I just purchased a Tascam 238 8 track cassette tape recorder. It's my first recorder and I'm a total novice when it comes to recording. I'd like to use it to make little analog demos at home. Eventually I'd love to have a full fledged OTB home recording setup but I'm starting small for now. I've been learning a lot about the sort of equipment I will need to get myself up and running but have had some trouble settling on a good in-line mixer. I'm mainly just looking for something solid that won't bust the bank that I can learn with. My main requirements are that it has a dedicated tape return, phantom power, at least 8 direct outs and a few busses so I can squeeze as much into 8 tracks as I can. Also, I'm in an apartment so it can't be gigantic. Ideally I'd like to find something with decent preamps and a decent EQ but it doesn't have to blow anyones socks off. My research has uncovered a handful of older models (they don't seem to make budget in-line mixers anymore) that seem to fit the bill but I'm having a hard time deciding which might be the best fit. The models I've found so far are:

Tascam M50
Fostex 450
Tascam 2516
Ramsa WR-8210A
Alesis studio 32

Was wondering if anyone has experience with one or multiple of these and can speak towards their experience using them and how they think they might fair for what I need them for. Is there a clear winner here in terms of features/sound/reliability etc? Also curious to hear if anyone has any other suggestions that might fit the bill as I'm sure there are plenty of mixers out there I must have missed.

PS, It's my first post on here and just wanted to say I'm really excited to become a member of the community here! Been reading a lot of posts in the last few weeks and am blown away by the wealth of knowledge that can be found on here. You all rock

I've got a Ramse WR-S4416 that I got to replace my dead Tascam 216 to use with my 238. All kinds of routing options, sounds better than the old Tascam boards or my little Mackie 1202 which I've used to monitor the 238 output in the past. I started out using the 4 bus outs with splitters into the 238 but switched to using the direct outs on channels 1-8 then return on 9-16, so no dedicated tape return. So that other Ramsa might be a fit for your requirements, and it has RCA so you don't have to dongle/get a rca>ts snake.

I would avoid Fostex 450 because of its post fader eq section which makes mixing difficult to handle.

Ahh this is excellent advice! I didn't take this into account. Thank you!

Something closer to this might be the route I end up taking. I found a Mackie 1604 VLZ3 with a travel case that can also house the 238 for a good deal locally. I figured with the 16 channels and 8 direct outs, I can use half the board for tracking and the other for monitoring and the case will allow me to bring the whole setup around to record when needed. Been reading a good amount on the Mackie VLZ series and it seems that while it doesn't have quite the same quality preamps as the newer VLZ4s with their Onyx preamps, the VLZ3's XDR2 preamps don't sound too shabby. I think it might be well suited for what I need it for and can leave room for me to learn without frustrating myself (hopefully) due to lack of features/unusable sound. And eventually I can upgrade to something more professional when the time comes.

Nothing to shabby with a Mackie 1604, used one many a time.

Have you got the 238 with the Dolby S? Be careful if you do as the tape plays nowhere else, ever, except where it came from.
Leave it Off for safety.

Had one of those and a 1604 like 30 years ago, whoa.

Oh and I always prefer Split to Inline on desks, much more useful.

I've got the DBX 238! Thankfully. And it's been serviced and totally recapped so hopefully it lasts a good long while. Just out of curiosity, why do you prefer split to inline?

You can experiment on the mixing side without mucking up the carefully selected and setup stuff on the recording side.

If you want more takes you don't have to reset. Sometimes you'd be pushing an Eq on the mixing side and then transfer its setting to the record channel if you really liked it. Just more versatile in general I felt.

Also with Inline it was easier to f*ck up and have the wrong path going, but that was usually user error, by me.