Tascam ATR-60-2N
A quarter-inch mastering deck from Tascam's top-of-the-range ATR-60 line, built for people who made their living with tape.
Overview
The ATR-60-2N is the NAB-head, quarter-inch stereo member of Tascam's ATR-60 series. The company itself positioned the line as its top of the range. Announced in 1986, the series was aimed at working studios, not the home recordist. The 2N was the two-track mastering machine: quarter-inch tape, NAB stereo heads, and switchable 15/7½ in/s operation. Studio Sound (April 1986, p.36) reported the launch and noted that the series comprised five machines, from the -2N and its DIN-head sibling the -2D through half-inch high-speed stereo and multitrack versions.
According to Tascam's own advertising, what separated the ATR-60 from the pack was mechanical honesty. The promotional copy hammered one claim above all: the deck plate won't flex. Ever. That rigidity was sold as the answer to flex-induced phase error and wow and flutter that supposedly plagued lesser transports. Take that with the usual grain of salt, since it came from a Tascam ad and not an independent bench test. The same copy touted the "Omega Drive" transport as gentler on tape, arguing that the cumulative tension of a thousand start/stop passes wouldn't reach the tape. Again, that's marketing, not measurement.
The more substantive engineering claims are the ones a working engineer would actually notice. Tascam designed and manufactured the heads in-house so that sync frequency response would equal repro response. That meant you didn't have to rewind and switch modes to make critical audio decisions. Time Code Lock kept code coming from the sync head regardless of the audio monitor mode, so a synchronizer wouldn't get confused double messages when modes were switched. The input enable/disable feature let you monitor any source without repatching or touching mixer settings. It's a small thing, but it saves real time in a session.
Tascam's advertising also made much of the deck's ability to drive long cable runs, with +4 dBm, +8 dBm and even +10 dBm levels available. Studio Sound (April 1986, p.36) confirms the electronically balanced inputs and outputs, along with a switchable 250/320 nWb/m flux level, headphone monitoring on the two- and four-track models, and low-frequency compensation. The separate transport and electronics could be rack-mounted in standard 19-inch EIA racks, and a wide range of optional accessories was offered.
The ATR-60-2N was a professional tool, and the classifieds of the early 1990s bear that out. By 1991, dealers were advertising demo ATR-60-2N two-tracks at $2,495. By 1993 "still in box" examples were changing hands for as little as $1,799 and $1,495. These were closeout prices on new-old-stock pro decks as the industry moved toward digital, not a reflection of build quality.
The ATR-60-2N has plenty of company from Tascam itself: the half-inch -2HS, the four-track -4HS, the eight-track -8, and the center-track-timecode -2T all shared the same design philosophy. For a quarter-inch mastering deck from the mid-1980s, the 2N is the straightforward stereo option - no timecode, no half-inch tape budget, just NAB heads and the ATR-60 transport.
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