Ampex ATR 700
A portable reel-to-reel that Ampex built for the road, the studio and the broadcast booth. It carried the "Ampex Sound" in a package you could unsnap from its cover and take anywhere.
Overview
Ampex's own advertising for the ATR-700 led with a simple instruction: unsnap the cover, plug in the power, and get to work in monaural or stereo. It was a reel-to-reel tape recorder in a compact package, built as a portable for commercial service rather than a consumer deck dressed up in a suitcase. Ampex positioned it as the entry point of its professional audio family, below the ATR-100 mastering recorder and the MM-1200 multitrack in the catalog. The company marketed it on wider dynamic range than most other portables of its day.
The ATR-700 was designed to do double duty. Ampex described it as tough enough for the continuous demands of full-time broadcasting, and equally at home on location. It could be racked in a station one day and hauled to a remote session the next. The ad copy also pitched it as a solid moneymaker in the studio for producing and editing commercials. One transport, one set of electronics, two working lives.
Frequency response is the headline number Ampex advertised, and it's a strong one for a portable. The ATR-700 was specified to deliver a response virtually flat from 40 Hz to 18 kHz, in either full or half-track monaural or full-range stereo. That's professional bandwidth, not a consumer spec stretched to look good. The machine was built around switchable equalization, so setup for most situations was fast rather than a fiddly calibration exercise. Full meter monitoring took the guesswork out of recording and playback levels.
Durability is where Ampex put the most weight in its copy. The ATR-700 used heavy-duty, professional-type switches and connectors throughout. The transport was built on a rigid, massive casting designed to keep all moving parts aligned even after hundreds of trips back and forth between the studio and the field. Ampex was selling this to engineers who actually moved their gear, and the cast transport was the answer to the alignment drift that plagues lighter decks. The front panel was compact, with every switch and control clearly marked for easy identification, and the back-lit meters stayed readable even when the room lights dimmed.
Period advertising placed the ATR-700 squarely in the broadcast and studio world. Studio Sound (May 1981, p.2) ran Ampex's pitch for the ATR series, noting that a cue amplifier and editing kit were available for broadcasters and that finding an edit point was as easy as turning the capstan knob. That mattered to anyone cutting spots or assembling a show. Mix (May 1981, p.15) carried the same campaign, emphasizing the machine's proven studio performance alongside low wow and flutter and what Ampex called unsurpassed phase-corrected equalization. Those are manufacturer claims, not independent measurements. They do show the intended market: broadcasters and commercial studios that needed a rugged, portable deck that behaved like a professional recorder.
The ATR-700 also turns up in the used-gear classifieds of the period. AVR, which had moved to 106 Main St. in Watertown, Massachusetts, listed an Ampex ATR 700 at $4,709 alongside the ATR-102 at $45.5K and the Ampex MIL200716-48K. So the ATR-700 was the affordable end of Ampex's professional line, though not a budget machine in absolute terms. Sierra advertised the ATR 700 as in stock in quantity alongside the ATR-100 and MM-1200, noting that some of the best-known products in professional audio were usually the hardest to get. The ATR-700 was one of the ones actually available.
For anyone buying one today, the machine's reputation rests on that cast transport and the heavy-duty switchgear. The same construction that made it road-worthy when new is what makes it serviceable now, provided the transport hasn't been abused and the electronics haven't drifted. Ampex built the ATR-700 to be carried, racked and worked hard, and the ones that survived did so because the design assumed that kind of life.
Similar items on eBay
No exact Ampex ATR 700 listings are live right now — these searches show current Ampex and similar vintage audio gear on eBay:
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.