Don't see many of these around...

[Talldog]

Old tascam system 20.

http://cleveland.craigslist.org/msg/1112532749.html

[stevieb]

Rather overpriced, IMHO.

I once scored a TAPCO vintage mixer- it was actually a main board, with the output side and 6 input channels, and an aux. board with another 8 inputs. Yep, 14 input channels- wierd. Both pieces were rack-mountable, and the board came in a "coffin" case. My son took the case during his DJ phase, and I kept the boards, which were 90% functional (one input channel was dead), albiet with some very stiff pots.

I paid something like $40 for the whole setup, and sat on the thing for a couple of years. David gave me an old-school, fully functional Yamaha powered mixer in exchange for the case, which I sold for a bit more than I paid for the TAPCO, and finally sold the TAPCO, plus a home-built 150-watt power amplifier, to a kid in the neighborhood for $20 so he could mix vocals for his garage band.

[RRuskin]

The System 20 was a "building block" version of the Model 30. Put all of the series together and that's pretty much what you had sans most of the switches that made the 30 so convenient to use.

[cjacek]

I briefly owned the system 20 and found it very cheap, quality wise.

[Richard King]

Originally Posted by cjacek

I briefly owned the system 20 and found it very cheap, quality wise.

That was my thought when they first came out. I wondered what in the world Tascam was thinking.

[Talldog]

Maybe thats why you don't see many around. kinda reminds me of their first cassette four tracks (144 I think).

[RRuskin]

Originally Posted by Richard King

That was my thought when they first came out. I wondered what in the world Tascam was thinking.

They were attempting to put the Model 30's sound quality in cheaper garb and succeeded. The system worked well, assuming the operator understood signal flow, could use a patchbay and didn't cheap out on cable. Because so many couldn't, it failed in the marketplace.

[Beck]

One thing I'll say about the System 20 is that it was a great way for students to learn signal flow... something most people fail to grasp in the current DAW based scene.

I used the whole system with a TEAC 144 about 1980. The PE-20 EQ really wasn’t bad. I kept one of the two I had for a while after I sold the rest of the setup.

Simply studying the manual would be enlightening for a lot of folks.