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So far, I’ve had this deck in my possession two or three times, and somehow I didn’t pay much attention to it. I knew it sounded good, it was cute, had some minor flaws, and that was it.

Somehow, it seems to me that the CF4 is unreasonably neglected and deserves a few words to be said about it, especially since the engineers at Grundig put in quite an effort. Additionally, the German magazine Stereoplay rated it much, much better than its predecessors – the CF-5500 Mk2 and CF-7500 (which I have in my collection), placing the CF4 in the Spitzenklasse 2 category, alongside the Nakamichi Dragon and CR7/5/4, as well as the BX300, Revox B215, Teac V970X, and Z6000… not to mention more. From my personal experience, in most cases, I could agree with the ratings of this German magazine when it comes to sound. There have been exceptions, during my modest HiFi hobbyist career… but not many when it comes to cassette decks.

To begin with, let me say that the CF4 is an original European deck, so it wasn’t made somewhere in the Far East but in Grundig’s factory in Portugal. This is supported by the components inside it: Wima capacitors, Piher trimmers, and the like. The deck itself is not a „copy“ or rebranded version of some Japanese model – you’ll find such a device only at Grundig.

It was produced for a short time, only from 1993 to 1994, and it was the best they had to offer at the time. Before it, the CT-905 held that position, about which I’ve already written. The CF4 model was much cheaper, 300 EUR compared to the 500 the CT-905 cost. With the newer model, everything became more modest: appearance, mechanics, display, options. But the heart remained Grundig’s. For 300 EUR, you could buy a Denon DRM-650S (dual-head, with Dolby S and auto calibration) or an Onkyo TA-6511 (with the same features), but also some three-head decks, among which the famous Aiwa AD-F850, which cost only 250 EUR, offered decent sound, plenty of cheap plastic, but also a mechanism with two flywheels in a closed loop (Closed Loop Dual Capstan), although one of them was plastic, for cost savings.

However, the Grundig Fine Arts CF4 is a true three-head, which is quite important to mention.

As far as I know, the Grundig CF4 is the last three-head deck produced not only by Grundig (which had only a few models of three-head decks) but also by any European manufacturer of audio equipment. Just looking at that, it’s unique.

The German company with a long history, founded by Max Grundig immediately after World War II in 1945, has definitely left its mark on video and audio history. Especially in the field of picture reproduction, Grundig was a true innovator. Technicians, by the way, hated their TVs because they were quite complicated. The same was true for VCRs while pushing the Video 2000 system together with Philips, if anyone remembers that. However, somewhere in the late eighties of the last century, this German manufacturer boldly stepped into the high-class devices with the 9000 series, which, in my opinion, is quite impressive but somehow fell into oblivion. This series had a specific name: „Fine Arts“ and a beautiful catalog. And it largely deserved that name – although the CT905 deck was the most modest member (there was no model with the 9xxx designation anyway) and realistically didn’t belong to a high class (it cost 500 EUR), but the CD player CD9009 and tuner T9000 definitely did (with prices of 1,500 and 900 EUR respectively). Other devices with the Fine Arts badge appeared in the offer (the 900 series consisting of amplifiers, tuners, and CD players, and it seems that the mentioned CT905 belonged to this series), but they were more of a higher mid-range than a high class.

In the early nineties, there was a turning point: Fine Arts still existed, but no longer in an expensive but much cheaper version, so it could be said that they were more of commercial devices and a propaganda slogan than real Fine Arts components.

The CF4 cassette deck is a real example of that series, and you’ll see the details further in the text.

I know that some followers of my site will wonder why this deck is relatively unknown and underrated? Well, first, I would think that the problem is that you can’t see the cassette, but it looks so much like a CD player that when its display isn’t working, you have to seriously stare at it and conclude that it’s not a player for a small silver disc. Fans of small magnetic tapes don’t like that, at least from my experience. And they don’t want to buy such devices. They like to see how the cassette rotates inside the housing.

On the other hand, the CF4 looks very modest and inconspicuous: there’s only a power button and controls for fast forward and play. Wait… play? Where’s the record button? It’s not there! Or, it is, but it’s hidden under the cover on the front panel, small and inconspicuous. The logic is probably as follows: all commands that aren’t the most basic are hidden under the cover, including recording level, balance, bias… and will certainly be used when recording, which means opening the cover. So why not put the record button in the same place? Logical, right?

