......."Has anyone actually written a proper letter to TASCAM though ? How would someone in our position get through to them and be taken seriously ? .........
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Letters/polls etc are unnecessary and unproductive in this instance.
I talk to the old-timers at Montebello all the time and since the 70's, I periodically still go over to the factory. Montebello, Japan, and all the other Teac satellites in all the countrires are completely aware of the analog conversations. In regards to Teac/Tascam, the capability, blueprints, parts manufacturing capability etc etc etc are still intact for analog. For the moment, analog production makes no sense..zero...for a company such as Teac.
There are things you have to keep in perspective.........
First and foremost, consider what many of you are paying for your various analog multitrack etc machines through your current pipeline...Ebay and the likes. The mindset is that many of you can pick up a 24 track for a couple of thousand dollars, an automated mixer for a grand, a four track reel to reel for 2-3 hundred dollars.
Ya gotta remember, these are prices for used equipment.
Go back in time and check this out.....I paid almost $3,000 each for my first few Tascam 8-tracks. I paid $16,000 for my new 3700 automated mixer. Then another fifteen thousand for the second one. I paid $11,500 for my first new Tascam 16-track, my 8516. I then paid another $11,000 for my second 16 track, my 8516b. Dealer cost for those 16 track machines was $9,000 each. The cost to manufacture those machines in the 70's/80's was approximately $6,500 each.
I considered buying a new MSr24 in 1992, but I just could not justify paying it's price....$16,000 for a one inch 24 track. I considered going 2" 24 with Tascam's 80 series, but actually felt that I should hold off on any more analog ....because this new digital stuff in 1991-92 was looking r-e-a-l good.
In fact, I had just bought my first digital recorder setup...consisting of a Sony F1 type encoder that utilized a vcr to store the stereo data on vhs tapes (anyone remember those?). I was absolutely blown away over how quiet and perfect my stereo mixes were!. For analog, I already had several sync'd 16 tracks that worked well together so I had yet one more reason to NOT buy the MSr24.
However, in mid 1995, when Montebello decided that all focus was going to shift to DA88 and similar products, they held that nationwide sale designed to BLOW out the remaining new analog stock so that they could shut down analog production. For a few weeks, brand new Msr24's were blown out at $5,000 each.
THAT'S when I bought mine and picked it up over at Montebello. I didn't really need it but boy...five grand compared to 16 grand. I'd NEVER been able to buy a multtrack for such a low price. Tascam took a huge loss on those machines because they basically blew them out at what it cost to make them...in 1995 dollars. But this was coming to the end for them for analog, and they wanted this stuff GONE.
Today...2005..no way would I pay anything near $5,000 for an Msr24. But you know what...it would cost more than that to tool up and build it at the factory.
"Yeah, well shouldn't it cost LESS to make analog recorders in 2005 than 1975?"
Nope.
Even with the advances in microtechnology and circuits, the cost of labor and parts to build a motor driven, magnetic head based, perfectly timed transport that's smoothly moving a thirty pound reel of tape....or a two pound reel of magnetic tape..will be substantially more in 21st century dollars, compared to ebay pricing or pricing of two decades ago. Digital is dirt cheap to produce from a comparitive perspective.
"Yeah, well there are a lot of potential buyers for analog recorders ".
Well...are there ten million potential customers as it was when analog was the only technology? Or is it more like fifty thousand potential customers? Or ten thousand?
Teac Japan is certainly not going to start ramping up production of all the teeny tiny parts needed to build the machines again if the customer numbers make no sense. Or if the customers think new stuff is gonna be priced at Ebay pricing. And right now, the customer numbers for analog make no profit sense in the Teac hierarchy. I know, because I've talked to them about this.
This equipment can not be built for Ebay prices. Non-motor type equipment...digital...can easily be built within smaller price constraints. The only reason digitial equipment..some of it, is so high in price is..well...because it CAN. That's what drives any large company. There is tremendous profit in digital and my guess is that Teac/Tascam is doing better than they ever have with profit margins.
Also...the biggest realization is that most of the people who are loudest about wanting "new" analog stuff are kids. Kids who only have a perception of ebay pricing for this kind of stuff and don't remember the size of the checks that people like me had to fork out for this stuff new. And remember..THIS was consumer pricing type stuff...These five digit checks were being written for what was considered non-professional stuff.
The professional stuff was up in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which can also be found dirt cheap on Ebay. Parts are another story of course.
A company like Teac weighs all this. Can/will kids or old-timers fork out thousands of dollars for new analog gear. In substantial numbers? The guess at the moment is "no". That Ebay pricing is a real kicker! I could've bought a nice house with all that money I spent with Tascam if I'd only known Ebay was going to be invented twenty years into the future. But that's ok. I got what I needed/wanted when it counted.
Now, the other side of the coin.
You get companies like Atr and the like who announce they are getting into the analog recorder manufacturing biz. Well, first of all, they're a tiny company compared to a behemoth like Teac. They probably source out manufacturing of many of the parts they plan to use. Which is real expensive to do. So my guess is that a company like ATR will have to charge more for these machines than Teac potentially could IF Teac desired to enter the market.
BUT..the entrance of companies like ATR into multitrack manufacturing will be good. Why? Because Teac will watch. ATR might simply bring products to market and manage to turn into a pleasant niche manufacturer.
Alternatively... if the lid blows off the ATR products and fifteen million people around the world are suddenly willing to pay thousands of dollars to companies like ATR for new analog multitrack machines...hey...what do you think Teac will do upon observing this?
If Teac wanted to, they could ramp up in about five minutes. At the moment, they don't need to from any standpoint you pick to look at the situation. Particularly from demand and profit.
But let someone else start getting substantial sales again on analog...just watch what Teac does then. Real fast.
