Technics DA-10
A DAT deck that owners modified to do something the factory wouldn't let it do, and then watched fail within a year.
Overview
The Technics DA-10 is a DAT recorder. The most useful thing the period press has on it isn't a review. It's a pair of reader letters. The first describes a modification that lets the machine record analog in at 44.1 kHz (EQ, June 1992, p.11). That one comes from an electrical engineer named Doug White, who asks EQ for the details of a modification that lets the machine record from its analog inputs at 44.1 kHz (EQ, June 1992, p.11). The other, from a studio owner named Richard Bugg, is less flattering. He describes the Technics as essentially a Panasonic SV-3700 with consumer analog I/O and says he made the same 44.1 kHz analog-input modification himself. He reports that his unit "only made it for about a year before transport problems appeared" - and the service from Panasonic left him cold (EQ, June 1993, p.30).
That's the DA-10's reputation among the people who ran one: a competent converter-and-transport package undermined by a factory restriction and a fragile mechanism. The 44.1 kHz analog-input limitation is a real, documented grievance. Two separate owners went to the trouble of modifying the deck to defeat it.
Be careful with the model name. A "DA 10" also appears in the trade press as a Lavry Engineering digital-to-analog converter. It's a completely different product from a different manufacturer, with three digital inputs, a discrete headphone amp, and sample-rate conversion. The two get confused in search results and in secondhand listings. Anyone hunting a Technics DA-10 should confirm they're looking at a DAT deck, not a Lavry converter, before money changes hands.
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