Fostex 450-16
Sixteen inputs, four busses, two outputs - and a price tag that made home sixteen-track production feel less like a fantasy.
Overview
The 450-16 is the bigger brother of Fostex's Model 450, and the relationship is simple: it's a 450 with eight more inputs. The base 450 is an 8 x 4 x 2 desk. The 450-16 stretches that to 16 x 4 x 2 - sixteen input channels feeding four busses and a stereo mix. For anyone building a home sixteen-track rig around something like a Fostex E-16, that's the natural front end. The marketing copy of the day positioned it exactly that way, calling it "the perfect 16-track production console."
The 450-16 inherits the feature set that made the 450 interesting in the first place. Phantom powering for professional condenser microphones is on board, so you're not stuck with dynamics or a separate preamp rack. In-line monitoring lets you keep tape returns visible at the input strip rather than burning channels or patching through a second path. There's solo, a dedicated stereo mix buss, a stereo effects send, and four switchable LED bar-graph meters. It's a compact-format desk aimed at the project studio that wants routing flexibility without a console the size of a dining table.
Fostex advertised the 450-16 at $1995.00, against $1095.00 for the eight-input 450. DB Magazine (July 1987, p.7) ran the pitch with plenty of confidence. It claimed the 450 offered more routing flexibility and "performance gusto" than anything in its price category, and that the 450-16 delivered sonic quality buyers would expect to cost three or four times more. That last line is advertising, not a measurement, so treat it as the manufacturer's own billing rather than an independent verdict. The price-to-capability point was the whole reason these desks existed: a sixteen-input, four-buss console for under two thousand dollars in 1987 was an aggressive number.
Collectors and working owners tend to find the 450-16 in one of two places: as the surviving front end of a home sixteen-track setup, or as a compact utility mixer in a small project room. The four-buss architecture is what lets you submix drums or print groups to a multitrack without tying up every channel, and it's why these desks still turn up in rooms that don't want a full-frame console. Some users love the LED bar-graph metering for its instant readability. Others find it less precise than needles.
Documentation for the 450-16 is thin. Owners hunting service information should expect to work from the Model 450 material where the circuits overlap, since the 450-16 is fundamentally the same desk with an expanded input section.
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