The Bottle Garden

Along with the Otari MX 70, this is one of our main multitrack machines. We modified the amplifier cards to allow correct biasing for high-output tape.

Our favourite feature: LED readout on the vari-speed.

This is a really handy machine to have around a studio.

Some features:

• Ajustable record bias
• Balanced inputs and outputs
• Third head for record monitoring (or tape delay)
• Vari-speed
• Dolby B and C
• A built-in oscillator
• LED readout with programmable cue points

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:

• Built in oscillator for speedier alignments
• External NAB/CCIR EQ Switches
• 3-way Fluxivity level switch

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