About the Company
3M/Mincom was primarily a tape‑media and professional recording‑systems company; it did make high‑end studio reel‑to‑reel recorders, but not consumer tape decks in the sense of Akai or TEAC, and its production was focused on professional multitrack and, later, digital mastering machines.
3M, Scotch tape, and Mincom
3M entered magnetic tape in the late 1940s with Scotch‑branded audio tape, becoming one of the dominant suppliers of reel‑to‑reel tape stock for Ampex, studio, and home recorders.
The division responsible for professional recording systems was Mincom (often written Mincom/3M), which expanded from media into manufacturing professional audio and video recorders.
Analog professional recorders
By the 1960s–70s, Mincom had developed professional analog reel‑to‑reel machines (the “M‑series”) for studios and broadcast use, covering multitrack and 2‑track mastering applications; these were comparatively rare, high‑investment studio tools rather than mass‑market decks.
In the same period, the consumer and semi‑pro open‑reel market was dominated by brands like Ampex (consumer line), Sony, Akai, TEAC, and others, with no evidence of a 3M‑ or Mincom‑branded domestic deck range.
3M Digital Audio Mastering System
In the 1970s Mincom and 3M spent several years developing one of the first commercially available professional digital reel‑to‑reel systems, in collaboration with the BBC.
The result, introduced at the end of the 1970s, was the 3M Digital Audio Mastering System: a 32‑track digital recorder using 1‑inch tape and a 4‑track ½‑inch digital mastering machine, both reel‑to‑reel transports built specifically for high‑end studio mastering.
Production history and scope
From roughly the mid‑1960s through the early 1980s, Mincom’s reel‑to‑reel activity comprised: professional analog multitrack decks, broadcast and instrumentation recorders, and then the early digital mastering systems, with production volumes far smaller than consumer brands and concentrated in studio installations.
After the early digital era, 3M exited most of the recorder‑hardware business and continued primarily as a media supplier, while specialist audio manufacturers carried forward both analog and digital multitrack designs.
Summary of role
As a “manufacturer of reel‑to‑reel decks,” 3M/Mincom’s role was narrow but historically important: it built high‑end professional analog and digital recorders used in some studios, while its Scotch tapes were ubiquitous across almost all other brands’ machines.
Because there was no broad consumer deck line, detailed model‑by‑model production tables exist mainly in specialist studio and archival literature rather than in the consumer‑audio histories that document Akai, TEAC, Revox, and similar brands.