Period press · Audio, October 1976 · scan pages 108

Annual Equipment Directory: the Otari listings

OPEN-REEL TAPE DECKS

The directory's comparison table: twenty-one diagonal column headings running from MANUFACTURER and MODEL across to Price, with the Akai, Crown, Dokorder, Nagra and Otari blocks beneath. The three Otari rows sit at the foot — MX-5050, MX-5050-QX and MX-5050-8 — with hys and dc stacked in the base machine's drive-motor cell and dc servo in the other two. ⤢ zoomThe directory's comparison table: twenty-one diagonal column headings running from MANUFACTURER and MODEL across to Price, with the Akai, Crown, Dokorder, Nagra and Otari blocks beneath. The three Otari rows sit at the foot — MX-5050, MX-5050-QX and MX-5050-8 — with hys and dc stacked in the base machine's drive-motor cell and dc servo in the other two.

	MX-5050	MX-5050-QX	MX-5050-8
Speeds (see letter code)	E	E	F
Max. reel size, in.	10½	10½	10½
No. of heads	4	4	4
No. of tracks	2, 4	4	8
No. of channels	2	4	8
No. of motors	3	3	3
Drive motor type	hys dc	dc servo	dc servo
Drive to capstan	idler	idler	idler
Freq. resp., Hz-kHz ±dB w/standard test tape at highest machine speed	30-18 ±2	30-18 ±2	30-18 ±2
Wow & flutter, DIN 45-507, %	0.06	0.06	0.08
S/N w/stand. test tape	68	65	58
Output level at 0 VU, mV
Mic. mixing?	yes	yes	yes
Mic. input Z, ohms	50k	50k	50k
Record level indicators, type & qty.	2mtrs.	4mtrs.	8mtrs.
Dimensions, in.	17x21¾ x21½	17x25¾ x21½	21½x17½ x9½
Weight, lbs.	50	75	86
Price, $	1450.00	2195.00	3995.00
NOTES

The table's speeds are given by letter code, keyed above it:

SPEEDS BY LETTER CODE: E — 15, 7½ and 3¾ ips. F — 15 and 7½ ips.

Site note

The capstan is the find. Read down the Drive motor type column: the plain MX-5050's cell carries both values, hys and dc, stacked one above the other, while the MX-5050-QX and the MX-5050-8 carry dc servo alone. That is the option-versus-standard split — the DC capstan servo an extra on the two-channel machine, fitted as standard further up the line — printed not in a spec sheet but in a consumer annual. It is what Otari's own ad had said in prose that April: "optional variable speed dc capstan servo... the eight channel with dc capstan servo as standard" (db, April 1976).

This is also the site's only period price for the four-channel MX-5050-QX: $2,195, between the $1,450 two-channel and the $3,995 eight-track.

One column is wrong, and it is worth saying so. Under Drive to capstan the directory prints idler for all three Otari machines — where every other machine on the page with that cell filled in reads belt or direct; the five Dokorder rows above the Otari block, visible in the figure above, leave the cell blank. The MX-5050 has no idler in its capstan drive: Electronics Australia, reviewing the machine on the bench two months earlier, found "a hysteresis-synchronous motor drives the large capstan flywheel via a flat belt," and the parts book agrees. A compiler's slip, reproduced here because it is what the page says — but not a fact about the machine. More on the Mark I line in History.

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