History
Katsuma and Tomoma Tani believed there was a better way to recreate sound at home, whether it was from a turntable, a cassette deck, or a CD player. TEAC Corporation was originally founded as Tokyo Television Acoustic Company on August 26th, 1953. In 1956, the name changed to Tokyo Electro-Acoustic Company, finally merging those firms in 1964 to form TEAC Corporation.
TEAC’s very first original production model, the TD-102, went on sale in April 1957. In 1957, two Americans came to visit the newly established Tokyo Electronic Acoustic Company. They were the CEO and the chief engineer of a big radio manufacturer called Lafayette Radio Electronics. When Tani showed them the prototype for the TD-102, they said “Add a playback amp, turn it into a tape player and change the casing to a cabinet and we‘ll take it!”. And with that, they ordered 25 units. While happy to receive such a great bulk order, there wasn‘t anyone at the company at the time to configure the amps… So according to legend, staff had to work flat out for 72 hours straight to complete the order in time. But their hard work paid off: The TD-102 crossed over into the US market and quickly became a favorite amongst audio fans.
In 1964, the world's first slow-motion video recorder made by TEAC was used at the Tokyo Olympics to record each and every movement of the athletes. In 1977, R2-D2's voice was recorded for "Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope" on a TEAC reel-to-reel cassette deck. In 1982, Bruce Springsteen's famous album "Nebraska" was created in his home recording studio using a TEAC multi-track cassette tape recorder.
Our goal is to record the musician's performance and the engineer's intentions faithfully to deliver them clearly to the listener's ears.
From the early days of reel-to-reel decks to today's digital age of high-resolution playback, media has changed dramatically, but TEAC's vision remains the same.
We are committed to providing products that are made with the utmost care and attention, for people just like you who love music.