Michael Rufolo about his Tascam 388

“This is definitely our go to tape machine for recording. It's probably in Shawn Lee's List of Gear as well.

It seriously is the dog's pants. The only thing is the trade between tape hiss and sonic warmth. I say keep it hissy and don't use The onboard dBx NR. (Although I'm always playing around with the DBX trying to make it sound as good as the non Dbx tracks because I noticed Shawn uses DBX). I picked the first one up in College at a New Jersey Yard Sale for $300. And it even came with patch cables and take up reels.

The prices of these really skyrocketed and now they are up to $3000-$4000. I originally wanted one because of Shawn Lee, I saw he got one and I was already nerding out on what gear he uses to record. I bought a Tascam 244 for the same price around $300 and loved it and found a good deal on the 388 so I had to get it.

I used it for about 4-5 years and I ended up having to opened the machine up to fix some internal problem and ended up further breaking it. I sold it for parts but I found another one in Connecticut for $1400.

The Tascam 388 is honestly worth the price they're going for. Even back in the day, the list price was something around $3000. From what I find about this machine is whenever you record something into it, it just instantly sounds better. I want to know why it's so magical but at the same time it's good to leave it to mystery how this machine can sound so good. It runs at 7.5 ips only. Which is very Lo-Fi yet it sounds great.” - Michael Rufolo