Picture Courtesy of Mike Cross
The Studio 8
The last tape recorder to bear the famous name. Unfortunately, it wasn't produced by them, but designed and produced by a design team at Wayne Kerr a subsidiary of the Wilmot Breedon Group.
It was their attempt to break into the then lucrative studio market, targeted at Project Studio's, Broadcasting organisations, Film dubbing studio's etc.
Too expensive for all but the well heeled amateur, yet offering remarkable quality, and facilities at a competitive price about £2500 when first launched.
Unfortunately, it came too late, others manufacturers had saturated this market, Bias Electronics, Scopetronics, Studer, TRD, Otari, EMI, and Leevers Rich to name but a few.
- Easy access for tape editing.
Tape heads for this model were manufactured by Phi Magnetronics.
Note: the clean tape path, in keeping with professional design, this was the work of Derek Bond, who along with Gerry Whitman were members of the design team that produced the Studio 8 at Wayne Kerr..
One point that has just been pointed out to me by one of the designers is that the tape guides adjusted automatically to compensate for tape path errors, which made it impossible to carry out head adjustments whilst the machine was running.
Special tools were produced for doing this alignment whilst the machine was stopped.
When set-up correctly the frequency response of the Studio 8 was better than 0.1db from 20Hz to 19.5kHz.
Studio 8's in use at the British Forces Broadcasting Studio's in London.
Keeping up the Ferrograph tradition of catering to the military.