Fostex Model 20 Master Recorder
A two-track mastering deck with a center-track SMPTE stripe. It let project studios lock picture and sound without a house sync department.
Overview
The Model 20 is a two-track reel-to-reel built for mastering. Its defining feature is written right down the middle of the tape: a center-track SMPTE time-code stripe running alongside the stereo program. Fostex's own catalog copy for the period described the deck as based on the same transport as the Model 80 multitrack. It pitched the machine at anyone mastering for production, and the center-channel time code was the whole point.
That time-code track is what separates the Model 20 from an ordinary stereo master deck. Recording Engineer (in a reader-corrections column that also caught a mistaken model reference) noted the Model 20 recorder with centertrack SMPTE carried a list price of $1,200. It also flagged that a review had confused it with the E-2, a larger-reel machine at $3,600. So the Model 20 was the affordable way into striped two-track mastering, not the flagship.
Working engineers put it to real use. In a Recording Engineer studio profile, one producer described his principal mixdown machine as a Fostex Model 20 two-track with center-track time code. He printed two different two-channel mixes. One was straight left-right stereo. The other split melodic parts to one channel and percussion to the other, so a final mix could pull down whatever got in the way of dialogue.
The deck shows up in Fostex's own advertising too. A Mix (May 1986, p.141) post-production spread listed the Model 20 as a "2-track recorder with center SMPTE track" within a complete 16-track audio post package starting at $11,100. That's marketing copy, but it shows where Fostex positioned the machine: the mastering end of a film-and-video post chain, not the music-only rack.
The available documentation doesn't give the Model 20 a deep published spec sheet. The transport is shared with the Model 80, the format is two-track stereo plus a center SMPTE channel, and the price was $1,200. Beyond that, the record is thin. Anyone chasing a full frequency-response or wow-and-flutter figure for this deck will find the manual excerpts garbled and the period coverage focused on its role in a post workflow rather than bench measurements.
The practical appeal is straightforward. A two-track master deck that carries its own time code is a self-contained sync solution — you don't need a separate center-track stripe box or a dedicated synchronizer to hand picture editors a code-referenced mix. For a project studio in the mid-to-late 1980s doing film and video work on a budget, that combination of a shared-with-the-Model-80 transport and an onboard SMPTE stripe at $1,200 was the value proposition. The trade-off, as the E-2 comparison makes plain, was reel capacity: the larger, pricier machine took bigger reels.
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