The mechanics and electronics are housed in a sturdy case, with a very sturdy cover, which I didn’t expect. The cover for the front panel controls is even sturdier. Simply put, although thin, the CF4 gives the impression of very compact and solid construction.

The cassette is inserted horizontally with the tape facing forward, and the base itself is lifted at the end, and the cassette stands at an angle to make it easier to pick up. It’s a delight. The quality of plastic is commendable. On the base, you’ll see a label showing how the CF4 automatically tensions the tape – this was done by some modern two-head and (especially) three-head decks to achieve optimal tape tension at the beginning of playback or recording.

Below the base is the display – a complete analogy with Fine Arts CD players from the same series (as far as I remember, the best one was a very rare model – the silver CD1000 with TDA1547 converters in double differential mode). The display only contains a digital counter and peak meters, besides displaying the operation of the Dolby circuits (only B and C, no S) and activating memory. Small LED lights next to the transport buttons serve as status indicators, with a small red one indicating ready for recording or recording in progress, and somehow it’s not logically connected to the REC button under the panel cover.

The display, by the way, can be turned off, and also stops displaying information when you click the cassette eject button – you simply think the deck is turned off, which is partially confusing – perhaps the designers thought there was no need to display the word „Open“ or something similar because the cassette holder largely covers it.

The counter can operate in two modes: the first is a simple digital counter, which has extraordinary resolution – a C60 cassette rotates to about 4,800 on the counter. With the Denon DRM-650S, you only get up to 1,600, and with the Onkyo TA-6511 up to 2,400. Bravo to Grundig. In the second mode, the deck counts elapsed time (without the need to set the basic duration of the cassette type C60, C90, etc.) and displays it on the display. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show the time remaining until the end. What I didn’t like was how long it takes for the counter processor to calculate the current position of the cassette – the process takes just over 30 seconds, but after that, everything runs smoothly – the counter changes values ​​during playback and fast forward.

The peaks have hold, but only in one color, which is a pity. And… here’s the surprise: most of the time, the number of segments displayed on the peaks is equal to the number of markers, i.e., if the deck has markings -20, -10, -5, -3, 0, +3, and +5 dB, this indicates that it has 7 segments that can be lit. In the case that there is also a segment „infinity“ at the beginning of the display, it is actually a device activation signal before displaying the peaks. The Grundig CF4 has 9 of these markers, with a resolution of around 0 dB, which is quite rough (-3, 0, +2 dB). However, if you look closely, you can notice that the peak segments also light up in unmarked sections, e.g., between -3 and 0 dB, as well as between 0 and +2 dB. When I counted the total number of segments, I came to the number 17, which is much more than I expected in this price category. In fact, the peaks on the Grundig, although small, are really excellent and have great resolution.

Other features include track search, but only forward or backward one at a time. Additionally, the Grundig CF4 does not have any advanced calibration options, but it does have variable bias, which is useful.

Ergonomically, some details remained unresolved: it seems to me that the CF4 is the only deck with logical commands that cannot switch directly to fast forward from the Rec/Pause mode, but the „Stop“ command must be used. Also, when in pause for recording, the way to start recording is to press the „Play“ button, but you can’t know this intuitively: the recording and pause LEDs are lit, but pressing the pause button does nothing, and pressing the record button records 5 seconds of blank recording. Instead, it would be nice if the „Play“ button blinked and indicated the need for use, like on Pioneer decks. Not to be too strict – the same situation in Rec/Pause mode is also on my Technics RS-M275X deck.

After starting recording, there is a small interruption in sound (not on the recording, but on the outputs), and source/tape monitoring can only be activated when the deck actually starts recording. They could have done this a bit more elegantly, but still, I’m not talking about major flaws.

Internals

The Grundig CF4 uses a loader system like a CD player, very decently made. The transport is, I would say, ALPS identical to that of the Denon DRM-650S, and I can say that I’m not very happy about that. Even the Onkyo TA-6511 and 6211 have a slightly better one (more massive flywheel). These mechanisms are easy to maintain, and the entire scope of the loader and mechanism is provided by two large metal plates on the top and bottom. Everything is made very nicely.

But, let me go back to the mechanism: first, Grundig did not create an opening for accessing the heads in terms of cleaning, like, for example, Harman on the TD420/450/470 models. This means that the heads and rollers (and perhaps the tape shaft) can only be cleaned with a special „wet“ cassette, which cannot be easily obtained. Incomprehensible, really.

