about 2%. As a result the tape between two capstans is streched. During playback the tape speed can be varied by about +/-2.5%. The die-cast head support assembly includes the heads, tape guides and rubber pinch rollers. The deck is a 3 discrete head head construction with 1 ferrite erase head of double gap design, 1 ferrite record head (3 micro gap) and 1 hard permalloy playback head (1 micro gap), however the deck has no monitoring function, you have to use the switch on your preamp.
The deck features both manual recording level setting with large illuminated level meters and ALC (Automatic Level Control) with time constant adjusted for optimal recording of speech. Automatic level control of music was deliberately omitted since the results cannot be satisfactory and would not be compatible with the high standard of the unit. The deck was adjusted at the factory for BASF LH super C 60 (standard), Maxell UD XL I C 60 (high output), BASF Ferrochrome C 60 (Fe-Cr) and Maxell UD XL II C 60 (CrO2 - auto select). In order to avoid the occurence of heterodyne frequencies and interference with the Dolby system a switchable 19 kHz Multiplex filter is provided. This filter is also active for the 30 kHz carrier used in the CD4 Quadro LP records. The headphoe volume can be adjusted by means of two separate knobs while the DIN microphone connectors have a 5 volt d.c. supply for electret microphones. Frequency response is 30-18,000 Hz +/-3 dB (FeCr and CrO2 tape), wow and flutter is +/-0.07% WRMS, dimensions: 460x285x85 mm.
(Some info kindly provided by M.E. from resus.ch )
