When will this Portastudio bubble burst?

Level Anything

Level Anything

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There are Tascam Portastudios selling for $650 on eBay as we speak and it's crazy. I've been seeing this for a little while but the last couple weeks have been wild. There's a guy right now in Canada selling a 246 for $1,300! If you look on the "sold" listings the 244 is selling for $500 all day. WTF? I know they're getting harder to find in working condition nowadays but c'mon.

I've been buying broken units the last couple of years and fixing them up for a little while now. I'll grab a machine off Craigslist for $50 and put a little TLC into it and then record on it for a while before usually selling it and making a small profit. I've kept the ones that I really liked over the years so I have a pretty nice collection but I'm always on the lookout for them. Lately, even Craigslist is super expensive because people will look on eBay to get an idea of what they sell for so it's not even worth it anymore.

The bubble sill burst though. Because analog is hot, people are flocking to cassettes and once they realize that they never use it they'll start selling them all back and they'll go back down to $50 again. Hopefully.
 
D'know, but I've got 'hold sell markers on my timecode sync Fostex ADAT for when they hit $2k again.
 
Yeah I've noticed the same thing. Someone a while back was asking about a good starter 4-track, and I was going to recommend the 414. I was gonna say "you can get them for around $70 or so," but I double-checked quickly and couldn't believe it. They were selling for $200 at times!

Pretty crazy!
 
When I saw that a Tascam 244 was going for $600 I was surprised but kind of understood if it was pro refurbished because they're really solid and repairing them isn't cheap so okay, but a 246 for over a grand is just ridiculous.

I'm watching it to see if it sells for that much. A lot of the higher priced Tascams that are for sale and auction are in Canada and I've heard that they are harder to find up there so I suppose that's factoring into the price but whoa.
 
The bubble will burst when cassette tapes are no longer available, won't be long now, like the reel to reel stuff. However there will always be collectors that will just like to own a machine.

Alan.
 
That's not going to happen. They're still available, and I'm not talking about the cheap type ones at Rite Aid. There's still places that sell new type II cassettes for pretty cheap. I suppose that since there's no companies still manufacturing type II tapes anymore that when all the stock is finally gone that's a wrap but there's a ton of it still out there that some companies bought up which they put into shells and wrap up like new.

I think that when people get their machines and have them for a while, they'll find that it's not what they thought and won't use them enough to justify keeping them around. Once all those people start to sell them again it'll happen a couple more times and then cycle down to where it was around 2010 when I bought a sealed box NOS 424 MKIII for $50 off of weebay (maybe not that cheap again, but...)
 
Level Anything said:
That's not going to happen. They're still available, and I'm not talking about the cheap type ones at Rite Aid. There's still places that sell new type II cassettes for pretty cheap. I suppose that since there's no companies still manufacturing type II tapes anymore that when all the stock is finally gone that's a wrap but there's a ton of it still out there that some companies bought up which they put into shells and wrap up like new.
Click to expand...

Tell me this in 5 years time.
 
Well there is a pretty big cassette resurgence happening in the indie music scene across most of the western world over the last couple of years so that's definitely playing a big part.
 
I think there's a kitsch element. I hope it doesn't mean that cassettes will go out of fashion later on.

It would be nice if cassettes stick around... it's fun to have variety, IMO.
 
Cassettes will be bigger than they are currently 5 years from now in my opinion.

The Portastudio thing is kind of a head-scratcher but kinda makes sense too. Small and portable, user-friendly, with analog character. I guess it's similar to the 388 thing ... Some machines just get a buzz going, and people want to get that sound. 388s are now into the price range of 1" 8-tracks, which is nuts. But an all in one unit that sounds like a record can be very appealing.

A 4-track cassette that sells for more than a 1/2" 8-track seems kinda funny, but maybe it's becoming like guitar amps. A Fender Twin is technically a bigger, "better" amp than a Deluxe, but the Deluxe is worth at least double ... Because it's more portable and does something the Twin can't. Personally, I'll take the Twin.

My main issue with the Portastudios is that I'm not sure they were built to last in the same way the bigger decks were. I've noticed a lot more non-working or partially working units out there over the last few years, and the parts all seem so delicate and fragile.

There are always sleeper deals out there though. But I think that cassette is going to go from cheap to "boutique" in the next decade.
 
If cassette tapes become scarce in the next few years, I may start selling off my large stash of sealed Type IIs. The current market prices are too high for me to want to buy more, but not high enough for me to want to sell.
 
Right now, cassettes are getting a lot of press in the mainstream media and almost every story is the same. "Remember those cassette tapes that littered the passenger seat of yr car in the 80's? Well guess what America? They're back, and the young kids are just crazy for 'em!"

It started with that story the Wall Street Journal did on the National Audio Company, and it's made people that never had the chance to use them curious. Especially younger kids who've never recorded to anything but Garage Band and Pro Tools, and keep hearing how much truer that analog is etc. They want to try it and experiment with different mediums. I think that's a great thing because recording that way really makes you a better engineer and musician imo. Learning mic placement and room sounds, getting it right on the first or second take. It's not as easy as a DAW obviously but it's fun.

I doubt anybody uses a Portastudio looking for a "good" sound. It's more about getting a different sound. 4-tracks really benefit certain song writing styles and certain musicians. I've heard some really beautiful stuff from a kid in his bedroom with a couple synths, to just a dude with a guitar singing 2 minute songs while his neighbors scream at each other from the next apartment. There's some really cool stuff being released on cassettes, has been for years now. After all, it's really not the gear you use, it's the song. I do agree though, that the majority of the people that are buying them right now will be getting rid of them in another year but I wonder what a good condition 4-track will be worth in 10 years?

What about in 50 years? Haha.
 
I was thinking the same thing after I've been browsing for the last few weeks. You can find one that will slip through the cracks for less than 50 but even still you're not sure what you're getting and sometimes know what you won't be getting (manual, ac adapter). I just won a half-joke bid for a porta 03 for 28 dollars that won't be coming with anything else and no idea what internal condition it's in. I'm apprehensive and unsettled with how it will go.

eBay moms are riding the used analog recording train a little too hard. Props to you for fixing them and putting them back into the market as a promised, functioning unit not convoluted with mystery as a time bomb.
 
It just depends where you search. I walked through a thrift store at lunch the other day in Glendale, there was either a 414 or 424 sitting there. Yeah it was missing a couple knobs, but looked sound enough. Pice? $9.95, so there you go.
 
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