Ampex ATR-104
A four-track quarter-inch and half-inch workhorse that shows up in the equipment lists of more serious rooms than almost any other Ampex of its generation.
Overview
The ATR-104 is easiest to recognize by its job. It was the four-track companion to the ATR-102. In the studios, mobile trucks, and post rooms that ran Ampex tape, the 104 was the machine you reached for when a session needed discrete tracks rather than a straight two-track mixdown. The record of where these decks actually lived is unusually detailed.
Start with the field. For the CBS broadcast of Super Bowl XXI, the network's Best Audio mobile carried an Ampex ATR-104 4-track alongside two Otari MTR-90 24-tracks and a Yamaha PM-2000-24 console. It handled multitrack playback and mixing for the national anthem and the half-time show. That was no decorative placement. The 104 was trusted with the music segments of a live national broadcast, with the Yamaha PM-2000-24 and Sony BVH-2000 1-inch VTRs in the same rack.
The studio pattern is the same. Spectrum Studios listed an Ampex ATR-104 4-track in its primary equipment roster next to an ATR-102 CTTC 2-track, an Otari MTR-90 II 24-track, and a Mitsubishi X-86a 2-track digital. When a facility moved between the 24-track multitrack and the two-track mixdown, the 104 sat in the middle of the workflow. A moving-sale listing from a sweetening studio shows it too: an ATR-104 alongside an ATR-102, a Studer A80, and an Ampex 24-track, the whole tape complement of an audio-for-video room sold as a package.
The ATR-104 also turns up in the sort of work where track separation mattered more than track count. During a December 1991 session at Evergreen Studios for a dramatic radio production, engineer Fred Jones and director David Ossman recorded scenes on either an Ampex ATR-102 2-track or an ATR-104 4-track at 15ips, both with Dolby A, choosing between the two depending on how much separation post-production would need. For a scene with James Earl Jones, the 4-track ATR-104 was used with Dolby A so that the stereo image of the "ghost" voices could live on tracks 3 and 4 while tracks 1 and 2 carried the pair of U47s and a P48 combined into a stereo image of a small theater. That's the 104 doing exactly what it was built for: not a lot of tracks, but enough discrete ones to keep a production's options open in the mix.
A Recording Engineer (October 1986, p.96) piece notes a session recorded on an Ampex ATR-104 half-inch 4-track, which confirms the machine's two common formats. The ATR-104 ran quarter-inch and half-inch tape, and the used-market listings make the distinction explicit. A 1987 classified priced an "ATR104 Ampex 30ips 2 + 4 track 1/4 + 1/2" at $7,500, which tells you the deck could be configured for two-track quarter-inch or four-track half-inch work. A 1984 Mix classified listed an ATR-104 in "great condition" at $4,500, and the same listing had an MM-1100 16-track at $10,000 and a 3M M56 16-track at $9,500. Even in the mid-1980s, when 24-track was the assumed standard, the 104 held a real position in the resale market.
The 104 was not a budget machine. The ATR-102/104 family was Ampex's top-of-the-line professional tape line. The deck's reputation for transport stability and head reliability is why it kept showing up in broadcast, scoring, and post rooms long after quarter-inch four-track had stopped being a mainstream format. It's also why so many of them were bought, used hard, and then held onto rather than scrapped when the room upgraded.
For anyone considering one today, the practical picture is straightforward. The ATR-104 is a large, heavy professional deck that needs real space and real maintenance — head relapping and replacement, capstan and pinch-roller service, and a supply of quarter-inch or half-inch tape in good condition. It is not a casual purchase, and it is not a machine you buy to play back a few old reels. It is a machine you buy because you want a genuinely professional 2-track/4-track Ampex in the rack, and because you understand that the cost of ownership is mostly in the upkeep, not the purchase price.
The ATR-104 shares its lineage with the ATR-102, which means parts and service knowledge are more available than for many one-off decks of the same era. The downside is that a 104 that hasn't been serviced in years will need a full going-over before it does anything useful. The tape itself, quarter-inch and half-inch, is now the harder part to keep supplied.
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