There were quite a few similar tape recorders in the USSR. But this was the one I had. And no one bought it for me, no one gave it to me. I assembled it myself.
Legendary rather because the name is “Legend”.
In general, amateur radio was very developed in the USSR . Special magazines were published. But my father taught me everything. I remember he gave me a soldering iron and said, “Solder.” Well, that’s not the point.
Having a tape recorder at that time was not a luxury, but a necessity. This was the only way to record your favorite songs from the radio or TV. There was no Internet back then. There were no other ways to listen to your favorite music either. Records don’t count – it was inconvenient (not all bands, songs, performers were released on records). You had to run around and look for these records in stores, and something popular (not in the sense of pop music, but popular with the people) was in short supply. In general, even then it was a rather exotic method. It may have been high-quality, but it was of limited application.
Besides, you can’t take a record player on a hike or just for a walk. It was chic, for example, to turn on your cassette player on the bus and listen, seeing how everyone envied you. By the way, no one ever complained about this. On the contrary, people were happy and smiled.
We had an old reel-to-reel tape recorder (I don’t remember what it was called) and a Eureka tape recorder in our family. Actually, it wasn’t really my thing. But I wanted something of my own, so I could take it anywhere and not ask questions. I had the basic diagram of the Legend. I started collecting parts. Somewhere I bought something, somewhere I got something. The most difficult thing was with the tape drive. But someone gave it to me for a low price through friends. But I couldn’t solve the problem with the speaker – as a result, I had to saw a larger speaker (the one I managed to buy in the Melodiya store) so that it would fit into the case.
In short, I assembled a tape recorder for myself.
After some time, I replaced it with another one, with better sound quality, but it didn’t work. Then I fixed it. But that’s another story.
Photo from personal archive