fireberd


I used to maintain a studio in Kansas City, Mo., that had a Tascam recorder and board back in the mid/late 70's.  I was also the staff pedal steel guitar player for the studio. 

The Tascam recorder was a nightmare to maintain.  I had to recalibrate the recorder about once a month.  The channel modules in the control board were not very reliable either and I had to work on those frequently too.

 Was this in North Kansas City way north of downtown? My band use to record at a studio up there with a Tascam board. In the mid 70s.

Well there might be a corilation between those who used Tascam  instead of Studder or Otari to record and those who now use Sonar instead of Pro Tools or Logic.... just kiddn :)
 
Edit; no ,,on second thought, no

just picked up a tascam 388 today (1/4 reel / 8 tracks) mint condition with the exception of the capstan band is stretched out.
called teac(tascam to try and order a new one.
lady says "we dont sell parts for that anymore, maybe we have some rubber parts but thats it"
 
said yea, a belt, its rubber !
she was very cool, they had it in stock, i ordered it and will be here next week.
 
all the needles move and light up / all tested channels, works mint.
got it for.....
FREE !
couldnt believe it.

The Tascam DA-88s were great alternatives to the ADAT in my experience. A studio I used to hang out at used them for years before going to a disk based recorder. They seemed to be much less fickle than ADAT units. Plus the tapes were smaller :D.

This just reminded me that I still can't log on with my Cactus account since the change, Maybe the forum maintenance will fix that. My Cactus has a big meter, my monkey has a small meter!
 
Totally cool Chuck! And Free is the right price too.  Even though I don't miss reel to reels much,  every once in a while I think it would be fun to do a session on one just to smarten us up.  
Well I have my trusty Tascam DR 40 so I'm still brand loyal. 

Tascam, then Teac, was one of the major driving forces behind home recording, some would argue the driving force.

Back in the early to mid 1980s I did maintenance work in a number of Teac/Tascam based studios. The really early gear was reliable, and maintainable, and a little annoying since working with their single-ended audio interface was at best challenging.

As the market grew they started to cut corners. The Model 38, and Model 58 certainly had more/better features, and I suppose looked cooler, than the 80-8, but I have an 80-8 that still works, and a lot of the 38s don't (undersized motors were a problem, and the custom chip that controlled transport functions is nearly impossible to find). The 58s fared a little better because their motors were up to full time use. I wouldn't turn down a 38 today because it would not get heavy use, but it was a problem back then.

Their boards followed the same arc. The Model 15 was amazing. Dead quiet, flexible routing (for the day) and very easy to work on. The Model 700 was an excellent console, but by then I think they had damaged their reputation, and they did not sell as well as they might have. I worked on quite a few 500 and 600 series mixers, and they were not a lot of fun to keep working.

Teacs real gift to the recording community, however, was their early manuals. If you can find copies of the manuals for the M15 or 80-8 read them. There is a wealth of good information in there.

i was surprised at the constrution of the 388.
first, it weighs a ton, got to be close to 100lbs.
second, the circuit boards are an amazing construction in these things.
the way they made them was very easy to replace parts.
rather than a board goes dead, lets replace the whole board,
they went with a small approach, a there is a board for almost all routes of the signal chain.