Tascam 388 manual as .pdf

B

burok

New member
I've seen alot of people asking about the tascam 388 manual (including myself), and the trouble to get one by contacting your local tascam retailer, paying and finally waiting for it turns alot of us slackers off ;)

so I've uploaded it to my account, and I'll keep it there:

tascam 388 manual as .pdf

hopefully I entered some decent keywords so people can find this thread.
 
burok said:
I've seen alot of people asking about the tascam 388 manual (including myself), and the trouble to get one by contacting your local tascam retailer, paying and finally waiting for it turns alot of us slackers off ;)

so I've uploaded it to my account, and I'll keep it there:

tascam 388 manual as .pdf

hopefully I entered some decent keywords so people can find this thread.
Click to expand...

SUPERB! Great job! Where in the hell did you get this thing ??
 
burok said:
I've seen alot of people asking about the tascam 388 manual (including myself), and the trouble to get one by contacting your local tascam retailer, paying and finally waiting for it turns alot of us slackers off ;)

so I've uploaded it to my account, and I'll keep it there:

tascam 388 manual as .pdf

hopefully I entered some decent keywords so people can find this thread.
Click to expand...

Nice job burok. Very helpful for a lot of members. Very good stuff - Thanks!

-Tim :)
 
tascam manuals

Charging for manuals to your own products is bullshit in this age of computers. I am going to put my 38 and m30 manuals on here for free for everyone who might want them soon. Thanks for the manual.
 
Rant On

planetorange said:
Charging for manuals to your own products is bullshit in this age of computers.
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Not that I'm a company man for TASCAM or anything, but I will offer up their side of the story of why they charge for manuals to their older gear.

When the 388 was brought to market back in the 80's, there was no such animal as the Internet or .pdf documents at the time to easily distribute for free or otherwise. Manuals were printed on paper only and only a set amount of them were made when they made the machines. Extra copies were primarily made for service shops to have for doing repairs and it was expected that the people who bought the machines would hang onto their manuals considering the original prices and complexity of the gear.

Fast forward 20 years and now the gear that is available for sale is secondhand or more and all the sellers have magically lost the manuals. So if you want to be mad at anyone, be mad at the sellers who were negligent in hanging onto them.

TASCAM thankfully, did hang onto their last real copies on the original thicker paper with the larger 2 and 3 page pull out sections and as a courtesy to their non-original customers, make photo copies by hand of these original documents which cost time and money to produce; time and money that they have every right to charge for.

The overwhelming majority of people who buy used gear, buy it for pennies on the dollar and to hear them whine and cry for free manuals really affirms my faith in the current state of our humanity.

RANT OFF

Cheers! :)
 
I respect what Ghost had to say and the reasoning behind it. However, many of the manuals are officially available, while some are not. I've always attributed this to them just not getting around to it. I could be mistaken.

Considering the extensive online manuals from Yamaha, Alesis, Lexicon, etc, it really is a hard call for me to make. You can find quite a few here for other Tascam products. These are provided by Tascam -- guilt free. ;)

http://www.tascamcontractor.com/ftp_resources/files/manual/index.html
 
I recently bought a manual for the Tascam 2516 mixer from Tascam, it was only $13 or so including shipping.

Couldn't find it on the internet, nobody was selling it on eBay. If they were selling it on eBay, it looks like a copy of the manual, printed or on CD-R, would cost between $15-$30.

In my search, I found other people looking for the same manual. When it came (it only took about 3 days to get here after ordering), my first thought was to scan it in for those people. But then I thought about it a little more...

The people who call up Tascam for manual and whatever parts they still sell are the very few who keep Tascam from staying in the analog market, even if it's indirectly and takes some searching. If there is to be any revitalized interest, or merely for Tascam to retain interest in this area, we have to keep it alive.

Ghost is right, the manuals are cheap, and we shouldn't whine about it when we buy what was a $4000 machine for $400. Beck is also right, manuals are provided for most equipment just about everywhere by everyone. I just don't think anyone on eBay or elsewhere should be making any money off of the sale of copies of manuals - not when they're still available from Tascam. Posting it for free on the internet: I say it's a personal call.

-MD
 
Getting a manual or replacement part from TEAC/TASCAM, in many cases, is a better investment then looking at "private" sales of the same. People don't realize but TASCAM doesn't overcharge on manuals as many eBay sellers do for inferior copies. Not only that but in some way you're telling TASCAM that there still is a market for long discontinued Analog gear. Take it for all it's worth.

~Daniel
 
The Ghost of FM said:
TASCAM thankfully, did hang onto their last real copies on the original thicker paper with the larger 2 and 3 page pull out sections and as a courtesy to their non-original customers, make photo copies by hand of these original documents which cost time and money to produce; time and money that they have every right to charge for.
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Ok, fine. How about instead of painstakingly photocopying each page for everyone who calls, why don't they just one time scan the manual into a pdf file? Once? And put it out here for everyone?

Charging $12 here and there for copying manuals isn't going to keep anyone in business.
 
Crap, I was just browsing the board and found this thread, guess I'm too late, the link is broken for the 388 manual...any chance of getting it posted again? If someone has it and wants to e-mail it to me, I can host it for a little while on my server for people to download :)
 
Hell yeah, thanks so much man...I've already had about a year to figure this puppy out, it's great to actually have the manual now and read about all the stuff that I didn't know (which was quite a bit lol)

As promised, here's the link for anyone who missed it the first time and would like to download it. I'll leave this up for a week or so.

388 Manual - Download
 
maestro_dmc said:
Ok, fine. How about instead of painstakingly photocopying each page for everyone who calls, why don't they just one time scan the manual into a pdf file? Once? And put it out here for everyone?
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I don't know about you but I actually like a real paper copy of a manual and especially so when in the studio where I don't always have a computer handy to view .pdf documents. Paper manuals, unless there's a fire or flood don't disappear when my computer crashes and I lose all my files. ;)

Charging $12 here and there for copying manuals isn't going to keep anyone in business.
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As far as what TASCAM charges for their manuals; it is their business. If you don't like that, don't buy it! They don't do it to make or break their business. They do it as a small component of their over all business dealings.

I'll say it again. direct your resentment at the dip shit that sold you the equipment and didn't keep his manual. TASCAM did give him a free one when he bought it new at full retail. Why you expect the same is beyond me.

Cheers! :)
 
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