Jist a thought

[Derek Verner]

When Teac and Tascam started, they were run by the Japanese who were concerned with excellence. Today, they are run by Americans whose main concern is the bottom line. Nuff sed.

[trigger]

Really not sure what you're trying to say.

I run a business and my main concern is the bottom line. If I didn't mind the bottom line, there would be no business. But I'm also concerned with excellence...with service...with communications...blah blah.

I've used TEAC & TASCAM products since the early 70's. I trust their products and their service. And I listen to their advice.

If you've got a problem with one of their products, call them. I bet they'll take care of you.

[The Ghost of FM]

Originally posted by Derek Verner
When Teac and Tascam started, they were run by the Japanese who were concerned with excellence. Today, they are run by Americans whose main concern is the bottom line. Nuff sed.

I disagree.

When TASCAM started out, they were not concerned with excellence at all. They were concerned with offering a cheaper alternative to the completely professional high end market where multi-track machines were selling in the 200,000 dollar range and matching consoles were also in the same neighborhood, price wise.

TASCAM originally aimed their products at high end home users and low budget commercial users who were budgeting to spend perhaps 20 grand on a complete studio which would include all the extras of monitoring, processing, microphones, cabling and acoustic treatment.

Professional studios in those days were easily budgeting 100 times that amount of money and more.

It wasn't until the advent of digital recording that industry standards and pricing for analog equipment began to slide and disappear, selling off their aging and worn out equipment for pennies on the dollar to keep current and go digital.

TASCAM's evolution and quality curve is little more then a mirror of what the market would bear as they emerged with questionable products at the outset, improved them but, kept costs about the same and then abandoned them just as they saw everyone else doing the digital cross-over and now offer only a handful of analog hangover products that were designed in a previous century.

TASCAM has indeed lost their way these days as they have nothing unique to offer the industry and nothing to cheapen and under-cut but the rest of an industry that is struggling to create an identity and reason to exist in this ravenous market.

Please don't misunderstand me. I own, love and use their gear from the 80's, when they were at their apex of quality. As a home recording enthusiast, I could have never afforded to buy real professional high end gear and would have had to go to a professional recording studio to get demos done of my band's music if TASCAM had not started the affordable revolution of allowing people like me to buy gear one piece at a time as I could afford it and have the benefit of learning and recording at my own speed. This was the true revolution that TASCAM gave us all.

Now, we are in a cheap digital world and TASCAM will be but a page in history from a by-gone era and state of evolution.

Cheers!

[Beltrom]

Originally posted by The Ghost of FM
As a home recording enthusiast, I could have never afforded to buy real professional high end gear and would have had to go to a professional recording studio to get demos done of my band's music if TASCAM had not started the affordable revolution of allowing people like me to buy gear one piece at a time as I could afford it and have the benefit of learning and recording at my own speed. This was the true revolution that TASCAM gave us all.

Thankyou TASCAM...

[Strryder]

The Ghost of FM, that was a fantastic post!!!!

[cjacek]

So ... where did this notion that "Made in Japan" is "best" originate ? It seems a bit of a coincidence (or not) that when great gear was produced it was "Made in Japan" and when things became cheaply made, it was "Made in China" .... Hmmm ...

Daniel

[The Ghost of FM]

The surest earmarks of a cheaply made product, regardless of where it it designed and/or manufactured is in it's design and quality of parts.

The only factor to quality of country that is widely accepted as urban legend, is that if you pay a worker well and give him democracy, they will pay attention to the quality of their work more so then a person that you pay next to nothing for their sweat and further, politically oppress them outside the factory walls.

The countries which do the best job motivating workers to do that has not been scientifically determined to date, to my knowledge.

The reality is that quality is more dependent on the company's internal quality control department and design budget coupled with it marketing department, regardless of where it is made.

Cheers!

[muttley]

Excellent postings everyone, very good thoughts.........



da MUTT