Tascam M-2600
An eight-bus in-line console that promised two independent stereo cue mixes and eight aux sends, and by most accounts delivered.
Overview
The M-2600 is a recording console. Tascam's own advertising leaned hard on one phrase: "Absolute Sound Transparency," or AST. That is marketing copy, but it shows where the company aimed - low-noise circuitry, wide shelving on the EQ, and headroom rather than coloration. EQ (1994, p.29) ran the announcement. It described the M-2600 as combining completely redesigned low-noise circuitry with AST to deliver a clean, high-quality sound. It also noted that both the high and low shelving bands of the EQ had been widened for more useful sound control.
The real story is the routing. Only the M-2600, Tascam claimed, provided two independent stereo cue systems. Performers could hear the submix or scratch tracks the way they wanted while the control room or producer's mix carried on unaffected. Using those cue mixes does not tie up the aux sends, which stay free for effects. And there are a lot of them: two true stereo send/returns to feed stereo effects units, plus four fully assignable aux sends, for a total of eight. As the advertising put it, you can use them all at once rather than compromising. At mixdown a "Flip" switch doubles the inputs so virtual tracks can be folded into the mix without repatching or buying expansion modules.
A period review in EQ (1995, p.115) sized the desk up as an eight-bus console for project studios. It called it a well-featured, well-built in-line design with a four-band EQ splittable between the channel and monitor paths, eight auxes, and six fully routable stereo effects returns. The review listed the strengths plainly: clean, easy to use, excellent cue-mix and aux-send flexibility, and plenty of stereo effects returns. It was just as direct about the weaknesses: unbalanced tape inputs and outputs on RCA jacks, no phase-reverse or high-pass filter, and phantom power switched in blocks of eight channels rather than per-channel. Those are real limitations, and the RCA tape I/O in particular shapes how the desk integrates with modern outboard.
The desk was sold in three frame sizes, listed at $1,950 for the 16-channel M2600-16, $2,470 for the 24-channel M2600-24, and $3,055 for the 32-channel M2600-32, according to distributor listings of the period. Tascam's own copy describes the front-end EQ as very transparent and the internal routing as flexible, with the ability to change from tracking to mixdown without extensive patching. The in-line topology does the work that a split console would need a patchbay for.
Then there is the small ergonomic stuff. Dedicated solo and mute indicator lights sit on every channel, on the master aux sends, on the stereo returns, and on each of the eight busses, so monitoring status is visible at a glance. Tascam also built in what it called SmartSwitches, intended to protect against redundant or canceling operations.
The caveats are the ones the period review already flagged. The M-2600 is an eight-bus in-line console from the mid-1990s, and its tape I/O is unbalanced RCA. That made sense for the project-studio tape machines it was built to sit beside, and it is less convenient now. Phantom power in blocks of eight means a single condenser forces power onto its neighbors. There is no phase reverse and no high-pass filter. Collectors and engineers who have worked these desks tend to praise the routing flexibility and the clean signal path while accepting those constraints as the price of the layout.
For anyone assembling a period-correct project studio around a multitrack tape machine, or simply wanting a flexible eight-bus desk with genuinely useful cue routing, the M-2600 remains a coherent piece of kit. It is not a console that hides its compromises, but the compromises were chosen deliberately — and the cue/aux architecture in particular is more generous than most desks of its size and class.
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