Tascam Model 38
Tascam's own advertising called it the lowest-cost half-inch eight-track ever built, and the dealers who bundled it into starter studios in 1982 and 1983 seem to have agreed.
Overview
The Model 38 is a half-inch, eight-track reel-to-reel recorder/reproducer. It was Tascam's budget entry into the format the company had helped establish with the 80-8. In its promotional copy for the Series 30 line, Tascam billed the 38 as carrying "every function of our time-tested 80-8" while being "the lowest cost half-inch 8-track ever built." That is marketing, not an independent verdict, but it shows where the machine sat: a full-size, simultaneous-eight-track transport aimed at the artist, the adman, the churchman, and the multi-image maker who wanted a studio of their own without a studio's capital outlay.
The transport runs full-size 10-1/2" reels, same as its Series 30 siblings, the 32 half-track and 34 four-track. It allows simultaneous record on all tracks, which mattered when quarter-inch eight-track competitors like the Fostex A-8 could only record four tracks at once. Tascam's Series 30 literature stresses the shared mechanical foundation. All three transports were built on the same rugged half-inch deck, which the company described as representing 25 years of continuous mechanical refinement. Modern Recording (April 1982, p.37) echoed that, noting the 32 and 34 were "8-track tough" because they shared the 38's transport.
The electronics were deliberately conservative. Series 30 used proven high-speed integrated circuitry run within design limits rather than on the ragged edge. Bipolar 15-volt DC power supplies were meant to keep hum and radio interference out of the signal path. That supply arrangement also gave a +15 dB maximum level for all outputs, which Tascam characterized as 25 dB of headroom, a generous buffer against distortion and overload for a machine at this price.
How dealers sold the 38 shows where it fit. Flanner's Pro Audio packaged a Model 38 with a Model 32 quarter-inch two-track, a Model 35 8x4x8 console, a pair of JBL 4301 BWX or Electro-Voice Sentury 100A speakers, a Crown D-150A or UREI 6150 power amp, and an Accessit reverb unit for $6,200, advertised as saving over $1,700 off list. Suntronics took a different tack. It matched the 38 to a Tascam Series M-50 12-by-8 console as a $6,000 Mini system, or to a Sound Workshop Logex console at $6,750. A Maxi version added a BGW 250-D amp and JBL 4312s for $7,850 to $8,150 depending on the console. These were turnkey eight-track studios for the price of a decent used car, and the 38 was the tape machine in nearly all of them.
The 38 turns up in the studio listings of the trade press too. Track Record Studios in Minneapolis built its eight-track room around a Model 38 alongside a Model 32, a Model 3440 four-track, and a Model 22-2. Woodland West Recording in Olathe, Kansas, listed a Model 38 eight-track next to its Sony JH-114 24-track and two Otari MX-5050B two-tracks. The 38 was rarely the flagship. It was the workhorse that got a room open.
By late 1986, Mix (November 1986, p.19) was still running the 38 in a Tascam advertisement paired with the M308 eight-track mixer under the headline "Performance Anxiety," pitching the combination at synth players doing sync-to-tape and small PA work. The pitch emphasized that the machine's design eliminated crosstalk, a real concern when eight tracks are packed onto half-inch tape and you are bouncing or syncing a sequencer against recorded parts.
Contemporary coverage was not uniformly starry-eyed. A Modern Recording (September 1983, p.8) reader discussion weighed the 38's roughly $2,750 retail against alternatives running $5,000 to $10,000 and openly wondered whether it was a "long-range machine." Specifically, readers asked whether the heads would wear out after some number of hours, and how long that would take. It is the obvious question for any budget tape deck, and it still matters to anyone buying one today.
For a modern buyer, the format is the appeal. Half-inch eight-track is a usable tape width, the transport takes 10-1/2" reels so you are not fighting short tape runs, and simultaneous eight-track record means the machine can capture a full rhythm section in one pass. The trade-offs are plain too. It is a 1980s consumer/project-studio deck, not a broadcast logger, and its value today depends almost entirely on head condition and whether the transport has been serviced. The electronics are simple and serviceable by anyone comfortable with a soldering iron.
Tascam said in its own advertising that eight-track recording no longer had to be a professional-only proposition, and the dealers who built $6,000 studios around the 38 backed that up.
Similar items on eBay
No exact Tascam MODEL-38 listings are live right now — these searches show current Tascam and similar vintage audio gear on eBay:
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.