Tapco — short for Technical Audio Products Company — was founded in 1969 by Greg Mackie and Martin Schneider. Working out of a garage in the Pacific Northwest, the company built a reputation around small, road-ready mixers aimed at working musicians and live sound engineers. The Model 6000, designed for the higher volumes of rock bands, and follow-ups like the 6100R reverb mixer became fixtures of the era, prized for their variable-gain mic preamps, low price, and "built like a tank" durability. Tapco's product range also extended into guitar amplifiers and PA speakers.

Greg Mackie left the company in 1976 to start AudioControl, and Tapco was later sold to Electro-Voice. In 2003, Mackie reacquired the Tapco name and revived it under the LOUD Technologies umbrella as a budget-tier sister brand, releasing products such as the S5 and S8 active studio monitors, the Blend 6 compact mixer, and the Juice Series power amplifiers (J800, J1400, J2500). The reissued S5 monitors, with a 5.25-inch woofer, 1-inch silk-dome tweeter, and dual 60-watt biamplification, became the line's most visible product among home-studio users.

The Tapco name is most often associated with vintage live-sound mixers from the 1970s and the affordable Mackie-engineered monitors and mixers from the 2000s reissue era.

Tapco has 13 products cataloged on Equipboard, including Mixers, Powered Mixers, and Audio Interfaces. Their gear is featured by 8 artists, with the strongest followings in Rock, Electronic, and Folk, World, & Country. Notable users include Alex Lifeson, Samantha Crain, and Flowers of St. Francis.