This is a really handy machine to have around a studio.
Some features:
Sound Techniques was one of the key London studios from the mid-60s to the early 70s. It’s where the Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd recorded “Arnold Layne b/w Candy and a Currant Bun” (the greatest debut single in history!) and where the Julie Dyble-era Fairport Convention recorded their first lp (the finest non-Byrds folk-rock LP ever?). The studio used a nice console of its own design. It was impressive enough that they ended up getting into the business of selling consoles to other studios like De Lane Lea and Trident in London as well as Sunset and Electra in LA. A rather fine array of artists ended recording with these desks.
One of the principal designers, and Sound Techniques co-founder, Geoff Frost has kindly started putting up videos where he lectures on mixer design. These are the three available so far:
This is our second string mixdown deck. While it doesn’t sound quite as good as the Studer B67, it’s been a sass-free workhorse. We bought it off our friends in the band Reversing Falls.
It has a few handy features, including:
If you have this machine and you’re missing the manual, you can download it here.
This is our fav demo machine–the design is intuitive and the narrow format keeps tape costs low.
The Church of 388 convenes here. These machines are quite popular in the San Fran scene.
We were fortunate enough to acquire this machine is mint condition. It belonged to a suave*, easy-listening cruise ship pianoman. He used it infrequently and kept it in the same climate controlled space as his grand pianos. Even when he did press this deck into service, one can only image he operated it with an uncommonly delicate pianissimo touch.
* I mean, Ricardo ‘Mr. Roarke’ Montalbán would come off sounding like Ron ‘Arnold Horshack’ Palillo next to this cat.
This was our very first open reel tape machine. We recorded a few albums on it and it sounded fine and never gave us any trouble. Lately we’ve been more apt to use it for tape loops and echo but we don’t love it any less.
Now that we have both this machine and an Otari 1″ 8-track, I must sadly report that Tascam’s ad copy is mendacious
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