Tascam M2600MKII
An eight-bus console where you feel the difference just trying to lift it.
Overview
The first thing anyone notices about the M2600MKII is the weight. Tascam's own literature says so - the console is described as a solid, heavyweight piece of gear, and the company invites you to feel the difference simply trying to pick one up. An extra-heavy external power supply sits outside the chassis, and Tascam claims it delivers more headroom than anything else in its class. Take the claim or leave it, the layout is real. A beefy outboard supply feeds a board built around an in-line configuration with flip switches, so the signal path stays short and the noise floor stays low.
This is an eight-bus recording console, and Tascam positioned it as the next-generation example of the breed. It came in three frame sizes - 16, 24, and 32 input models - so a project studio and a working commercial room could buy the same design at different scales. The in-line layout with flip switches is the key ergonomic decision. Channels can be flipped between mix and monitor duties without repatching, which saves you from crawling behind the desk mid-session.
I/O is flexible. Each channel offers a choice of balanced (+4dBm) and unbalanced tape ins and outs, so the console works with professional +4 gear or the semi-pro gear that was far more common in project rooms of the period. Phantom power is switchable in banks of eight channels rather than per-channel. That keeps the front panel from turning into a wall of tiny switches, though it does mean you commit eight inputs at a time to condenser duty. Every channel carries a semi-parametric split EQ, and the board is ready for automation via any of a number of third-party packages.
The aux section is where the M2600MKII makes its most concrete claim. It carries six auxes, two of them stereo, and Tascam's pitch is that you can use all six all the time - no repatching, no limitations. In practice that means more effects sends and multiple independent stereo headphone mixes running simultaneously.
Build quality gets its own chapter in the literature. Tascam invites buyers to check whether the knobs and switches wiggle on a competing eight-bus board, then points at the M2600MKII's controls as the counterexample: no play, no wiggle. The faders are smooth long-throw 100mm units, and the ergonomics were drawn so that even the largest fingers fit between the knobs.
One design touch worth calling out is the SmartSwitches — Tascam's self-canceling, two-tone buttons. The two-tone scheme gives visual confirmation of every button position at a glance, and the self-canceling behavior protects against redundant operations. It sounds like a minor convenience until you've tried to read a dark control room full of identically-lit buttons at 2 a.m.
The company's advertising for the console ran in the trade press through the mid-to-late 1990s. EQ (1995, p.10) and Mix (1996, p.26) both carried the "8-Bus Recording Consoles" spread, with further placements in Mix (1996, p.56) and EQ (1995, p.22). The recurring argument across those pages was that serious consoles keep their jacks in back, where an installed board's connections belong, rather than on the front panel where you'd be forever messing with cables. The M2600MKII was built to that brief: clean-looking, jacks around the back, made to be installed once and then left alone to work.
There's an optional multi-process meter bridge as well, which lets you keep your eyes on the board rather than the recorder — a small ergonomic win that becomes a large one over the course of a long session. Between the meter bridge, the six always-available auxes, the semi-parametric EQ on every channel, and the balanced/unbalanced tape I/O, the M2600MKII reads as a console designed by people who had actually sat behind one.
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