Sony DTC-1500ES
(1990 - 1993)

Follower of the original DTC-1000ES, hand-assembled, sporting 4 Heads and 4 Motors, separate PTs for the D and A sections, distributed in Japan only and priced with an exclusive tag of 300,000¥ ! Compare this with the 200,000¥ of the "last-stand" DTC-2000ES, the 160,000¥ of the "regular" DTC-77ES or the mere 98,000¥ of the little DTC-55ES...
It seems the 1500ES was "grey-marketed" in the US for the no-less princely sum of 2500$. Still, "only" a post-1990 home deck so it has that bloody SCMS but at 17,5kg, it can even dwarf its DTC-2000ES follower :)

Sadly, it seems many DTC-1500ES suffer from bad SMD caps on one of the power-supply boards which, in time, render the entire deck dead or wandering madly . The same fate happened to the ill-fated MDP-605 LD player or Panasonic's S-VHS bestseller NV-FS100H... The same illness seems to afflict some batches of DTC-2000ES, albeit without such radical effects. Still : be careful.

Interesting to see a typical Sony signature in the shape of the monitoring switch - same design, size and material used on many a totl 3-Head Sony tape deck (whether analog or digital) since the late 70s. Interesting, too, to see the 1500ES being advertised along the MX-1000ES (in its ES-X version) - the same mic/line mixer that was available along Sony's 1st set of ES units and specifically recommended for the TC-K777ES masterpiece... way back in '82. DAT was after all meant to replace the Philips cassette so this, here, is what one could call continuity.