New Mixer Day

peccary

peccary

Well-known member
So I was going to wait until I got home from work and was able to take some better photos, but I just can't contain myself and I need to share this with some other nerds who might appreciate it.

I know I've been a MIA lately - my responsibilities at work have expanded significantly and when I get home my daughter has been taking up most of my time. I still browse this forum most days, but don't really feel like I have a lot of time to interact.

Anyway...

I've been kind of obsessed with vintage Tascam mixers (thanks a lot, @Harry Klippton ) and had been keeping an eye on them over the past few months. I really love the routing flexibility that these older mixers have, and VU meters and tactile buttons and sliders really get my motor going. And since I use tape machines for recording it seemed natural to be drawn to mixers from the 70's and 80's anyway.

@Harry Klippton sent me a link to a Goodwill auction that was a local pickup only, and it just so happened to be offered by a Goodwill that's about 20 minutes from my house (about a block away from the museum where I do my blacksmithing, actually). Good looking out, Will!

It was for this Tascam M-35. I'm pretty pumped.

Eight individual channels with four subgroups. Routing out the wazoo, tape tracks available on all mixes. The channels are on individual strips and each has its own transformer. I'm pretty pumped about this thing. I also got it for a song - $160 out the door! Can't beat that.

I haven't had a chance to go through it yet, and It does need a little bit of love. It'll need a good cleaning at the very least, and I have some African mahogany at home that I can use for the sides. And you can see that the label for the first channel needs to be tacked back down. If it has any electronic issues I feel confident that I'll be able to get them sorted out, that's more a matter of time than anything, I think. That's another one of the benefits to these older machines: I actually feel like I will be able to work on it. I'm hopeful though that it'll work fine and just need some TLC and DeoxIT 🤞

On the downside this beast weighs in at over 60 lbs and is a bit monster-sized. I'll take it, though.

This should pair well with both my ADAT (8 tracks) and my Tascam 424.

I've got a lot of projects going on right now and very little time, but this is something that I'm happy to add to that list. I'll add some better photos when I get home later. My lovely wife was gracious enough to go and pick this up for me today (the pickup times for Goodwill are awful) and sent me these photos. So for now they'll have to do.

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Erik S said:
So awesome.

I've been simultaneously working on a little Teac mixer, and shopping for larger ones.

I think I watched a video on one of those recently - if yours is like the one I was watching, those channel-strips each unplug from a socket on the back wall, and pull straight out for servicing. Super slick.
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Yeah, that's it: should just be a couple of screws and then they slide out - pretty nifty and should make it easy to work on when needed.

Which Teac are you working on? Any photos?!
 
Erik S said:
Mixer is a Teac 2a with an MB-20 meter bridge. The idea was/ is to get this Tascam 234 syncaset running and use these together to make some tapes.

The 2a is cool, but it’s pretty bare bones. The dream combo right now would be the 234 with a Tascam m-208.

View attachment 73366
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That is sweet. I've been drooling over those 234's for a while now, and would love to get my hands on one. Have you diagnosed the issue/s with it yet?

I looked at a lot of 200/300 series Tascam and have drooled over them all. Hopefully you can find a 208 that doesn't set you back too much, they're super rad mixers.
 
The 234 seemed to record and playback fine, but it ate a tape pretty quick. I got the transport out and replaced all the rubber parts. The belts were intact, just a little loose. The pinch roller, and two other tires were totally deteriorated. They looked okay, but they were the consistency of dried chewing gum. Sticky/ smeary, and you could pinch into pieces with your finger tips.

The transport is back together, but I still need to reinstall it and get back to testing. Hopefully that stops the tape eating.
 
Erik S said:
The 234 seemed to record and playback fine, but it ate a tape pretty quick. I got the transport out and replaced all the rubber parts. The belts were intact, just a little loose. The pinch roller, and two other tires were totally deteriorated. They looked okay, but they were the consistency of dried chewing gum. Sticky/ smeary, and you could pinch into pieces with your finger tips.

The transport is back together, but I still need to reinstall it and get back to testing. Hopefully that stops the tape eating.
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That's rough - some of those little rubber bits can run quite a lot of money for what amounts to little bits of plastic. And that's if you can even find them!

How do you like the Teac? That meter bridge really completes the package, there - it looks great.
 
Not that rough actually! The deck was cheap, and the guy said he thought it needed belts, so no surprises there. Those 234s aren’t super common, but I think the transport is mostly the same as the early portastudios, so the parts are cheap and available.

I don’t have much experience with mixers, and I’ve only run sound through the Teac for testing. It definitely looks cool, and sounds okay as far as I can tell.

The latching assign buttons on the mixer and the bridge are all noisy and cut in and out. It also isn’t set up for xlr in, and I would maybe need adapters with transformers in them to get the impedance right for an sm57? I have to study up on all that a lot more.

I bought the teac from a family estate situation, so it’s got some sentimental value, but for how I imagine using it, it would be nice to have something set up for xlr, an effects loop, and more than two EQ knobs.

I haven’t done much recording, and none where I was running the recording gear, so this is all pretty new. In theory at least, recording to tape and bouncing tracks looks more fun to me than working in a DAW.
 
peccary said:
So I was going to wait until I got home from work and was able to take some better photos, but I just can't contain myself and I need to share this with some other nerds who might appreciate it.

I know I've been a MIA lately - my responsibilities at work have expanded significantly and when I get home my daughter has been taking up most of my time. I still browse this forum most days, but don't really feel like I have a lot of time to interact.

Anyway...

