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[Les Ismore]

One Tascam board you might take a look at is the M600. They can be picked up fairly reasonably and were Tascams higher end pro series (along with the M700 which was thier answer to SSL).
These are large format boards with patchbays multicabled to the board and seperate power supplies. Lots of features, runs forever. Low maintenance.
They sound pretty good, although they aren't in the same class as Neve etc. I've done about 350 projects on this board and people always were suprised at the quality of the end result.
When I bought this board new (25K) there was quite a stigma to the name Tascam. Reminded people of the 4 track stuff. I always thought that when Tascam or Peavey came out with pro stuff they should have used a different name on it.
Anyways, although it's their pro line, it's not the most high end stuff in the world, but it is affordable, very low maintenance, sounds good, and whenever people come in and see a large format console on it's stand there's a certain "knob envy" that happens.

[Neon Noodle]

I recently picked up a Tascam M-512, and i really like the routing options. Has anyone ever used these boards, and if so do you have any opinions on their sound/quality?

[acorec]

Oliver wrote on Thu, 24 March 2005 17:26

So there's been a lot of talk about the Topaz on this and other forums. I'm thinking of investing in a board in the not so distant future. I have yet to see a Soundtracs board for sale anywhere near me. I believe it was Zoesch who mentioned Tascam boards as being another good budget option. There's an m1600 for sale near me but I have no knowledge of any of the Tascam stuff. I'd be using it for mixing but I don't want to rule out recording with it so the pres are a consideration. This is mostly a fishing expedition for me. I'd really just like to see a discussion of lower cost boards other than the Topaz, if there are any that come anywhere close to its price/performance ratio. Thanks, Oliver.

These Tascam boards have been showing up frequently and for the life of me, I don't understand how these cheesy sounding boards have *improved* over the years. When I was a lad (in the 70s) everyone I ever met was trying to get away from these things. They sounded thin. I used many of them and just gave up on trying to get any useful sounds out of them. Now, they are back and people are just *glowing* over these "vintage" boards. I really don't get it unless digital recording really sounds that bad. If you are going to get a used mixing board, good lord buy a used *professional* board and have something that really sounds good.

[RedBus]

Quote:

These Tascam boards have been showing up frequently and for the life of me, I don't understand how these cheesy sounding boards have *improved* over the years. When I was a lad (in the 70s) everyone I ever met was trying to get away from these things. They sounded thin. I used many of them and just gave up on trying to get any useful sounds out of them. Now, they are back and people are just *glowing* over these "vintage" boards. I really don't get it unless digital recording really sounds that bad. If you are going to get a used mixing board, good lord buy a used *professional* board and have something that really sounds good.

Um, the M1600 was released in 1997, an 8 bus mixer to be teamed with DTRS or ADAT machines...   That's hardly vintage, and it's  at least project-studio-level "pro", which may not be "pro" enough for you...

Regards,
RedBus.

[WhyKooper]

I still have a couple of Tascam 3700's which I always thought were pretty good.  The onboard fader automation was always handy in the old days even if it was vca-based.  Another nice thing is I can use the faders on the consoles as generic controllers for Nuendo.