My dad had one of these consoles in his studio. I was just a kid but I remember it had a unique smell. Esp when it was brand new. I remember he put the buss switches to red-green for Christmas. He also had a Teac Model 5 with expander, a Teac Model 1, Teac 3340 4trk 1/4", Teac 85-16 1" 16 trk and a Teac 80-8 1/2" 8 trk. All Teac studio until the 80's when he got a Soundcraft 2400 and 2" machine. Yours looks in great shape!
Absolutely amazing! You really added a fantastic touch to it- although I like the gritty sound rather than transparent but yea I’m in envy of how this turned out
I‘ve been lucky and recently gotten my hands on a factory seald Teac Model 3 (new-old-stock). I really like the sound so much. Any advice where i can find a detailed guid to modify the thing? Especially on replacing the opamps at some point in time. Thanx 😊
@@scottbaxendale323 Scott I've owned everything almost including one of these. The -10 doesn't hurt unless you need the recorder more than 20 feet from the board and the Rca's can be eliminated with a good patchbay. They do have a fatter sound than modern mixers because of the slow slew rate of the old 4558 opamps. Same with the old blackface MCI consoles that I had. Slow opamps make acoustic instruments and voices sound bigger. Not as clean with transient snappy attacks but harmonically fatter if a sharp fast attack is not desired.
What's a good vintage console / board with about 8 channels under $500? I'm looking for vintage good sounding preamps. Tired of audio Interfaces and 1073 clones that aren't good. I am wanting to just buy a vintage mixer now that has good pres. Teac 5b? 5a?
Regarding your "Master Output" VU meters on the bridge...being the M15 guy, what IS the "Master Out"?? The studio out? CR out? Aux A? I'm getting ready to purchase one of these consoles...
Hi Brian, if you want the most versatile and best summing circuits maybe look elsewhere. The Teac does what it does, and with a few mods can sound pretty decent when you push it a bit and hit that sweet spot. There a few flaws in the design however which mean you can't route a signal directly to a stereo output, be it Mon A, Mon B, Control Room or Studio outputs. Instead you have to send signal through the Buss --> Mon A/B first. You can take a stereo outputs from either Mon A or B, but if you are doing a mix you will likely want both Mon A and B, so that leaves you with the Control Room and Studio outputs. At this point due to poor gain staging design and depending on how many channels/buss/Mon A+B's you are using you will have a rather raised noise floor, which in todays digital age most people will find unacceptable. So to answer your questions the Master Output for me is the Control Room output, I have upgraded the op amps here, improved stability and tapped a signal for my Master Output VU's. I use these VU's for an average level referance only, they are fairly cheap and do not detect peaks. If you are planning on adding an additional meterbridge as I have done you can wire it however you want. In your set up you may wish to use Mon A as your master output, it's really up to you. A couple of tips; when tracking take signal from the direct outs, or even better the insert send (granted no eq, but sounds really punchy) and try and keep all signals hot across the board and all unused channels/Buss/Mon muted and the noise floor will be more manageable.
+DrunkJoaw Thanks, man, I really appreciate it. The guy who's selling me his tried my setup and verified that it works. The board will be used for rock records only, if the hiss is no more than "normal" non-Dolby tape hiss, that's fine. Be usually oh, 18 channel mixdowns, Buss 1-2 raw mix, Buss 3-4 parallel compressed mix, Buss 3-4 jumped to Buss 5-6 to stack parallel compression, letting me pull the faders and noise down and keep the program level much better than just using one. Or I may jump 1-2 to 5-6 and buy another identical compressor. The opamps on all outputs will be changed to discrete opamps, a couple of the outputs supposedly have "active summing circuits" if I can figure out which ones those are we'd probably use those and add a pair of transformers to that output as well. I have a guy in Chicago who is a genius and can modify anything for the better, and knows how and why. I don't use EQ when I track...and hearing the difference between the preamp out and the summing circuit out on the MX-80 I just bought, I am beyond "on it" about opamps now. No more "it'll be okay", screw that. You may be hearing from me a little or a lot. With any luck I'll have it within the month and it's in mint shape and fully loaded (24 mono strips). I had an M-35 I absolutely loved and this is a better, giant version of that. I also have an M-3700/32 and a rare Soundout/Soundtracs 24-8-16. This will be my classic rock console...and my baby, all however many hundred pounds it weighs God Bless you man \m/ \m/ and FANTASTIC work on the desk brother-bk p.s. by the "best summing circuit" I meant the best one in that desk, lol.
+DrunkJoaw Oh and what you said about pushing the board and it liking it? That's what I'm all about. SOLD I'm just turned 47 by the time I'm 50 that thing will be a monster and so will my 3700. The Soundtracs needs the preamps recapped, needs nothing else the signal path is like the shortest in the world I'd safely bet. You have to keep checking the power supply to make sure it's on, it's that quiet. But it also loves to be pushed on drums. So I have different consoles for different needs and sounds.
+Brian Keller I mean if there's no stereo output, there's kind of no point in the whole mixer, is there? Mixing channels down to stereo is the purpose of any recording console, I thought. I used the "Studio Out" and some transformers on the M-35.
Use a very small amount of Caig DeoxIT F5 to clean and flush and then a drop of Caig DeoxIt F100L. Be very carful not to over apply DeoxIT F5 as it can wash away the grease and leave the pots feeling rough and easy to turn. Have a look on www.teac15blaggersguide.co.uk for more info on cleaning pots, faders and switches.
