Teac Model 2A
A six-in, four-out mixer that Teac treated as the front half of a complete studio system.
Overview
The Model 2A is defined by its channel count: six microphone or line inputs feeding four output busses. Teac's own documentation positions it as the companion mixer to the A-3440 four-track deck. The A-3440's four output jacks were meant to connect to a mixer like the Model 2A, or to other equipment accepting line outputs. The two pieces form a system, and Teac said so plainly.
Each of the six inputs has its own equalization, output channel assignment, and pan pot, according to Teac's accessory description. That's a practical layout for a small studio: six sources, four busses, and enough routing to get a band onto four tracks without patching around the front panel. The Model 2A also meters up to four line-level signals and carries a built-in 4 x 2 monitor mixer, with buss/tape selectors for each channel. Teac's Sound Processors advertising confirms these details. It ran in High Fidelity (November 1978, p.53) and Recording Engineer (December 1978, p.48), among other places.
Polyphony (March 1981, p.7) highlighted the Model 2A's patch points as the route to mixdown flexibility - external equalizers, reverb units, whatever processors the user wanted to bring in. Teac's own advertising made the same argument, pairing the mixer with the GE-20 equalizer and the MB-20 meter bridge. The MB-20 provided buss and tape output metering plus a built-in headphone amp with independent volume and left/right/center monitor switching. The Model 2A meters four line-level signals on its own, but the bridge gives the full system its readout.
The MB-20 is also the piece that turns the Model 2A into a monitoring hub instead of a summing box. Teac's system pitch was A-3440, Model 2A, MB-20: a complete four-track studio in three boxes. The documentation treats the trio as a single purchase decision.
As a standalone mixer the Model 2A shows up in dealer listings on both sides of the Atlantic. A London pro-audio dealer's 1982 stock sheet listed "TEAC Model 2A with meter bridge" in its mixing desks section alongside the Model 3 (8 into 4), Model 5 (8 into 4), and Model 15 (24 into 8/16). A US dealer's clearance sheet advertised a demo Model 2A at $325 against a $475 list. A classified ad in the same period offered a boxed 6 x 4 Model 2A for £99. These are dealer and secondhand figures, not independent test data. They do show the market position: a small-format Teac mixer that sat below the eight-input Model 3 and Model 5 in the range.
The record contains no independent bench test of the Model 2A. The period magazine appearances are all Teac advertising. The Sound Processors campaign ran essentially unchanged across High Fidelity, HiFi-Stereo, Modern Recording, and Recording Engineer in late 1978, and the later Polyphony placement reads as promotional copy too. No measured frequency response, distortion, or noise figures have surfaced in the archive. The noise floor is undocumented.
The practical questions today are the usual ones for a mixer of this age: whether the pots and switches are clean, whether the buss assignments still latch reliably, and whether the unit comes with its meter bridge. The bridge is a separate accessory, and the Model 2A is meaningfully less useful without it. The boxed example in the classifieds suggests some units survived with original packaging.
The dealer sheets make the Model 2A's place in the Teac line clear: it was the six-input entry point below the eight-input Model 3 and Model 5, and the natural partner to the A-3440. The units that turn up for sale tend to be priced accordingly.
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