Teac 25-2 2T (Teac 7300 2T) How much? What's fair?
- Thread starter jrdamien
- Start date
RandyRhoads1981
New member
If the deck is 15ips, it will always be half-track.
Like the post from RRuskin, all 25-2's are 15ips Half-Track Mastering Recorders.
RandyRhoads1981
New member
Congratulations! I hope you enjoy it very much.
It has 4 Microphone Inputs each with their own Level mixing controls.
I would assume that it could make some pretty awesome Live recordings with or without a mixing board.
Seems like a good Tape Deck for doing singer-songwriter demo's too. Just Plug and play!
RandyRhoads1981
New member
Each Track can have 2 Mic inputs each that are "mixed together", not separate.
After being recorded, you can't turn one of them off because it's only 2 tracks.
If you look on the picture that was posted on the 2nd page, you can see that the controls
say Left A, Left B, Right A, and Right B; these are the Levels for each Mic Input.
I don't think I'm explaining this very well, does anyone else wanna chime in on the 4 Mic Inputs?
Here's way too much information. I thought the 25-2 was a cool story as it took forever to get mine new compared to when it was announced.
I bought my 25-2 new in 1976. Or maybe 1977. Those days start to blur a bit. It was actually announced with the 80-8 and 90-16 to we dealers at the end of 1975 but took forever to actually ship. The planning for the release of the 25-2, 80-8, and 90-16 was pretty well organized. We had all the printed publicity in our hands a good 6-9 months before it all became available with instructions to NOT talk about them to the public. Piles and piles of the beige brochures would pour in weekly from Montebello for us to stash. The 80-8 and model 3 and model 5 turned out to be the first to sort of trickle in for us.
The 90-16 was especially to be kept quiet as it was decided that thing was gonna be too complicated for "Bill the neighborhood drummer" to use, so would be limited to which of us dealers could sell it. I think Tascam was really trying to figure out how to sell that one in the best way. The last thing they wanted was some guy out in Fargo calling them every day because his 90-16 wouldn't work and he didn't know how to spell capstan, much less what it was. Such were those ancient days when recording was still magic, smoke , and voodoo.
Before the 80-8, 90-16, and 25-2 hit, we dealers pretty much were presenting the 3340 and 33002t as sortof the poor man studio of the minute. With whatever mixer you could conjur up to bundle up with it from store brands we had.
The 25-2 had three items in the box. The transport, electronics/vu, and dbx unit. Never really followed the later 7300 but from the looks of the pic, no dbx at the bottom. The 7300 was probably kept to hi-fi dealers rather than we pro stores. That was a pretty weird split of Teac marketing for quite a long time. The 25-2 was half-track with a little switch for playing back quarter track.
Maybe the leaving off of the dbx unit on the 7300 was the marketing angle. If you remove the side panels on that 7300, I bet the entire lower portion though will remove. Possibly then allowing mounting in a rack as the 25-2 was designed for.
Anyway, the 25-2 was one of the last machines to use the little mechanical tape counter . The 90-16 also had that inaccurate counter if you can believe it.
The mic xlr inputs seemed bizarre to me. While that could come in handy for some on-location recording in a pinch, the machine was being promoted as a link in the studio sandwich. So not sure where anyone would be taking a 25-2 out for portable on-location work. There were a couple of mic pad switches on the back as I remember too. There was also a set of -10 direct outs for the tape to completely bypass the little built in summing section. Dunno if the 7300 has that. The 25-2 had varispeed... which even the first 80-8s didn't have.
There was eventually a dealer promo for selling package deals of an 80-8, 25-2, series 5, series 5 expander for awhile when the 25-2 actually finally hit.
Tascam also rolled out a bunch of national ads showing Joe-blow with his new home studio, making a lot of money recording all the bands in town with the studio sandwich (not the official term). Tascam also sent us some cool half-in pre-recorded 8 channel tapes to slap on the 80-8s so that potential customers could stand there and mix through the series 5's and into the 25-2. Sold a few of those packages, but even in those days, that was a pretty hefty $10,000 package for customers . Of course, the only nearest option if you wanted a studio was to move into Sound Workshop, Otari, etc or on up into MCI etc which shot the numbers up astronomically.
Somewhere in that time frame, we started getting info from Otari regarding becoming a dealer. I remember checking their pricing and lit out but at the time, they really weren't doing a concerted glitz and galamour , so-easy-to-use-even-a-caveman-can record" approach. Otari was sort of the white coat lab era guys. Here are our specs .. good machines.. last a long time.. do ya wanna sell these. It didn't make enough of an impression on us at those early stages to pursue them.
Anyway, the 25-2 was gentle on tape, had a nice quiet sound, great half track with a quarter track playback switch too. But the xlrs and the little mixing section didn't really make sense. I kept it for about 3 years and then moved on to newer models.
