Members GZsound Posted April 6, 2006 Members Share Posted April 6, 2006 I noticed that Mackie is producing the Tapco line of music gear now, and it appears to be a low priced knock off of Mackie gear. Has anyone taken a look at the Tapco stuff? I remember back in the seventies when Tapco was trying to unseat Peavey, Neptune and Biamp gear with little results. But they have some really inexpensive stuff. Is this Chinese Mackie? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BLAblablah Posted April 6, 2006 Members Share Posted April 6, 2006 Their Near-Fields have been getting good reviews. IIRC Greg Mackie actually use to own Tapco before he started Mackie. The Chinese Mackie Barry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members where02190 Posted April 6, 2006 Members Share Posted April 6, 2006 My very first "pro audio" purchase was a Tapco 6000 mixer in 1974.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members CN Fletcher Posted April 7, 2006 Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 Even if I ever did purchase a "Crapco" product I would never admit to it... not even if it was from 1974 [though I did have to work on one every now and again... and yes, it was painful... funny part is that I'll bet that old Crapco I hated in 1980 would probably eat a modern Soundcraft for breakfast and {censored} it out before lunch]. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Weathered Posted April 7, 2006 Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 Originally posted by BLAblablah The Chinese Mackie Which is funny....because most (if not all) Mackie stuff is now built in China, including the $4000 list Onyx 2480. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted April 7, 2006 Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 Originally posted by BLAblablah Their Near-Fields have been getting good reviews. IIRC Greg Mackie actually use to own Tapco before he started Mackie. Yeah, that's right, he did. I've never laid a hand on an original Tapco product, although I remember seeing what I think was a mixer and thinking it looked really crappy. Some older engineer friends of mine told me that the stuff wasn't too good, and that they were a bit suspicious when Mackie started because of the dubious quality of Tapco. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kiwiburger Posted April 7, 2006 Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 I find enough faults in my Mackies. I certainly won't be buying anything lesser. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted April 7, 2006 Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 I've also seen good reviews of the Tapco nearfields. Bear in mind that this is relative to the price point - I doubt ADAM is shaking in their boots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GZsound Posted April 7, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 Originally posted by where02190 My very first "pro audio" purchase was a Tapco 6000 mixer in 1974.... With the big knobs? I can't remember but I owned several pieces of Tapco (and Peavey, and Sunn, and Shure) PA equipment back in the early seventies. But my first "Pro" PA was a 100 Watt Bogen and two University Horns.. 1964. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GZsound Posted April 7, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 Originally posted by Fletcher@mercenary.com Even if I ever did purchase a "Crapco" product I would never admit to it... not even if it was from 1974 [though I did have to work on one every now and again... and yes, it was painful... funny part is that I'll bet that old Crapco I hated in 1980 would probably eat a modern Soundcraft for breakfast and {censored} it out before lunch]. Trust me.... NO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members CN Fletcher Posted April 7, 2006 Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 Q: What words do you hear in show buisness that are an immediate tip off that you're about to get {censored}ed? A: Trust me. I trust my wife, I trust my mother... I trust my two best friends and the guy that runs my companies. Other than that, I don't trust a mother{censored}ing soul on the face of this, nor any other planet. Guilty until proven cool I say [but I've been financially sodomized so many times since I've been in the music industry I feel like a 'prison bitch' at the hands of a lawyer... as always... YMMV]. The words "trust me" [when spoken about any subject] send up great big signal flares [WARNING WIL ROBINSON!! DANGER!! DANGER!!] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members D Charles Posted April 7, 2006 Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 My first mixer that I used with my 2340 reel to reel was a Tapco 6200 I think was the number on it. Man, did those pots ever go stiff as hell till you couldn't hardly turn them at all. Ended up breaking several of those big plastic knobs just trying to adjust the volume on channels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GZsound Posted April 7, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 Originally posted by Fletcher@mercenary.com Q: What words do you hear in show buisness that are an immediate tip off that you're about to get {censored}ed?A: Trust me.I trust my wife, I trust my mother... I trust my two best friends and the guy that runs my companies. Other than that, I don't trust a mother{censored}ing soul on the face of this, nor any other planet. Guilty until proven cool I say [but I've been financially sodomized so many times since I've been in the music industry I feel like a 'prison bitch' at the hands of a lawyer... as always... YMMV].The words "trust me" [when spoken about any subject] send up great big signal flares [WARNING WIL ROBINSON!! DANGER!! DANGER!!] O.K.. I apologize. Don't trust me. Get to your favorite pawn shop and buy a 1970's era Tapco mixer. Compare it to....well ANY mixer available today. We were living in a 1% world back then.. any mixer with 1% THD was amazing. Does anyone make a 1% THD mixer today? trust..m.... uh, nevermind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Matt Hepworth Posted April 7, 2006 Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 In my opinion the Tapco nearfields are not very good. They have the narrowest sweetspot of any monitor I've compared them to in that price range. Drastic changes just by moving a couple inches in ANY direction. Their mixers are super cheap, but maybe a bit better than a certain imfamous brand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GZsound Posted April 7, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 7, 2006 Originally posted by Matt Hepworth In my opinion the Tapco nearfields are not very good. They have the narrowest sweetspot of any monitor I've compared them to in that price range. Drastic changes just by moving a couple inches in ANY direction. Their mixers are super cheap, but maybe a bit better than a certain imfamous brand. Should we hate Tapco because they are made in China and are a rip off of Mackie designs? Hmmmmm.