Tascam AQ-85
The autolocator for the Tascam 85-16. Used 85-16B packages still get listed "with AQ-85" as if it were part of the model name.
Overview
The AQ-85 is not a recorder. It's the autolocator - Tascam's automatic cue/positioning unit - built for the Series 85-16 sixteen-track tape machine. It shows up in nearly every period listing of the deck as if the two were welded together. When a Studio Sound classified ad reads "TASCAM 85 16B with AQ-85 Autolocate," it's describing a complete working package, not a tape machine with a random box thrown in. The locator was the difference between a 16-track you babysat and a 16-track you could run sessions on.
Recording-Engineer (August 1979, p.108) covered the TEAC Tascam Series 85-16 as a 16-track recorder/reproducer offering sixteen full channels of dbx. It also described sync capability between transports - between two tape machines, or between a transport and a VTR or film recorder. The 85-16 was Tascam's one-inch sixteen-track, and the AQ-85 was the positioning and synchronization partner that made it a system rather than a deck.
Dealers built packages around the pairing. A 1982 Studio Sound classified from Audio Services lists "85-16b AQ85B" alongside Model 15 and Model 16 consoles in 16- and 24-input versions. Another ad in the same publication that December quotes a complete 85-16B/AQ-85B package with a Soundcraft mixer at £12,000. Turnkey, the London dealer, was advertising 24-, 16- and 8-track packages through the summer of 1982 on the strength of availability as much as price. The AQ-85 moved as part of a bundle, and the dealers knew it.
By the mid-1980s the combination was a known quantity on the used market. A 1986 Studio Sound classified lists a "TASCAM 85 16B with AQ-85 autolocater - two years old" at £5,000. The following month's issue repeats the same machine at the same price with the note "Mint Delivery." So a two-year-old 85-16B with its locator was a five-thousand-pound item in Britain in late 1986. The same listing ran twice, which suggests it wasn't flying off the shelf at that number.
The AQ-85 also turns up in documented working studios. A Recording-Engineer profile of Steve Sperry's "The Mult Shop" personal-use studio lists a "TEAC Tascam 85-16 sixteen-track 1-inch tape machine, with integral dbx noise reduction, and AQ85 autolocator" as the centerpiece of the room's tape setup. It sits alongside a Soundcraft 1624 console and a Studer B67 mastering deck. The engineer wants to jump between song sections and punch in without hand-cueing tape, and the AQ-85 is the box that does it.
In the surviving documentation, the AQ-85 is not a standalone product with its own spec sheet. The period surveys that list the 85-16's numbers describe the recorder. The 1980 Studio Sound multitrack survey gives the 85-16 as 16-track on one-inch at 15 in/s, frequency response 40 Hz to 18 kHz ±3 dB, noise 67 dB weighted and 62 dB unweighted, wow and flutter 0.04% peak and 0.03% rms. It lists the AQ-85 only as an optional accessory alongside the DX-16A dbx noise reduction unit. The locator gets no frequency response or noise figure of its own. It's a control and positioning device, not a signal-path component.
For a modern buyer, the AQ-85 is a period-correct, system-specific autolocator for the 85-16/85-16B, and its value is bound up with whether you own or plan to own the deck. A loose AQ-85 without an 85-16 is a curiosity. An AQ-85 with its 85-16B is a working tape machine with the ergonomics the original buyer paid for. The used-market listings that pair them - £5,000 for a two-year-old 85-16B with AQ-85 in 1986 - are the benchmark, and they show the locator was never the expensive part.
Period advertising is inconsistent on names. The locator appears as "AQ-85," "AQ85," and "AQ85B" across Studio Sound listings, and the deck as "85-16," "85-16B," and "85 16B." Whether the B suffix on the locator denotes a revision or is simply dealer shorthand is not documented in the surviving material. Verify it against a specific unit's serial plate rather than assume. What is documented is that the AQ-85 was sold, advertised, and resold as an integral part of the 85-16 system.
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