I bought my 25-2 new in 1976. Or maybe 1977. Those days start to blur a bit. It was actually announced with the 80-8 and 90-16 to we dealers at the end of 1975 but took forever to actually ship. The planning for the release of the 25-2, 80-8, and 90-16 was pretty well organized. We had all the printed publicity in our hands a good 6-9 months before it all became available with instructions to NOT talk about them to the public. Piles and piles of the beige brochures would pour in weekly from Montebello for us to stash. The 80-8 and model 3 and model 5 turned out to be the first to sort of trickle in for us.
The 90-16 was especially to be kept quiet as it was decided that thing was gonna be too complicated for "Bill the neighborhood drummer" to use, so would be limited to which of us dealers could sell it. I think Tascam was really trying to figure out how to sell that one in the best way. The last thing they wanted was some guy out in Fargo calling them every day because his 90-16 wouldn't work and he didn't know how to spell capstan, much less what it was. Such were those ancient days when recording was still magic, smoke , and voodoo.
Before the 80-8, 90-16, and 25-2 hit, we dealers pretty much were presenting the 3340 and 33002t as sortof the poor man studio of the minute. With whatever mixer you could conjur up to bundle up with it from store brands we had.
The 25-2 had three items in the box. The transport, electronics/vu, and dbx unit. Never really followed the later 7300 but from the looks of the pic, no dbx at the bottom. The 7300 was probably kept to hi-fi dealers rather than we pro stores. That was a pretty weird split of Teac marketing for quite a long time. The 25-2 was half-track with a little switch for playing back quarter track.
Maybe the leaving off of the dbx unit on the 7300 was the marketing angle. If you remove the side panels on that 7300, I bet the entire lower portion though will remove. Possibly then allowing mounting in a rack as the 25-2 was designed for.
Anyway, the 25-2 was one of the last machines to use the little mechanical tape counter . The 90-16 also had that inaccurate counter if you can believe it.
The mic xlr inputs seemed bizarre to me. While that could come in handy for some on-location recording in a pinch, the machine was being promoted as a link in the studio sandwich. So not sure where anyone would be taking a 25-2 out for portable on-location work. There were a couple of mic pad switches on the back as I remember too. There was also a set of -10 direct outs for the tape to completely bypass the little built in summing section. Dunno if the 7300 has that. The 25-2 had varispeed... which even the first 80-8s didn't have.
There was eventually a dealer promo for selling package deals of an 80-8, 25-2, series 5, series 5 expander for awhile when the 25-2 actually finally hit.
Tascam also rolled out a bunch of national ads showing Joe-blow with his new home studio, making a lot of money recording all the bands in town with the studio sandwich (not the official term). Tascam also sent us some cool half-in pre-recorded 8 channel tapes to slap on the 80-8s so that potential customers could stand there and mix through the series 5's and into the 25-2. Sold a few of those packages, but even in those days, that was a pretty hefty $10,000 package for customers . Of course, the only nearest option if you wanted a studio was to move into Sound Workshop, Otari, etc or on up into MCI etc which shot the numbers up astronomically.
Somewhere in that time frame, we started getting info from Otari regarding becoming a dealer. I remember checking their pricing and lit out but at the time, they really weren't doing a concerted glitz and galamour , so-easy-to-use-even-a-caveman-can record" approach. Otari was sort of the white coat lab era guys. Here are our specs .. good machines.. last a long time.. do ya wanna sell these. It didn't make enough of an impression on us at those early stages to pursue them.
Anyway, the 25-2 was gentle on tape, had a nice quiet sound, great half track with a quarter track playback switch too. But the xlrs and the little mixing section didn't really make sense. I kept it for about 3 years and then moved on to newer models.
Yes, that's what they were designed to be used for. The mic inputs and mix function were after thoughts.
RandyRhoads1981
New member
A little dusty but it worked just fine. Didn't get a chance to record with it so my fingers are crossed but playback sounded great.
Here are the heads. Comments? They look very worn.
WOW!
She's beautiful.
Awesome 1970's vibe.
Look at the wooden cart.
Great buy.
RandyRhoads1981
New member
I agree, the Heads do look like they've seen better days.
These Heads can be replaced somewhat inexpensively if you
are committed to using this quite a bit.
JRF Magnetics or OpenReel.net may have some.
I do know that OpenReel.net has the A-7300 2T Heads.
I don't know if they both share the same heads or not.
kennyboy37
New member
The picture looks just like my machine only difference is mine is 3/34 IPS and 71/2 IPS speed.One note to this thread,DON'T lose the 10 inch reel adapters.They are no longer available.you can get 10" reel adapters but not the turn and lock ones that came with the deck. I really like the adapters because they make changing reels a little bit less of a hassle.Oh and BUY the deck if it's in that good of shape