Uher (brand)

Uher is a German brand of electronic equipment. The manufacturer, Uher Werke, later known as Uher Informatik, is based in Munich, Germany, and is probably best-known for its former range of portable reel-to-reel tape recorders which were once widely used by professional people in areas such as reporting and film-making. Since digital equipment has become widespread, these older analogue recording machines have ceased production and the company has focused on other equipment.

The "Report" series of portables had a neat, compact design, about 11" wide, 10" deep, and 4" thick. They used 5" reels of tape, and came in three models:

* Report 4000 - 4-track mono
* Report 4200 - 2-track stereo (tape used in one direction), usable also as 2-track mono (tape runs in both directions)
* Report 4400 - 4-track stereo (tape used in both directions, being turned over in between), usable also as 4-track mono

They had 4 speeds: 7 1/2 inches per second (i.p.s.), 3 3/4 i.p.s., 1 7/8 i.p.s., and 15/16 i.p.s. With the longest variety of 5" tape (1800 ft. long), and using 4-track mono at 15/16 i.p.s., it would be possible to get about 24 hours' recording time on one reel of tape, albeit at poor quality suitable only for speech, and 6 hours' continuous recording time would be possible.

These tape recorders had small loudspeakers (mono) built into them, at various times either in the front, or on the top near the piano-key-style controls.

They had three possible sources of power:

* Mains power, using a power transformer;
* A nickel-cadmium rechargeable battery;
* 5 standard (non-rechargeable) batteries.

Uher's web site (in German) can be found at http://www.uher.com, and the German Wikipedia has an article (in German, of course) on Uher at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uher.