Month: February 2025

MASCO was one of America’s leading manufacturers of public-address equipment during the vacuum-tube era. The earliest record I can find of the firm is 1934, although it’s likely they began operations earlier. MASCO is an acronym of ‘Mark Simpson Manufacturing Company’ and they were based in Long Island City, Queens, NY.

Toolbox-sized MASCO PA heads, along with similar models from competitors Operadio, Bogen, Dukane, Stromberg-Carlson, and Newcomb, are simple mixer-amplifiers that were made in huge numbers in the post-war period. Also common are similar units from retail giants Knight and Lafayette Radio Electronics as well as the much larger firm RCA; Altec also made mixer-amps in the period but they are quite rare and very very pricey today With one or more microphone and line-level inputs, a tone control or two, and one or two speaker output jacks on the rear, these allowed for basic control of a modest sound-system. Many models offered 70V outputs for ‘distributed sound systems’ in addition to the usual 4, 8, and 16 ohm ‘voice-coil’ outputs.

These units were made of steel and wired point-to-point; they are very durable and many have survived, although if you happen upon one today it will likely need most of the caps (filter, bypass, and coupling) replaced, as well as most of the tubes and the power lead ETC. Once that work is done, with some basic modifications (changing the i/o jacks to 1/4″ and converting the input stages from grid-leak bias to cathode bias), you can have a guitar amp that is remarkably close to a Fender tweed for 1/10th the price. Back fifteen, twenty years ago, I did a ton of conversions like this; in 2005-2010 you could still get these amps readily for under $100 on eBay. They can still be had in the $20-$100 range at flea markets, but online prices have shot up as with everything else in the ‘vintage’ electric-instrument world.

Masco PA ‘heads’ were sold complete, or without tubes. They were also offered alone or with auxiliary equipment such as microphones, portable cases including speakers, ‘phonograph tops’ (see above), and a range of different ‘permanent install’ speakers.

Click the link below to download the entire 24PP 1947 Masco Catalog #45. Products covered, with photos, descriptions, and specs, include: MASCO MA-35RC amplifier & record changer; MA-20HF hi-fi amp; MA-17, MA-25, MA-35, MA-50, MA-75 mixer-amplifiers; MC-25P, MAS-17P phonograph amplifiers; MB-50 and MB-100 booster amplifiers and MBD-8 driver amp; the MASCO MAP-15 musical instrument amp; RC-1 portable record changer and MPA-3 ‘all-electric phonograph reproducer’; plus a huge range of wall-mounted speaker baffles, horns, mic stands, Jensen drivers and enclosures, and transformers.

MASCO also offered a ‘musical instrument amplifying system’ model MAP15 in 1947. Or as we would term it – a guitar amp. With 2 6L6 rated at just 15 watts and a 12″ speaker, I would bet these sound awesome. The preamp and PI tubes are 7F7 (Loktal 6SL7). To go along with the amp they also sold model L-10 and MC-20 ‘contact mic,’ or as we call them, pickup. Because I would have to imagine that electric guitars were extremely rare in 1947, but acoustic guitars (and basses, and cellos, and pianos) were everywhere.

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They also offered a ‘high-fidelity’ amplifier model MA-20HF, which offered then-novel independent bass and treble controls and promised a response of +/- 1.5 DB from 30hz to 15k hz and 25W output at 5% THD (!!!). It also offered much better hum performance than their comparable mixer-amps, although this is likely simply due to the lower overall system gain (77db vs 125db). Regardless, given the limitations of source media available in 1947, I think this would have been a fine amp in its time and def worth seeking out today. I don’t imagine they sold too many of these.

Got any MASCO tips or lore? Weigh-in!

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Click the link below to download the accompanying 1947 MASCO pricelist:

Audio Devices, INC manufactured the popular ‘Audiotape’-brand 1/4″ tape in the 1950s and 1960s. They also produced ‘Audiodiscs,’ which were recordable blank disc-media made for use with home disc-recorders. And they published an 8pp advertorial-magazine, of which I have a half-dozen issues. The magazine must be fairly obscure, as i have never seen any others besides this lot that I found in an auction.

Units covered, with photos, pricing, specs, and description, include: Bell Sound Systems RC-47A; Fairchild 539-G, 539K, and 523, as well as 541 magnetic cutter-head; General Industries G1-R58L and R90L and Model 250; Presto Model K, Model Y, Model 6N, Model 8\\-D, and Model 8-DG; Rek-O-Kut Challenger, TR12H, M12, V-Deluxe, and M55; Scully Standard and Automatic, and the Wilcox-Gay 3C10.

Disc recorders are a rarity these days – I believe I have found less than a dozen ‘in-the-wild’ in the 20 years that I have been digging heavily for antique recording equipment. I have found very small, cheap off-brand units the size of a suitcase, and I once purchased a circa 1950 RCA console-style studio-recorder for $30. But the most common units (that survived, at least) are the Presto Model K and the Rek-O-Kut Challenger.

The Challenger and the Model K both sold for around $5000 in today’s money, and feel like they have been around $1500 lately when I have encountered them. So these would have been either luxury items or professional items, but not unobtainable for a small local studio or musician.

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The disc-recorder was a fairly common machine in the 1930s and 1940s, existing alongside the wire-recorder while offering potentially better fidelity. Both of these technologies would be essentially eliminated with the introduction of commercially-available AC-biased magnetic tape recorders beginning in 1948 (Magnecord, AMPEX, etc).

But for a moment (clearly, as late as the early 1950s), these media were all in regular use, although for different purposes, likely. That’s what makes this 1952 ‘directory of disc recorders’ so fascinating. This is likely the ‘peak’ year for the consumer disc-recorder; I am not aware of any new consumer disc-recorder models being introduced after 1952 (Neumann and Scully and some others would of course continue to introduce updated professional mastering ‘lathes’ into the 1970s and 1980s). There are no RCA units present, which is odd, as I was fairly certain that RCA was still making studio disc-recorders in 1952; I could easily be incorrect.

The professional Scully lathe is part of this 1952 lineup ($6k) alongside consumer models selling for as little as $175 list. For point-of-reference, that’s $71,000 versus $2000. The Neumann lathe does not appear here, as I don’t believe that they were yet available in the United States. It’s interesting to see just how pricey the Scully was – it’s double the price of the comparably-spec’d Fairchild and Presto ‘Studio’ disc recorders.

If you are a frequent crate-digger, you have likely come across old used (or blank) AUDIODISC media; the sound-quality is usually pretty terrible, but that’s probably more due to the equipment and operator than the medium itself. I know that disc-recorders were used in professional studios well into the mid-60s so that artists and producers could take-home rough mixes, work mixes, or finished product. Cassette tapes were only first available in 1963 and rare until the 1970s, and not everyone had a 1/4″ tape machine in the 1960s, not even every professional musician. But anyone involved with music likely owned a record player. I have some 1950s and 1960s studio disc-recordings in my collection, and the sound-quality is totally acceptable, although surface noise is a factor.

Here’s a scan of the whole 4-page segment. If anyone has personal experience using any of these machines, and especially if you are using one today, please weigh-in in the comments sections.