TASCAM Wallpaper

Nice stuff.

The only heathkit stuff i had was a solid state 2x12 combo amp they sold circa 1975. Kind of like a fender twin.
Went into Chicago to the main store to pick it up, and stayed up all night building it. By 7am it was done.:D
 
RFR said:
Nice stuff.

The only heathkit stuff i had was a solid state 2x12 combo amp they sold circa 1975. Kind of like a fender twin.
Went into Chicago to the main store to pick it up, and stayed up all night building it. By 7am it was done.:D
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Thanks! :)

My only experience with Heathkit was owning a couple of their catalogues from around 1970 which my dad brought home from work after his office was done with them. He worked for a larger electrical contractor back in the day and their company used to buy stuff from them, meters and scopes, I'd guess?

At that age, being around 10 years old, I had no hope of buying anything from that catalogue on my 25 cent a week allowance! :D

But I did find a certain fascination with all the cool stuff there-in and is why I was drawn into hunting some of their vintage offerings from the 50's and showcasing it here.



Cheers! :)
 
I've covered a number of Dolby noise reduction units but none directly from Dolby themselves except for one where it shared the space with a dbx unit. Anyway in the interest of fairness, here's a nice early model from them called the 361 which could be interfaced with any balanced in out deck...



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Cheers! :)
 
Back to Heathkit for a moment. Discovered an oddball all tube model which was claimed to be a special British model. I can't confirm or deny that at this moment but was more drawn to the unique cosmetics of this piece with its rounded corners as well as it being an early stereo design from them from somewhere around 1960. Image-wise, this one's a complete Frankenstein as the available images of it on-line were abysmally poor. Anyway, here's the Heathkit S-88.



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Cheers! :)
 
RFR said:
It's a bus, without a doubt.
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:laughings:



Here's a cleaner version without the visual aids....



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It really is a unique piece of gear in that its the only power supply I've ever seen that is both a full function power supply and a very clean 100 watt mono block amp! I guess for techs who needed a handy amp on the bench without taking up any additional space, this unit was a real welcomed piece of gear. Though at the original retail of $2400, I'd guess they didn't sell a whole heap of them.



Cheers! :)
 
I have been a forum member for quite awhile and just lurk a lot of the time.:eatpopcorn: I gotta echo Sweet's comment though from this page and thank you Ghost for laying these treasures on us. You never fail to amaze and your facility with the 'Shop program is just incredible. I've worked around some dudes who I thought were good but you go beyond it brother. I have zoomed in on some pictures trying to see edits and pixels, etc. but it doesn't happen, the editing is so clean.

Just wanted to say thanks man, it's obvious you love what you do and the fact you are sharing it with the forum is very cool. I also think the education you're providing, by showing this gear along with the always well written posts, is helping the younger home recording enthusiasts get an excellent grounding in the history of our little world. I just turned 40 and feel like I'm ancient next to some of the younger guys but I always learn something from your posts by seeing stuff that was well before my entry into recording and the world for that matter.

As the art direction and design of most plug-ins show, the analog look and feel is still popular, reveared and useful. The emulations of old tube, tape and vintage gear only drive the point home further. But while there seems to be a large devotion to classic analog gear we are still well into the 21st century and most everyone is using digital in some respect or using it exclusively. Keeping the REAL gear and it's authentic history is very important and needs to be passed on to the future generations of engineers and musicians. What Ghost has done here at the forum is an excellent contribution to that end.
 
Microphone polar patterns. We've all seen them in ads, brochures, manuals and so on but I'll bet none of us knew how they were created in the first place, especially back in the grand old pre computer days when everything was analog! Anyway, while poking around the web for some additional HP bench gear, I came across a really interesting piece of gear from them called a Polar Display. This seems to share a lot of the design components of an oscilloscope but it custom designed strictly to the task of generating polar patterns which would be useful in microphone design and probably speakers too and maybe even transmission antennas. This is only a small part of the gear required to generate these graphs as sweep oscillators, microphone pre amps and plotter printer interfaces would also be needed to produce these charts and the total of all that is way too much to cover here and well above my pay-grade to understand how it all works.

Anyway, here's the HP 8414A Polar display along with the HP 8413A Phase Gain Indicator which can slide in and out of the heavy duty rack case which also contains the power supply for these modules.



