Studer 2" 16 Track Tape Machine at Panoramic
We’re pretty excited that we now have a 2” Studer A80 16 track tape machine at Panoramic. I first bought this machine about 15 years ago for The Hangar when I was in Sacramento, and Chris Woodhouse used it quite a bit for records with Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall and lots of other bands. Then I sold it to my pals Lance and Ben who took over The Dock in Sacramento, but they ended up closing that studio up a few years ago, so we worked out a deal to get it back out to Panoramic. The A80s are classic tape machines with albums like Dark Side of The Moon and Peter Gabriel’s So recorded on them.
It’s a great machine, sounds great and is very solid and reliable. We recently had Steve Villieux out and he did a full alignment, along with tension, lubrication and azimuth, etc. alignments on the heads. While he was here, we had him check the tension, azimuth, etc on our Otari MX 80 2” 24 track machine as well, so that machine is also good to go. So 16 or 24 track, we have tape as an option at Panoramic.
The remote was in a big clunky floor-stand with no wheels and weird gray carpeting for a finish, so I built this smaller pine box with a handle to make it easier to move around the control room.
And, if you need 24 tracks, the Otari MX-80 has that covered. Our friend Bryce Gonzales refers to the Otari machines as the “Toyota Camrys” of tape machines. Not super cool but very reliable.
On a side note, we’re selling our MCI 2” 16 & 24 track machine to make room for the Studer, so if you’re interested or know somebody, LMK. We have tons of extra parts for this machine including multiple headstacks.