Pioneer TAU-11
The half of the RT-2022 tape system that does the thinking — and the one collectors keep hunting for decades after the transport got separated from it.
Overview
The TAU-11 is not a tape deck. It is the amplifier-and-electronics half of Pioneer's RT-2022 open-reel system, the separate box that carries the record and playback electronics for a transport that lives in its own chassis. Modern Recording (June 1977, p.58) spelled the arrangement out plainly in its lab report: the complete product consisted of the RTU-11 tape transport and the separate electronics housed in the TAU-11 amplifier unit, with the last two digits of the RT-2022 designation marking it as a two-track, two-channel version (the RT-2044 being the four-track, four-channel sibling). That modular split was the whole point — a professional-style division of labor between the mechanicals and the electronics.
The reviewers at Modern Recording thought enough of that split to call the separate electronic module concept "a welcome professional touch" that made installation more flexible (June 1977, p.61). It is also, from a collector's standpoint, the reason these units are so often found orphaned. Transports get separated from their electronics, racks get broken up, and a TAU-11 turns up on its own with no RTU-11 to feed it. Enthusiasts hunting a complete RT-2022 system learn to watch for both halves.
The TAU-11's real value shows up in the numbers Pioneer published for the system it drives. Frequency response ran 30 Hz to 28 kHz at 15 ips and 40 Hz to 20 kHz at 7½ ips — a spec that, on paper, reaches well beyond what most listeners can hear and speaks to the quality of the electronics behind the heads. Harmonic distortion was quoted at 0.8 per cent at 15 ips and 1.0 per cent at 7½ ips, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 57 dB at a +6 dB level. Channel separation came in at 53 dB. None of these are budget-deck figures.
The input and output specs tell the same story. Mike sensitivity was 0.11 mV, line input 34 mV at 100 kilohms. Line output delivered 450 mV at reference flux level with 930 mV maximum, and the headphone output topped out at 133 mV.
What the TAU-11 also brought was a genuinely useful set of calibration and editing tools. A built-in test oscillator offered Off, 1 kHz, and 10 kHz positions for checking response and even cutting one's own test tape, and the owner's manual carried an unusually long list of tapes by brand name and number with recommended EQ and bias settings for each (per Modern Recording, June 1977, p.60). The electronics supported sound-on-sound and echo-effect recording, plus a "run-in" (Pioneer called it "follow-up") mode that let the operator go straight into record from playback without first stopping the transport. For anyone doing serious tape work, that is the difference between a machine you fight and a machine you trust.
That kind of want-ad persistence is its own kind of review. The unit is not glamorous on its own — it is a box of electronics with no reels to spin — but it is the half that makes the system sing, and the market has never quite stopped looking for it.
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