I've been kind of obsessed with vintage Tascam mixers (thanks a lot, @Harry Klippton ) and had been keeping an eye on them over the past few months. I really love the routing flexibility that these older mixers have, and VU meters and tactile buttons and sliders really get my motor going. And since I use tape machines for recording it seemed natural to be drawn to mixers from the 70's and 80's anyway.

@Harry Klippton sent me a link to a Goodwill auction that was a local pickup only, and it just so happened to be offered by a Goodwill that's about 20 minutes from my house (about a block away from the museum where I do my blacksmithing, actually). Good looking out, Will!

It was for this Tascam M-35. I'm pretty pumped.

Eight individual channels with four subgroups. Routing out the wazoo, tape tracks available on all mixes. The channels are on individual strips and each has its own transformer. I'm pretty pumped about this thing. I also got it for a song - $160 out the door! Can't beat that.

I haven't had a chance to go through it yet, and It does need a little bit of love. It'll need a good cleaning at the very least, and I have some African mahogany at home that I can use for the sides. And you can see that the label for the first channel needs to be tacked back down. If it has any electronic issues I feel confident that I'll be able to get them sorted out, that's more a matter of time than anything, I think. That's another one of the benefits to these older machines: I actually feel like I will be able to work on it. I'm hopeful though that it'll work fine and just need some TLC and DeoxIT 🤞

On the downside this beast weighs in at over 60 lbs and is a bit monster-sized. I'll take it, though.

This should pair well with both my ADAT (8 tracks) and my Tascam 424.

I've got a lot of projects going on right now and very little time, but this is something that I'm happy to add to that list. I'll add some better photos when I get home later. My lovely wife was gracious enough to go and pick this up for me today (the pickup times for Goodwill are awful) and sent me these photos. So for now they'll have to do.

View attachment 73362View attachment 73363
Click to expand...

Wow, that's really clean, given its age.
 
So I had some time to play with this today and it definitely needs some TLC. I'd say that almost everything functions, but I wouldn't call it "working" if that makes sense. The only things that doesn't seem to work outright are the submix VU meters. They don't move and the lights don't come on, but the cue VU works, though the light doesn't function on that one either.

I tested the tape ins, line ins, and mic ins and they all work. Sending to the submixes seems to work, but volumes are low. I haven't quite sussed out whether some things are issues or just my unfamiliarity with this thing. I've gotta spend some more time with the manual. I'll print it out tomorrow, which will be a lot better than fumbling around on my phone. Tonight I just plugged things into everything, turned knobs, and pressed buttons.

It should be fun to dig into!
 
And here's me thinking this thread was going to be about tequila and bitters... I miss my old tascam 234. It was so easy to get great sounds from. Sigh... I sold it years ago when starting up my business and needed every dollar I could find.
 
Vu meters on my little meter bridge have needed some work. @Harry Klippton sent me a video on un-sticking stuck ones, but I botched the job and ended up getting an eBay one from someone doing a part-out.

I had them all working briefly, and then they went out again along with the headphone amp. There was a blown fuse that feeds the 6v AC to the bulbs. Replacing that got me working again for now. Now I just have one bulb out.

The idea of a row of dancing analog meters is a big part of what sucked me into all this nonsense!
 
i found a tascam m208 on CL with a road case, one of my greatest finds. man, it sounds awesome. i have an SSL big six that i use as the main hub of my hybrid setup since it has awesome routing options between the DAW, but my plan when i have more room is to have that as inserts on channels 1-4, then a couple channels running straight into the SSL.

my tinkering goal is to do the direct out mod for each channel... someday...
 
Erik S said:
Vu meters on my little meter bridge have needed some work. @Harry Klippton sent me a video on un-sticking stuck ones, but I botched the job and ended up getting an eBay one from someone doing a part-out.

I had them all working briefly, and then they went out again along with the headphone amp. There was a blown fuse that feeds the 6v AC to the bulbs. Replacing that got me working again for now. Now I just have one bulb out.

The idea of a row of dancing analog meters is a big part of what sucked me into all this nonsense!
Click to expand...

Yeah, he sent me that video last night. I might be able to pull this thing apart tomorrow to get a look at the guts.

I actually got kind of excited when it didn't work. More stuff to tinker with, I guess 😂
 
I didn't have time to do much other than peek under the hood his afternoon. I really love that pulling a channel out of this thing takes about 30 seconds.

I just pulled one of each channels (input, bus, mixer) to get a look, and also checked out the power and I/o section as well.

They certainly don't build them like this anymore. At least not for home use.

A quick photo dump in case anyone is interested. Info on these mixers seems hard to come by so I figured I might as well share.

Other than the headphones jack and the seemingly botched surgery on the first channel I didn't find anything obvious yet. There were a shit ton of dust bunnies and some cobwebs inside, though 😂

My plan right now is to fix the headphone jack and just pull each channel and clean the hell out of if and see if I can find any obvious issues. Same with the connections in the back. I might resolder those connections on the first channel once I'm able to take a closer look.

I should be able to do that tomorrow, I think.

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I am really impressed by the hand-tied wire management. I wonder when they gave that up and went to zip ties.

Speaking of… what’s the silver canister looking component in the second to last pic with the zip tie around it?
 
Erik S said:
I am really impressed by the hand-tied wire management. I wonder when they gave that up and went to zip ties.

Speaking of… what’s the silver canister looking component in the second to last pic with the zip tie around it?
Click to expand...

Seriously. The attention to detail is nuts. Too bad it smells like an ashtray inside 😂

That's a transformer, each channel has one!
 
I was going to say that I can practically smell that just from the pics. But if it smells like an ashtray I can't. Well, I can, but in a far more unpleasant way.

I have a Kenwood stereo amplifier from around 1980 which looks very similar inside.
 
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