Tascam Model 52
A two-track quarter-inch workhorse that weighed over seventy pounds and cost around thirty-five hundred dollars - the Series 50 deck studios bought by the half-dozen.
Overview
At a little over 70 pounds, the Model 52 is not a machine you move casually. It is a two-track quarter-inch reel-to-reel built on Tascam's Series 50 platform, and it sat at the top of the company's two-track line when it arrived. The transport runs 7½ and 15 ips on 10½-inch reels of quarter-inch tape. That is the classic mastering and mixdown setup. It is fast enough for serious work, and it has a real signal-to-noise advantage over the cassette and narrow-format machines most project studios were running at the time.
The editing package is what set the Series 50 decks apart. The reviewer noted a servo inching knob built into the head block, digital tape-time displays, and built-in splicing blocks. Those are the facilities that turn a tape deck from a playback machine into a production tool. The same report mentioned heads whose geometry, according to Tascam, held "head bumps" (the low-frequency response ripple that plagues playback heads) to less than 1 dB. That is Tascam's claim, not an independent measurement.
The inching knob lets you find an edit point by rocking the tape under capstan control, instead of stabbing at fast-wind and hoping. That is the difference between a clean splice and a ruined take. Add the built-in splicing block, and the Model 52 was designed for people who cut tape for a living, or wanted to learn how.
The Model 52 was not alone in the Series 50 family. Tascam introduced it alongside the Model 58, a half-inch eight-track machine built on the same production-machine design philosophy. Modern Recording (February 1983, p.25) covered the pair as a joint launch and described both as production machines that could take 10½-inch reels. Studios that needed more tracks stepped up to the 58. The 52 handled the stereo mixdown and the mastering pass.
And it got used. A 1989 Mix studio directory lists Ron Rose Productions in Tampa running six Model 52s alongside their MS-16 and Model 58. That is six two-track decks in one facility. The Model 52 was a utility player: dependable, repairable, and cheap enough to own in quantity. The same Mix directory and a 2002 EQ studio profile of Cedar Crest Studio in Northern Arkansas both place the Model 52 in working rooms years after the model's introduction.
Collectors and working engineers note the usual caveats for a machine of this age. The Model 52 is heavy and it is old. Heads wear, rubber parts perish, and the servo-controlled inching mechanism is more complex than a plain transport. Buyers should inspect the heads and verify the transport before committing. The dbx option is worth having when present. When it is absent, it is one more thing to source.
What the Model 52 offers today is Series 50 editing facilities, quarter-inch two-track fidelity, and Tascam's build, at a price that undercut the European alternatives when new and remains more attainable than a Studer on the used market.
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