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Cheers! :)
 
The Ghost of FM said:
Microphone polar patterns. We've all seen them in ads, brochures, manuals and so on but I'll bet none of us knew how they were created in the first place, especially back in the grand old pre computer days when everything was analog! Anyway, while poking around the web for some additional HP bench gear, I came across a really interesting piece of gear from them called a Polar Display. This seems to share a lot of the design components of an oscilloscope but it custom designed strictly to the task of generating polar patterns which would be useful in microphone design and probably speakers too and maybe even transmission antennas. This is only a small part of the gear required to generate these graphs as sweep oscillators, microphone pre amps and plotter printer interfaces would also be needed to produce these charts and the total of all that is way too much to cover here and well above my pay-grade to understand how it all works.

Anyway, here's the HP 8414A Polar display along with the HP 8413A Phase Gain Indicator which can slide in and out of the heavy duty rack case which also contains the power supply for these modules.



View attachment 94924

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Cheers! :)
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Wowwww...never even knew such a thing existed!
 
sweetbeats said:
Wowwww...never even knew such a thing existed!
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Same here! :D

This is all a small part of the test gear world which exists on a whole other plane of reality to those in the fields of industrial research, design and engineering, much like your Ampex 1300 data recorder also being a citizen of that world that churned out all that marvellous technology for us mere mortals. :)

More then just the coolness factor of the cosmetics of this stuff, its also a massive testament to the incredible accomplishments of US manufacturing and engineering and the free market enterprise that fostered all this stuff. Sadly, HP no longer produces this genre of gear , (going by their current web site), All they're spitting out now is off-shore computers and are facing massive lay-offs as the world's economy seems to be condensing into fewer hands. I like looking at this stuff just to keep reminding myself of what we were and what we've become. Philosophical rant over. ;)



Cheers! :)
 
Just a bit of a redo on the previous image to swap out one of the modules with a more appropriate one, the 8407A, which is one of HP's prescribed driver units for the phase display. Also swapped out the rack handles from my own physical parts cash and photographed it at the appropriate distance and focal length to match with the chassis...and also added in a faux polar pattern and tried my best to light it as it might look in reality. Not sure if I really nailed that though.



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Cheers! :)
 
One final HP piece. This one, a frequency counter called the 5340A. I chose this model for three reasons. First, was that it has those cool "nixie" numerical tubes which was real cutting edge tech before the LED and LCD displays came into popularity. The second reason was because it was their first counter unit that could measure any frequency between 10Hz and 18 GHz. Prior to that, you needed to have multiple units to cover all the different bands. So this was a real landmark piece as far as HP is concerned. The final reason why I chose this one is because it remained in their product line up from 1972 all the way up to 1994, essentially unchanged because it was made so well and was apparently very popular in spite of its healthy MSRP of...wait for it...$5340! :)

These days, they go for considerably less then that on ebay but still sell for between 600 to 1200 bucks, depending on condition.

Anyhoo, here's the mighty 5340A...



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Cheers! :)
 
Haven't done any TASCAM stuff lately so I decided as a Saturday afternoon project, I'd re-shoot my own 122, 3 head deck as the overcast skies were near ideal for a natural light shot and brought it up to my current "patent pending" floating mirror effect with some wilder colours. Hope y'all like purple! :D



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Cheers! :)
 
Some of you with long memories might remember an oddball piece I posted about, the Teac MX-8, which was a "prehistoric" version of the later Tascam MX-80 which many of us are familiar with. Oddly enough Tascam, after the lifespan run of the MX-80 then released a couple of updated System Enhancement Series pieces, one of which was the MH-40 Mk II headphone amp, which effectively squeezed the old brown faced, double rack space unit down to a single rack space. They also released a unit called the MX-4, which was also a single rack space sized unit but only had 4 channels but could be cascaded together to create as many channels as needed by adding more units. In many ways, this piece mirrors the old Teac MX-8 unit but with cleaner mic pre electronics.

Anyway, here's the TASCAM MX-4, released somewhere in the early 90's and quickly faded into obscurity...



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Cheers! :)
 
I <3 nixie tubes...

And I <3 the 122 series decks from Teac/Tascam. Question is, do you really have that Teac cassette or did you add that in?? I thought the original 122 was cool with the onboard Dolby N/R or switchable external loop to route through a dbx Type II unit. I'm partial to your work-up with the wood side panels... :D

MX-4... :eek: You did it again. Never heard of it...very cool.
 
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