Studer III-24
A two-inch 24-track that turns up in studio gear rosters the way a good workhorse turns up in barns - still earning its keep.
Overview
The Studer III-24 is a machine you usually meet in the fine print of somebody else's equipment list. A studio's gear roster reads "Studer A80 MK III 24-track" and you realize the deck in the corner of the photo is the thing you've been trying to identify. The documentation is thin and scattered. The honest starting point is that the III-24 is best understood through the facilities that ran it, not through a clean spec sheet.
What the period trade press does establish is that the III-24 was a working multitrack, not a showpiece. Recording Engineer (October 1982, p.82) reported that Skyline Studios in New York City installed a Studer A80VU Mark III 24-track alongside half-inch two-track mastering machines. It was part of a Neve 8058 console package with custom modifications providing 40 inputs and 10 VCA sub-groups. So the III-24 lived in a room with a serious console, a serious tape path, and a mastering deck next to it. The machine sat at the center of a tracking workflow, and the studios buying it were buying into a system.
The facility listings from the middle of the decade tell the same story. Mix (September 1983, p.17) ran a studio advertisement listing two Studer A-800 24-tracks and a Studer A-80 VU MK-III 24-track alongside a Q-Lock synchronizer and Ampex two-track machines. That is the inventory of a room built around multitrack tape. Two years later, Mix (September 1985, p.162) carried a near-identical listing. That's the useful detail: the III-24 wasn't a flash-in-the-pan purchase, it stayed in the roster and stayed in service. A studio doesn't list the same deck in its advertising two years running unless the deck is doing the work.
The naming is where collectors have to be careful. The period sources use several forms - "A80 MK III 24-track," "A80VU Mark III 24-track," "A-80 VU MK-III 24-track," and "A80-III 24-track" - and they all point at the same family of Studer 24-track machines. A DB (November 1989, p.29) gear roster lists a "Studer A800 MR III 24-track," and an Electronic Musician studio advertisement names a "Studer A 80-III 24-track" in a Santa Barbara facility's equipment list. The III-24 designation sits inside that cluster. Expect the paperwork to be inconsistent, and check the actual machine in front of you instead of trusting a listing title.
The documentation does not give the usual collector details. There is no confirmed production run, no original list price, no published frequency response, no weight, no headblock specification, no transport automation detail. The fact sheet behind this page came up empty on every one of those points, and the period sources that name the machine are facility listings and studio advertisements, not bench reviews. The machine shows up in the record because studios bought it and used it.
Today the III-24 is a two-inch 24-track studio machine, and it should be treated as one. It belongs in a machine room with a console, a synchronizer, and a tape path that gets maintained. The period listings pair it with Q-Lock synchronizers and half-inch mastering decks because that's how these machines were deployed - as the multitrack at the center of a tracking room. Parts availability, head condition, and transport service are the open questions, and none of them are answered by the published record. Inspect the deck, not the listing.
The advertisements and facility rosters are the primary evidence for how studios equipped themselves in the early-to-mid 1980s. They show a machine that was bought new, installed next to Neve consoles and Ampex two-tracks, and kept in service long enough to appear in listings years apart.
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