Otari MTR-90 II
A two-inch multitrack that studios kept buying used, and kept buying again. The classified pages tell the story better than any brochure.
Overview
Watch the back pages of the trade magazines and the MTR-90 II keeps turning up, priced, condition-graded and clearly moving. In the classified columns of Electronic Musician, dealers list it next to the studio consoles and outboard gear of a working room. One Boston-area seller advertised "Otari MTR-90II/24: $33k" alongside Ampex ATR-102s and a Fairlight. Another ran a standing line, "Otari MTR 90 II, many available," as though stock rotated through often enough to be worth mentioning.
That "many available" phrasing is the tell. A machine nobody wants doesn't get a recurring classified slot. The MTR-90 II was a 24-track workhorse that studios bought, used hard, and resold into the next room. The period press treated it as a known quantity. Studio Sound (December 1983, p.57) described the MkII MTR90 as "now accepted as the 24-track," found in what the magazine called some of the world's most prestigious installations. That same magazine had run Otari's own launch copy for the series months earlier, so weigh the claim accordingly.
The transport is where the design argument lives. Studio Sound (October 1983, p.63) described the series MTR90 as offered in 8-track one-inch, 16-track, and 24-track two-inch versions. It was built around an "Optimal Tape Guidance System" with a pinchroller-less PLL capstan, two ZHP DC reel motors, and an integral tape-guidance headblock governed by Otari's microprocessor-controlled servo. The later Studio Sound writeup (December 1983, p.57) put the payoff plainly: a transport under total computer control, giving what the magazine called the smoothest possible operation, with punch-ins and punch-outs described as totally gapless and silent.
The MTR-90 II also fit into post-production work through Otari's EC-101 synchronizer module. Otari's advertising in Modern Recording (October 1985, p.21) and Recording Engineer (February 1987, p.65) pitched the EC-101 paired with the MTR-90 as a time-code-only link over mic cable to a master machine. The listed features were bi-directional frame-lock from 0.2X to 2X play speed, phase-lock across a ±50% play-speed range, wideband time-code reading, and an RS-232C interface port with optional RS-422. The copy claimed typical parking accuracy of zero frame offset. That is marketing, not measurement. It's Otari's own billing, not an independent bench result.
The record leaves out the boring, useful stuff. There's no confirmed production span, no documented list of revisions between the MTR-90 and the II, no independent measured wow-and-flutter or frequency-response figures, and no service-history consensus on which subsystems fail first. Anyone chasing a specific serial range or a known-weak capstan will have to lean on the service documentation and the seller's word. The magazine record here covers reputation and capability, not bench numbers.
The classifieds do confirm that the MTR-90 II held real value deep into the digital era. A $33k asking price for a 24-track two-inch machine appeared in the same dealer listing as Pro Tools rigs and ADATs.
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