Sony DTC-1000ES

This is the first one, the one that started it all.

OK, it didn't start much, but musicians and studios loved it. CD pressing plants also preferred to have their pre-masters sent on DAT, as early home-burned CDs proved to have way too much BLER errors.
For these uses and tiny markets, D.A.T. was the king.

Sometime after its introduction, and with minor alterations, Sony turned the DTC-1000ES into the 2 box professional PCM-2500 and the DRD-100 duplicator.

Whether 1000 or 2500, there was no ABS time, no margin indicator or END id : just a good old counter. Expect a 1'50" counter drift on a 120 tape !
On the good side were its almost indestructible mechanism and excellent a/d converters - still today : not really linear but lively.

Spearheading the format from as early as 1982, Sony, with its long and successful VCR/PCM experience, produced D.A.T. recorders aplenty. Some were afflicted by recurring over-heating and "tape-eating" symptoms - even in the pro lineups.
But you can not go wrong with anything named DTC-1000ES, DTC-1500ES, DTC-2000ES or PCM-2500.

The 1000ES was also sold in Japan under the Excelia badge (Aiwa's upper grade range) and the XD-001 moniker ; it bore a very different faceplate but was a DTC-1000ES just the same.
A non-ES version, DTC-1000, was also available, seemingly only in the US market...

And the mechanism itself was OEM'ed to Pioneer for its D-1000, Luxman for its KD-117 and Yamaha for its DTR-2, too. Denon planned and built a beautiful wood-encased and titanium grey version of it in 1988 but finally settled for lesser OEM sources for its DTR-2000G.

If the DTC-1000ES knew nothing about SCMS, it knew about copy prohibition and it still does : no second generation digital copy shall be allowed if a 'copy prohibit' flag is present on the tape to be copied.
And it couldn't record at 44.1Khz, whether in digital or analog mode.

I regret mine.