Teac Tascam 122 (c. 1981–1982)

Little is documented about the Teac 122, partly because it wasn't sold under the Teac name at all. Period advertising identifies it as the Tascam 122, a studio cassette recorder from Teac's professional division. The ads left no doubt about the target. This was a machine for studios, not living-room listeners.

The Tascam 122 ads ran in the pro-audio and hi-fi trade press from late 1981 into mid-1982. A spread in High Fidelity (May 1982, p.71) pitched the deck as having everything needed to transfer a studio sound faithfully to cassette. It called the deck a serious studio tool rather than a plaything. The one concrete technology named was Dolby Headroom Extension, claimed to add up to 10 dB of usable headroom above 10 kHz. Teac said that meant cassette dubs came out hotter and cleaner on any standard playback deck.

Beyond that advertising, the record is thin. No independent test report, full specification sheet, or original price has surfaced in the archive. Transport layout, head configuration and wow-and-flutter figures are not documented here either.