Otari EC-102
A one-rack-unit box that turned a pair of MX-80s into a 48-track studio - if you could find one.
Overview
The EC-102 is a chase-lock synchroniser built by Otari to lock two tape machines together, and it takes up a single rack unit. That's all it is on paper. What makes it interesting is where it sat in Otari's lineup and how the company pitched it: as the cheap route to more tracks. Otari's own advertising in Studio-Sound (February 1991, p.9) said it straight out. Combine a pair of MX-80 machines with an EC-102 synchroniser and you get the extra tracks you'd been hankering after, for experimenting, for effects, for avoiding unnecessary bouncing, and for compiling vocals and solos. The pitch leaned on the idea that two smaller machines were more mobile than one large recorder, and the ad teased that the price, stacked against a larger 24-track, might surprise you. That's marketing copy, not a measured verdict, but it shows what the box was for.
The EC-102 wasn't Otari's only synchroniser. A 1987 product roundup in Studio-Sound (April 1987, p.50) laid out the family. The EC-101 was a module designed to fit inside an MTR-90. The EC-102 was the 1U rack unit aimed at the MTR-20, MTR-10/12, and MX-70. The same listing noted the EC-102 was "not available yet" at that point, and that a derivation of the EC-101 for the DTR-900 was in development. So the EC-102 came as the standalone, rack-mount sibling of an internal card - the version you bought when you didn't want to open up a transport.
By the end of the decade it was a fixture in Otari's catalog. A Studio-Sound show preview (June 1989, p.68) listed the EC-102 synchroniser alongside the MTR-100 24-track, the DTR-900B 32-track PD-format digital multitrack, and the MX-80, MX-50, and MX-55 series. A later Studio-Sound roundup (October 1989, p.20) grouped it with the MTR-100A 24-track and the DTR-900B as established Otari products.
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