Tascam MTS-30 MIDI/FSK Translator
A little box that finally let a sequencer and a tape machine agree on where they were in the song.
Overview
The MTS-30 is a MIDI-to-FSK translator - a synchronizer built to bridge the two things that dominated home and project studios in the late 1980s: MIDI sequencers and drum machines on one side, multitrack tape on the other. Tascam's own advertising was blunt about the problem. Getting digital signals onto multitrack tape had "always involved compromises," and the converters built into sequencers and drum machines were handy but prone to slipping out of sync from conversion errors. Worse, they could only start playback from the top of the song. The MTS-30 was sold as the fix for both.
The headline feature was MIDI Song Position Pointer compatibility. The user no longer had to rewind to the beginning every time. The MTS-30 used Song Position Pointer data so playback could begin from any point in a composition. Shuttle the tape, hit play, and the MIDI gear picked up in the right place. A bright LED display showed which measure the tape was sitting on, so finding a spot in a long arrangement didn't take guesswork.
The rest of the appeal was housekeeping. Tascam built in error-correction circuitry and an automatically switched MIDI OUT/THRU terminal. That let the user drive a drum machine while recording the sync tone from a sequencer to tape, then drive both the drum machine and the sequencer on playback, all without constant repatching. In a small studio every cable swap is a chance to introduce a mistake, so the auto-switching was a handy thing to have.
Contemporary coverage treated the MTS-30 as the missing link between MIDI equipment and multitrack recording. DB (March 1988, p.62) listed the MTS-30 FSK/MIDI Translator at $225 retail, and noted that with it a user could shuttle the tape to any location within a song and have MIDI keyboards and drum machines follow along. That matches Tascam's own advertising of the period, which also quoted a suggested retail of $225 and described the unit as arriving at "a very affordable price."
The MTS-30 was part of a broader push by Tascam into peripheral recording devices for the home-studio market. When the company introduced its GS30 guitar amp simulator, marketing manager Bill Mohrhoff framed the strategy plainly: musicians needed products that complemented their home-based studios. The MTS-30 sat alongside the ES 50/51 synchronizer and the multi-function MIDIizer in that lineup. Tascam even bundled it into promotions. A 1989 Canadian ad offered the GA-30 EQ, RC-88 remote control, and MTS-30 synchronizer together as $1,100.00 in free accessories with a system purchase. A 1994 EQ workshop piece (May 1994, p.8) still shows the MTS-30 in active use, walking a reader through pressing the Tape key until "SAVE" appears in the display and setting a rear-panel switch. The box stayed in service years after its introduction.
For anyone wiring a MIDI rig to a tape machine today, the MTS-30 is still a period-correct way to do it. It is a narrow tool by modern standards. It synchronizes, it displays measure numbers, it switches its own MIDI routing, and that is the whole job. Collectors chasing one should confirm the LED display and the auto-switching out/thru behavior are working, since those are the features the unit was sold on. Original retail was reportedly $225, per both Tascam's advertising and DB's 1988 listing.
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