Second is that this type of mechanism has a gear on the reel motor that breaks. I managed to repair it, but the mechanism remained a bit noisier, so in the end, I replaced it with a working one, so that the sound during fast forward/rewind wouldn’t remind me that the end result could have been better. A great saying goes: „Perfect is the enemy of good,“ but sometimes good isn’t enough.

It’s a real shame that Grundig didn’t invest in a slightly higher-quality mechanism.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any data on the material of the recording/reproduction heads or their type.

The inside of the deck – you can see that the electronics are quite neat. By the way, Torx screws are used everywhere, instead of Phillips, which Grundig routinely used at the time.

What I didn’t understand were the specifications: the service manual states that the signal-to-noise ratio is around 57 dB (without noise reduction, the type of tape is not specified), which is quite an average figure if we are talking about metal tapes… even poor for a three-head cassette deck of that generation. However, for the frequency range, they only provided information for playback, not recording/playback, as if it were a turntable, not a cassette deck. That information is that the deck plays in the range of 30 Hz – 18 kHz, which is probably based on a test cassette that had frequencies recorded up to 18 kHz.

That’s why I decided to measure the range in terms of the input signal of -20 dB, recording and playback, and looking for the -3 dB point on the frequency response curve.

And I was amazed: first, the electronics of many decks, when comparing the input and output signals in Rec/Pause mode, are not very linear and drop after 20 and something kHz. With Grundig, the output was as linear as a ruler, and I changed the measurement range from the standard upper limit of 25 kHz to 30 kHz and got a flat line all the time, compared to the reference point of 1 kHz… all the way to 30 kHz. Fascinating! At the other end, the drop in the curve started around 50 Hz, and the -3 dB limit was reached at around 30 Hz, which is fine. Generally, I didn’t expect such a quality result in terms of linearity and signal throughput at 30 kHz (I didn’t go further). To be precise: if the electronics are not linear at the beginning, the result of recording and playback will hardly be linear, but if the result in Rec/Pause mode is good, that doesn’t say much about the deck’s ability to record and playback properly. This means that the real data will be obtained by further measurement.

Moving on to that part, using TDK D (normal), Maxell XLII (chromium dioxide, or more precisely pseudo chromium), and TDK MA (metal) cassettes gave the following results:

On normal and chrome tapes, I got the upper limit of the range at somewhere over 21 kHz (closer to 21.5 kHz), which is extremely good for a deck of this category.
On a metal cassette, the upper limit was somewhere between 24.2 and 24.5 kHz, which is incredible. A truly outstanding result, it reminded me of the Fisher CR-9070.

So, measurements of this modest deck reveal its brave heart, I would say.

Sound

The Grundig CF4 is a dangerously good machine. It sounds even better than the Fisher CR-9070, which can sound a bit artificial at times. This doesn’t happen with Grundig. The reproduction is very clean and neutral, and the high tones are detailed and clearly presented. The bass is not like in top-notch decks, in terms of volume, but it is very well presented (definition) and honest – Grundig actually fascinates by not pretending in any segment; it faithfully reproduces what has entered it, and that’s it. It doesn’t try to captivate the listener with exaggerated bass, smudges to sound smoother, or pumped-up highs that are supposed to throw us into a trance. The essence of CF-4 is to do the job as correctly as possible, and that’s it. And that „correctly“ is very, very fair and fine – for example, a short hit on a drum (Peter Murphy – Cuts You Out) has its beginning, end, and duration, which, believe me, is often a homework assignment for machines that record and reproduce compact cassettes.

Compared to, say, the Onkyo TA-6511 and TA-6211, the Grundig CF4 is in a higher category, and that is very clear, both in terms of dynamics, bass, and naturalness and neutrality. Comparing it to the Denon DRM-650S, the sound is similar, but with Grundig, it’s more precise and cleaner.

Conclusion

Is the Fine Arts CF4 without flaws? No, of course not. However, it does not deserve to languish in the corner of audio history, and this text is dedicated to it for that reason. For 300 EUR, which is what it cost, it really offers a lot, more in my opinion than the vast majority of two-head decks with Dolby S system that cost the same.

Could I live with its sound and not have any other cassette deck? Absolutely. This is just proof that Europeans also had a horse for the race – but they probably invested decades less in propaganda, as well as the whole marketing approach.

In conclusion, a warm recommendation for the Grundig CF4.

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