
09/13/2025
The Ampex 300-series of tape machines ruled the 2- and 3-track era in the US
These fabulous sounding vacuum-tube machines were part of so many iconic recordings at places like Columbia’s iconic 30th st. location here in NYC
The transports from these machines are a bit clunky by modern standards and complete machines are difficult to incorporate into modern workflows (it can be hard to calibrate more modern tape formulations), but the electronics sound so good that people started converting them to mic preamps a couple of decades ago
We have a few channels of these—they’re thick, lush and colorful (the “A” setting on decapitator seems to be modeled thereupon)