The Bottle Garden

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

This is our main mixdown deck. For the first two years we owned this machine, it had an annoying habit of falling out of record mode. Because of this, we relegated it to tape echo, rewinding and other secondary duties. We replaced every single electrolytic capacitor in the machine chasing down the prob, but it ended up being just a little jumper that wasn’t pushed in properly. Boy, do we ever feel stupid.

Now it’s just a sweet sounding late-70s Swiss mastering deck that gives us no sass and just happens to match our console.

Tho it only records one track, it’s the best sounding tape machine we have. This mechanical marvel was built circa 1965, and after replacing the electrolytic capacitors, it performs up to the specs in the manual. Compared to our other machines, the fast winding torque is truly terrifying.

A certain AL JACKSON JR leaning against an AG-350

This is our favourite multi-track machine. It looks like 80s hospital equipment.

Interesting features:

• Lets you store two bias settings per speed.
• Switchable speed pairs (7.5/15ips or 15/30ips)
• ‘Global input’ for all 8 channels for quick and easy alignments
• Very nice sound