MCI Sony JH24
A two-inch 24-track that changed hands for under eight grand in the early nineties. The classified ads tell the story.
Overview
Many surviving examples carry a "MCI/SONY" badge, and the classified columns of the early-to-mid nineties treat the two names as interchangeable. A "Sony JH24," an "MCI JH24 w/Sony transport," and an "MCI/SONY JH24" all show up side by side in the same dealer listings. The machine was a 24-track two-inch reel-to-reel. It was common enough in professional rooms that it turns up again and again in the used-equipment pages of Mix and Studio Sound across the period. One example: Mix (April 1990, p.203) ran a classified for an MCI JH-416 console with producer's desk and patch bay at $8,500 OBO.
The period ads make it clear the JH24 was a working studio machine, not a collector's trophy. It was bought, sold, and traded as a tool. A 1994 Mix classified from Southern California lists a "Sony JH24" at $14k alongside a "MCI JH24 w/Sony transport" at $14.5k. The same page offers a Studer A-820 and an Otari MX80. The JH24 sat priced below the Studers and roughly in line with the Otari. By 1997 asking prices had softened: AVR Systems in Massachusetts listed a Sony JH24 at $12k, and by 1999 a "Sony JH24/ALIII" was listed for $9.5k. A 1991 Studio Sound dealer listing shows an "MCI/SONY JH24 24 track, private use" with the price obscured by OCR damage. The "private use" notation suggests these machines were often sold out of project and home rooms rather than big commercial facilities.
The British market tracked the American one closely. A 1994 Studio Sound classified from Tony Larking Professional Sales lists an "MCI - SONY JH24 + auto 3. Private use VGC" at £7,995, and
The classified columns don't editorialize much. They list condition ("VGC," "SUPERB," "private use") and price. But the model appears so often across Mix, Studio Sound, and Recording-Engineer through the early nineties that it was likely a common sight in mid-tier professional rooms. Dealers bothered to distinguish "MCI JH24" from "MCI JH24 w/Sony transport," which implies the transport was a meaningful variant. The period sources here don't spell out what changed between them.
Read the period pricing as a rough guide, not a valuation. The $9.5k - $14.5k range in the mid-to-late nineties reflects a market where two-inch 24-track machines were still in daily service and being displaced by digital multitrack. The same Mix pages that list JH24s also list Alesis ADATs and Sony 3324s. The JH24 was a solid analog workhorse being sold off as rooms went digital, at prices that made it accessible to project studios for the first time.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.