Studer A80 Mk IV
A quarter-inch of tape and a quarter-million pounds of Swiss engineering - the multitrack that studios kept buying long after the digital brochures arrived.
Overview
By the time the trade papers were listing them, the A80 Mk IV was already the second-hand bargain next to the A820 and the A800 Mk III. Nobody was throwing them out, though. A 1990 stock list from a British pro-audio dealer shows the pecking order plainly: an A820 with Dolby SR cards and auto/remote at £34,950, an A800 Mk III quoted on application, and an A80 Mk IV with auto/remote and low hours at £16,000 (Studio Sound, November 1990, p.??). The Mk IV was the mature version of a machine studios already trusted, and it was priced as a workhorse rather than a flagship.
That £16,000 bought a 24-track reel-to-reel, the standard multitrack format of the era, and the Mk IV was most often seen in that configuration. The American classifieds are full of them. A used Studer A80 Mk IV was advertised in Mix as having been used only in a home (Mix, March 1993, p.173). Another pair ran in December 1991 at $32,000 and $28,000, the cheaper one simply described as "mint" (Mix, December 1991, p.??). A Boston broker was asking $31,000 for one in February 1990 (Mix, February 1990, p.??). These are used prices, so the machine had already been depreciated once and was still commanding new-car money.
The transport and head assembly were the parts that mattered, and the Mk IV's reputation rested on them holding alignment through long sessions. Dealers leaned on that in their copy. A "recontoured Mk 3 'tightpunch' headstack" was a selling point in a 1991 classified, along with a custom remote, VSO, and a Fostex synchronizer interface, all bundled at $17,500 (Mix, December 1991, p.??). The phrase "low hours" turns up constantly in dealer listings. A 1990 British stock sheet lists an A80 Mk IV auto/remote as "low hours" alongside the same dealer's A800 Mk III (Studio Sound, October 1990, p.??). Owners and brokers both treated hours as the headline spec. The number that counted was how much tape had run across the heads, not the feature list.
The autolocator was the other recurring theme. A 1988 Studio Sound listing advertises a new A80 Mk IV 24-track "including Autologate" at £22,950 (Studio Sound, January 1988, p.??). The "Autologate" was the locator/autolocate package that made the machine usable in a modern workflow. By the early nineties, "auto/remote" is the standard descriptor in dealer copy, and machines without it are priced accordingly. A buyer looking at one today should check the presence and working condition of the autolocator first. A Mk IV without a functioning locator is a very different proposition from one with it.
By the early nineties the A80 Mk IV was not the top of the Studer range. The A820 and A800 Mk III sat above it in every dealer's price list, and the digital multitracks - Sony 3324, Mitsubishi X850, Otari's digital machines - were appearing in the same classified columns. Part of its survival was price. At £16,000 used against £34,950 for an A820, it was the machine a studio bought when it needed 24 tracks of Studer reliability without the flagship premium. Studios kept them in service alongside newer decks. A 1987 studio profile lists a Studer A80 Mk IV 24-track as the main multitrack next to an A810 and a B67 for two-track work (Mix, November 1987, p.??).
For a collector or a working studio today, the math is simple. The A80 Mk IV is a 24-track with the build quality that made Studer's name. Prices have come down from the early-nineties classifieds but are still serious money for a machine that needs a technician. The tape is the other recurring expense, and it is not getting cheaper. None of that is unique to the Mk IV; it is the cost of keeping any 2-inch multitrack alive. The Mk IV is the version of the A80 that studios actually used in volume, with the locator and the headstack that made it practical.
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