TASCAM Wallpaper

[The Ghost of FM]

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...

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

Thanks for the kind feedback on the images!

Yeah, I remember first seeing those nixie tubes in an old set of encyclopaedias I had from the 50's and thought that was so space age cool! So when I stumbled upon the HP unit with them, I had to include it here.

About the 122, yup! That's my very own deck. Picked it up about 6 months ago from my old tascam tech buddy, Patrick at teletech. He's always got a few hidden treasures kicking around his shop.

About the MX-4, I had to use the wayback time machine website to go through some earlier versions of tascam's website where I found a nice press shot ftp folder which had a bunch of obscure gear on it. I have some other units from that site that I'll also put up here when the mood strikes me to do them justice so stay tuned!



Cheers!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Next up, I take you back to 1953, Kalamazoo, Michigan where the Gibson factory was churning guitar amps! Not sure of how many different ones they made back then but this one seemed like a nice example of their handiwork with a 75...(oops...make that 25) watt all tube amp with separate microphone and instrument inputs teamed up with a 12" Jensen semi-full range driver in an open back cabinet which appeared to be pretty well made for its day. Not exactly sure why they gave up on their amp line but I suspect Fender gave them a pretty hard ride in market share.

Anyway, here's the GA 75W amp with the top rear mounted control surface added into the image so you could see what was going on back there...



View attachment 95096

right click to download...



Cheers!

 

[RFR]

Nice example.

Gibson actually did quite a few amps and continued, despite fenders dominance.

Some pretty cool stuff too. One of my faves is the skylark. A smallish fender champ/ vibroluxe contender.

I used to buy em cheap, just for the logo. It was the exact same logo used for the 58/59 flying V. .
Turned out to be a good sounding amp as well.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Thanks for the addition info and insight, RFR!

I had a feeling they were a decent product just from how well it seemed to be put together, so nice to know my instincts/guesses were more or less on target.



Cheers!

 

[sweetbeats]

And I'm guessing that 75W valve combo could put out some volume...that's a fair amount of power for a 12" valve combo!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

And I'm guessing that 75W valve combo could put out some volume...that's a fair amount of power for a 12" valve combo!

Indeed. But in 1953, before the days of rock and roll, it was probably deemed appropriate for the working jazz/swing guitarist of the day to keep up with a horn section in a decent sized orchestra...which I assume was their target customer when they designed it. Plus with 1 mic input and 4 instrument inputs, it was probably also seen as a means of being a simple PA system too for a smaller band.

Here's another shot of the control panel with a rendered casing around it which is close to reality but admittedly not 100% accurate...sorry.



View attachment 95102



Cheers!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Hmm.

After sleeping on that last render, I decided it was a bit too cheesy so I opted to flesh out a better idea which shows off the front and back of that amp with more realism...



View attachment 95107

right click to download...



Cheers!

 

[sweetbeats]

*like*

 

[sr71rules]

I'll take it!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

And I'm guessing that 75W valve combo could put out some volume...that's a fair amount of power for a 12" valve combo!

I did a bit more research on this amp and it turns out that most sources claim this to be a 25 watt amp, Sorry for the misinformation.

I did find a youtube video demo of this amp and it sounded really nice! The guy demo'ing it used the mic input to get a really sweet tube overdrive out of it by simply dialing up the volume on his guitar to go from a pretty clean sound to a full on modern rock guitar sound. It also seemed to play pretty dang loud too!





Anyway, thought I should clear that up.



Cheers!

 

[RFR]

Shit, Ghost. Look what you did!! Now I want one! If one finds it's way home to me, I'm blaming you.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Shit, Ghost. Look what you did!! Now I want one! If one finds it's way home to me, I'm blaming you.

There were only 1100 units made. The commerce site that I found the raw images on was asking somewhere in the ballpark of 3 grand for it and it was not as clean looking as the renders I presented...many dings, rips, paint chips and scratches.

What can I say? Fill yer boots if you want to.



Cheers!

 

[j.harv]

Just watched the video. The amp is much bigger than I thought it would be. Very nice sounding too!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Just watched the video. The amp is much bigger than I thought it would be. Very nice sounding too!

The video gave me that same impression.

I'm beginning to wonder if that's actually a 15" inch driver in there instead of a 12", myself.



Cheers!

 

[RFR]

3k?? Hmm, game changer. I can pick up a nice tweed fender for that kind of scratch.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Now that the excitement of 1953 has cooled down a bit, lets slide the lever on the time machine a few decades forward to around 1978 and pay some homage to another guitar manufacturer who dabbled in the electronics game...

Ibanez. I covered one of their mult-ieffects units called the 202 a while back and now found a few decent files to work from of their UE-405 multi-effects units with the remote stomp box thrown in for good measure. This unit featured a stereo chorus delay section and a pretty cool "Insta-Patch" feature for the signal flow which I don't believe the 202 model offered.

Anyway, here's the UE-405...



View attachment 95126

right click to download...



Cheers!

 

[RFR]

You must be rich, retired, or have no life.
Or a combination of all three.


It amazes me the time you put into creating these "better than original brochure" pictures. Not to mention finding them in the first place.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

You must be rich, retired, or have no life.
Or a combination of all three.


It amazes me the time you put into creating these "better than original brochure" pictures. Not to mention finding them in the first place.

Thanks!

If I were rich, I'd own all this cool gear and take my own dang pictures of it!

Unfortunately, I'm only retired on a modest pension and have the luxury of time to pursue my new-found hobby of photo restoration combined with my love of analog gear. I'd love to be rich too but 2 out of 3 ain't bad, I guess.



Cheers!

 

[sweetbeats]

That Ibanez unit is so cool!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

That Ibanez unit is so cool!

For sure!

I always get a kick out of seeing rack gear from companies that normally wouldn't be known for that type of thing. I guess inevitably, they're also doomed to be market failures as most guitarists prefer to pick out each pedal for its own merits so when you try to squeeze 3 or 4 processes into one box it probably won't appeal to a big group of players. The concept of them though is really innovative.



Cheers!