Scully 280-16
A 16-track workhorse that studios bought, used hard, and sold off the moment the next format arrived. That is why the survivors are worth hunting.
Overview
The 280-16 is the sixteen-track member of Scully's 280 family. The most useful thing to know about it is what the used market did with it. By the late 1970s these machines were changing hands constantly in the British trade press. One dealer listed a Scully 280 16-track at £5,000 in 1978, another at £5,500 in early 1979, and by 1980 a "v.g. condition" example was up at £7,500. A spec sheet can't tell you that. The 280-16 was a known quantity, priced against Studer A80s and 3M M79s, and it held its ground in the secondhand columns instead of being dumped (Studio Sound, August 1979, p.65).
The Sync/Master is a separate accessory, not an integrated function. A 280-16 found without one is a different proposition from a complete rig, and the pricing columns bear this out. In 1979 one dealer asked £3,750 for a Scully 280 8-track with Sync/Master against £3,000 for the bare 8-track. That is roughly a 25% premium for the remote alone. The same arithmetic should apply to the sixteen-track.
The 280-16 turns up in studio inventories of the era next to far more expensive machinery. A 1980 Mix studio listing shows one facility running a Scully 280 16-track as its main multitrack, with a Tascam 80-8 and a pair of Technics 1500s handling the lighter work. It was the machine for a working room that needed sixteen tracks and couldn't justify a Studer.
What to Check Before You Buy
The trade listings are the best documentation of condition risk. Between 1978 and 1980 the same handful of 280 16-tracks cycled through dealer ads at £5,000, £5,500, £6,000 and £7,500, moving every few months rather than sitting. That churn is a warning as much as an opportunity. A 280-16 that has passed through three owners in two years has had three sets of hands on the head alignment, and the heads themselves are the first thing to inspect.
Check the transport against the published figures. The 76/38/19 cm/s speed set and the 0.08% RMS wow and flutter at mid-speed are the benchmark. If a machine can't hold that, the capstan or the pinch roller is tired. The 30 Hz to 15 kHz ±2 dB response and 62 dB S/N on 3M 202 are the reference points for evaluating the head path. Be realistic, though: those were new-machine numbers on a specific tape, and a forty-year-old 280-16 with original heads will not hit them without work.
Confirm whether the Sync/Master comes with the deck. It is the difference between remote cueing with tape lifter defeat and walking to the machine every time, and the secondhand pricing shows buyers paid real money for it. A 280-16 sold without the remote should be priced accordingly. A seller who doesn't mention it probably doesn't have it.
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