Teac 7030 SL
A half-track, two-speed, ten-and-a-half-inch-reel workhorse that Teac itself was careful to call "penultimate."
Overview
Teac's own advertising for the SL Series was unusually modest. The company billed these machines as "penultimate," saving the word "ultimate" for whatever it hadn't built yet. The 7030 SL is the top of the SL trio. It's a two-track stereo machine running 7½ and 15 ips, built around 10½-inch NAB reels. It was also the only deck in the family that could play back four-channel tape alongside standard recording. Half-track stereo at 15 ips plus four-channel playback made it the serious home rig of the line.
The "SL" suffix wasn't decoration. Recording Engineer (June 1971, p.32) reported that the 6010 SL, 7010 SL, and 7030 SL incorporated more than fifty modifications over the decks they replaced. These included all plug-in relays, a redesigned power supply, increased dynamic range, reduced distortion, and a better signal-to-noise ratio, along with changes to bias switching and bias/record equalization. The same report noted the machines were built to accommodate both standard and low-noise/high-output tape. That was the point of the SL designation: Superior Sound/Low Noise.
Tape-handling flexibility was the marketing hook, and Teac leaned on it hard. High Fidelity (August 1971, p.64) ran the company's pitch describing the SL Series as decks designed specifically to exploit the recording characteristics of the new low-noise/high-output formulations. It also noted that Teac backed the heads with a lifetime guarantee.
The 7030 SL sat at the top of a three-deck lineup, and the differences were mostly about reels and speeds. Audio (February 1972, p.9) laid out the family. The 6010 SL took 7-inch reels only, while the 7010 SL and 7030 SL accepted 10½-inch NAB reels. The 7010 SL ran at 7½ and 3¾ ips with four-track, two-channel autoreverse. The 7030 SL traded autoreverse for the faster 15 ips speed and half-track heads. That's the trade a working recordist would make, since 15 ips half-track is the format for tape that will be mixed or mastered.
By the end of the decade the 7030 SL was showing up in the used-equipment columns. A January 1980 Broadcast Equipment Exchange listing offered two used 7030 SLs at 7½ - 15 ips, two-track stereo, described as in excellent condition. Professional brokers were still moving them nearly a decade after introduction.
The 7030 SL is not a collector's trophy in the way the big Studers and Ampexes are, and it doesn't pretend to be. What it is: a solenoid-controlled, half-track, 15 ips Teac with a lifetime-guaranteed head, four-channel playback capability, and a rack-mount option — a machine built for people who actually used tape.
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