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members markmann Posted April 20, 2006 Members Share Posted April 20, 2006 I bought a used Tapco mixer in 1976... one of those six channel units with an eight channel expander model 6100 ra & re. I never had an issue with that old beast except that it weighed a lot in the Anvil case and I didn't care for the rotary volume knobs. I just sold it last year which means I owned it for nearly 30 years and never let me down once and the only service I did on it was to clean the pots. I bet I (or whoever inherits from me when I die)won't be making that same claim about my new Onyx in 30 years, or any other new mixer for that matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GZsound Posted April 20, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 20, 2006 Originally posted by markmann I bought a used Tapco mixer in 1976... one of those six channel units with an eight channel expander model 6100 ra & re. I never had an issue with that old beast except that it weighed a lot in the Anvil case and I didn't care for the rotary volume knobs. I just sold it last year which means I owned it for nearly 30 years and never let me down once and the only service I did on it was to clean the pots. I bet I (or whoever inherits from me when I die)won't be making that same claim about my new Onyx in 30 years, or any other new mixer for that matter. You are probably right. My trusty Sunn eight channel line mixer finally took a dump after twenty five years of solid service. I had to replace it with a fifteen year old Roland unit... But Tapco, Neptune, Peavey, Sunn, Biamp, etc. were affordable fairly robust pieces of gear that got a lot of us through the bar wars. My band had the first set of Sunn equipment built (after the Kingsmen gear) including a portable cut down B3 and Leslie that was very cool. It is funny to hear how substandard all that stuff is considered today with our throw away gear we now buy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted April 21, 2006 Members Share Posted April 21, 2006 I have what is probably a 20-25 year old Peavey P.A. head/mixer that I bought in a pawn shop in Reseda for a silly amount of change. It still works perfectly well, and I use it for rehearsals. It's gotten beer spilled on it at gigs, gotten the red compression light completely pegged for entire gigs where it looked like it was simply a reading light, been taken on the road several times, been used next to swimming pools with kids mistakenly splashing it with chlorine water, and has been used indoors and outdoors. It's taken all that's been thrown at it (sometimes literally) and laughed it off. Ain't even missin' a knob. Sometimes, those old things are just fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dxdreamer Posted April 21, 2006 Members Share Posted April 21, 2006 Tapco studio monitors are totally hard sounding, i can not mix one them at all. try one if u can at ur localsreviews... beaware of the BS around due to money, or stupide and pride. it's everywhere Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fuzzball Posted April 21, 2006 Members Share Posted April 21, 2006 Originally posted by GZsound Trust me.... NO. Trust me ..yes, and it will taste better still. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fuzzball Posted April 21, 2006 Members Share Posted April 21, 2006 Originally posted by UstadKhanAli I have what is probably a 20-25 year old Peavey P.A. head/mixer that I bought in a pawn shop in Reseda for a silly amount of change. It still works perfectly well, and I use it for rehearsals. It's gotten beer spilled on it at gigs, gotten the red compression light completely pegged for entire gigs where it looked like it was simply a reading light, been taken on the road several times, been used next to swimming pools with kids mistakenly splashing it with chlorine water, and has been used indoors and outdoors. It's taken all that's been thrown at it (sometimes literally) and laughed it off. Ain't even missin' a knob.Sometimes, those old things are just fine. I love them Peavey products, built like a rock! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hueseph Posted May 31, 2006 Members Share Posted May 31, 2006 Just for clarity: Tapco is a subsidiary of Mackie. Hence the similarity between the Mackie and Tapco mixers. Yes they are made in china but so are 90% of all computers and parts in North America. Even Macs are built overseas now. I think when it comes down to it, eventually you have to overcome your gear snobbery in order to really judge hardware. That is not to say that I think Tapco are necessarily a good product. Only that you can't judge a product by it's name, it's past or where it's made. There was a time when people laughed at Japanese products. Toyota? Bah! Honda? Rice burners! Now who's laughing? In the end. It's not the gear. It's the ears behind the console. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted May 31, 2006 Members Share Posted May 31, 2006 Originally posted by hueseph Just for clarity: Tapco is a subsidiary of Mackie. Hence the similarity between the Mackie and Tapco mixers. For even further clarity, Tapco was Greg Mackie's company long before Mackie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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