Teac Model 10 (1972)
A floor-standing 8-in, 4-out mixing console that undercut the professional market by leaving out only what you didn't need.
Overview
The TASCAM Model 10 was built for the small studio whose band had outgrown a four-input box and just received its first real console quote. TEAC Audio Systems made it a floor-standing 8-in, 4-out mixing console and priced it at $1,890 - a figure the company repeated so often in its advertising that it effectively became the product's name. DB Magazine (November 1972, p.15) ran the pitch almost verbatim: one floor-standing Model 10, manufactured by TEAC Audio Systems, plus tax.
The pitch was blunt. TEAC's own advertising asked what $1,890 buys you and then answered with a parts list: eight input modules, four sub-master modules, one master module, four 4" VU meters with fast-acting LED peak indicators, and pre-wired facilities for up to four additional input modules and other optional accessories including talkback, remote transport control, quad panner, and headphone monitor. The argument was that full professional studio gear costs an arm and a leg, and you pay for a lot of things you may not really need. The Model 10 was the answer to that complaint.
The input modules are where the design gets interesting. Each one has a 3-position input pad, a feedback-type mic attenuator, a line attenuator, a 3-position input selector, hi- and lo-pass filters, and three bands of equalization, two of them with frequency selection. It also has complete echo-send and receive circuitry with pre- and post-selection. Channel and pan assignment pushbuttons sit next to a pan pot and what TEAC called a unique straight-line fader. Recording Engineer (October 1972, p.24) printed the same inventory under the headline "8-IN, 4-OUT: $1890. Plus Tax." Apparently the readers cared about the tax.
The four sub-masters were not afterthoughts. Each carried its own straight-line fader, a source/tape monitor control, a meter control switch for line or echo, an independent monitor level control, and an echo receive level control. A single master gain module tied it together. That is a lot of routing for a console in this bracket, and it is the reason the Model 10 stayed in service long after cheaper boards had been retired.
Impedance is where TEAC made its real bet. The basic Model 10 was high impedance in and out, with studio line impedances available optionally. The company's reasoning, as stated in its own copy, was that you would probably want low impedance mic inputs but might not need all low impedance line inputs. So you could order any combination of high and low input/output impedances according to your application. TEAC sold the configuration as a menu instead of forcing a spec sheet on the buyer.
The console was not sold alone. TEAC paired it in advertising with the Series 70 Recorder/Reproducer at $1,770 — a 1/2" transport with 4-channel modular electronics, overdub, a plug-in head nest with ferrite heads and scrape filter, a remote control connector, touch-button solenoid/relay controls with anti-spill circuitry, heavy-duty 6-pole torque motors, and an indirect drive two-speed hysteresis-synchronous capstan motor. Both units were available with studio line impedances optionally. Read together, the two prices describe a complete small-format studio for under four thousand dollars in 1972 money, which is the actual story of the Model 10.
The design did not stand still. By the time Modern Recording (April 1976, p.10) covered the follow-up, the Model 10B had arrived. It was described as a good thing made better, with peak reading LED indicators on each input, chassis-mounted 1/4" phone jacks for added stability, and echo busses that could be used with the program busses for 8-out capability. An 8-channel Monitor Mixdown Module, the Model 116, was offered optionally for direct interface, with each channel switchable to monitor buss or tape, individual pan and gain controls, a split mono cue send, and an outboard automatic switching matrix. The 10B's feature set is not a retrofit kit for a basic Model 10 - the two are distinct revisions.
By Modern Recording (June 1982, p.81), the Model 10 had moved into the classifieds, with input modules listed at $135.00 apiece. A console discontinued years earlier was still being parted out module by module. That suggests two things: the modules failed independently rather than taking the whole board down, and people were still building up or repairing Model 10s a decade after the original ad ran.
What the Model 10 is not is a console that pretended to be something else. TEAC's advertising was explicit that some things you may or may not need, and we leave that choice up to you. That philosophy cuts both ways in 2026: the board rewards a user who knows exactly what they want and punishes one who assumes every feature is present. The reward, for the right owner, is a genuinely professional routing architecture at a price that never pretended to be professional.
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