Flea market season is upon us, and I wanted to share my first find. Like I say every year, I'm always there about a half hour before it opens and enjoy the hunt.

Last Sunday, I picked up this Teac A-6100 for $100. I didn't know much about this deck when I saw it. I watched the guy take it from his truck to the table and was blown away by how clean it was.

According to the dealer, the machine came from an estate sale. I got it with a brand new 10" Teac take-up reel and some accessories.

The machine is beautiful to look at, and it's unique in that it can do 2-track or 4-track playback via a switch on the head cover.

This was made to be a 'mastering' deck for an 80-8 way back in the mid-1970s.

I've also learned that an emulation of it is included in the IK Multimedia Tascam series.

The good news:

I took it home and plugged it in, and it works as expected. The power supply has been recapped, but from the looks of it, nothing else has been touched. The buttons and switches feel and look brand new. The heads have zero wear on them. It looks like it's NOS.

The bad news:

Although I got the take-up reel, there were no 10" hubs. Also, the belts are fine (only two), but they need to be replaced. I still need to run a tape on it, but I've ordered replacements.

One of the spindles had the lock broken off. It took a while, but I removed the broken part without stripping anything. Luckily, I found a NOS pair on eBay.

The pinch roller feels good. I cleaned it up, and it seemed to be fine, but I decided to buy a new tire. I'll try this one out, but it will probably be replaced.

I've oiled up the deck and received the hub adapters and some new tape today. I should have the belts tomorrow and the tire by the weekend.

Does anyone have any experience with this machine? I'll probably use it sparingly, but it looks so cool I had to have it. I've just sent my old 5050 8-track out for service so that they will be a neat pair. I'm not expecting it to be a Studer or even an Otari, but I was still happy to find it!

In the car at the flea market!





After some cleaning:

These machines were considered solid mid-fi stereo decks back in the day, not in the same league as Otari or Revox, but good value for the money. It's odd that it is so clean but was apparently hit hard enough to break off that reel lock. I'd try putting it into fast wind right away to see if that reel motor and mount was bent or damaged by that impact. Otherwise, if you can get the parts you need and the rest of the caps are not visibly leaking it would be worth having a tech look it over, do an alignment and set it up for a tape type you like and can afford.

From the looks of things, the reel lock was broken by over-tightening. It took a lot of work to remove it, but by putting a penetrating oil in it, letting it sit, and bringing the broken stem out of the back of the reel.

One of the images may give the impression that the reel is bent, but in reality, it's simply loose due to the presence of the counter belt behind it. I will address this by replacing the belt once it arrives.

Tascam/Teac gear holds a soft spot in my heart, so I will enjoy having it around even if I don't use it often.

The power supply has been recapped, but everything else looks original. Once I get the Otari back, maybe I'll bring it in to be serviced, but I'll check the alignment once I get it together and go from there.

Cool find!

Sure is a clean looking machine

I have a 6100 exactly like that. Even if you have to put some work into it, that's a steal, IMO

It was my mixdown deck back in my 8-track and 16-track tape days. It can shift the metering down 3 dB and has little peak lights that can give you a slightly better idea of what is going on if you want to push it.

It's a good machine, IMO

These days I use it mostly for transfers, and I have found the 1/4 track playback head option to be very useful for that because you never know what tapes will come in with.

I don't know if you will be doing that kind of transfer and archival work, but it might be an idea to keep your eyes open for a dbx NR box.

Thanks!

The Teac was working well, but I wanted to get it serviced by someone who knows more about these things than I do. I brought it to a store called Audioproz in Massachusetts and they did a fantastic job adjusting everything, fixing some minor issues, and calibrating it.

It's sounding and running beautifully!

Reminds me of this true story. I used to record a lot at a studio in Redondo Beach run by a guy named Wyn Davis. Can't recall the name at the moment. This was back in the early 80's.

Anyway, the studio's console was a Harrison 32. Wyn had bought it from the widow of a recording engineer at an estate sale. She had no idea what any of her husband's gear actually was. He asked her, how much for the console? She replied, "I don't know, what are you offering?" He told her he could give her $3k for it and she said wow that's a lot, yes I'll let you have it for that. The desk of course was worth far more than 3 grand at the time.

Taking financial advantage of the widowed wife of a recently deceased recording engineer while she was likely still in mourning and trying to figure out where life goes now.

Class act, that Wyn Davis guy.

The honorable (scratch that, the *human*) thing to do would be to tell her the approximate real value and offer to negotiate if she was willing.