Any love for casstte 4 track recorders?

[andrewb]

i have a tascam portastudio :)

[tweedtone]

The thousands of hours I spent on my PortaStudio were hugely instrumental in my development as a musician, songwriter and guitar player.

[woodman]

Originally Posted by tweedtone

The thousands of hours I spent on my PortaStudio were hugely instrumental in my development as a musician, songwriter and guitar player.

+1 in a big way. when i went over to digital, at least i had explored the zillion ways to mess up a track -- with no Undo command! so at least i had the basics down, and it was a lot easier than starting from scratch.

[pmcghen]

I miss my old Tascam. It died a few years ago and I haven't gotten around to replacing it. I did a lot of demos on it when I was just starting out. Currently my band uses a Yamaha MT8X cassette 8 track for working on demos. It's not for everybody, but I'm into a lot of lo-fi garage stuff, and it's a good start for fleshing out songs and letting us spend our practices working on more than just one or two songs. I might look into getting a cheap cassette 4 track for my apartment instead of lugging the 8 track back and forth from our practice space.

[unbridled]

I still use my portastudio once in a while. It's easy to haul around to catch ideas. I also use it to catch live stuff cause it's easy to use. Like Ron Popiel says, just "set it and forget it." Just make sure there's still enough tape in it every once in a while.

[Justinvs]

I picked one up on ebay a while back but haven't really had a good chance to play with much. I intend to, though, now that summer is winding down.

[teledude66]

I got a portastudio 07...

[tele salivas]

For practices and songwriting I've used a cheapo karioke machine with an even cheaper radioshack mixer ,with a mess of pawn shop mics(some surprisingly good, some... well, cheap!). That mixer opens up"tracks" for live band recording and hell, nothing like cutting your teeth on tape, learned a lot how a room works this way. A song is a song is a song, as long as that comes through with some creative mic and eq work, thats a solid demo for me , Iv'e had some luck with tape to get a good enough vibe to release on 7" vinyl. Good luck

[Beatbx]

I learned a lot from them, but I don't miss them. A PC and a low end interface is the new 'lo-fi'.

[E.D. Patton]

a 4-track cassette recorder gives an artist a whole slew of whopping technical and creative limitations. If you like 'em, fine, but they're hardly worthy of championing to others.

Your feelings are clear, but I'm wondering why you're slumming at a lo-fi lovefest.

BTW I just picked up a Mattel Synsonics drum machine and I'm loving that.

$2.50 at a church rummage sale.

[Skully]

Your feelings are clear, but I'm wondering why you're slumming at a lo-fi lovefest.

I'm into doing good deeds, if you haven't noticed.

[E.D. Patton]

Originally Posted by Skully

I'm into doing good deeds, if you haven't noticed.

It was you!

I was wondering who left that shopping bag full of BASF 1/4" tape and all those old Wollensak reel-to-reels on my porch.

Damn, brother, the gas alone...

I'm speechless.

[tele salivas]

I'm one of those characters that still spanks the child with my hand and not a compression pedal, um , what the hell's an interface? Stuff is a lot easier now a days isn't it, just the fact I can speak to other tele geeks is amazing

[eddiewagner]

Originally Posted by woodman

that feeling happened all over again when i discovered GarageBand.

yeah woody!!!! garageband was the miracle cure for me. i also had one of them little fostex machines and nothing good ever came out of that thing. all is better digital for me. i hate to even think about cassettes.

[mudbean]

Originally Posted by Strawfields

NO

Great when there was nothing else

Originally Posted by mudbean

Exactly.

Our Tascam PortaOne cost us $500 back in the early 90's. For under $300 today, you can get Tascam's 8 Track digital version of the PortaStudio. Just seems silly to stay with a cassette 4 track, IMHO.

mud

To amend and quote myself ...

As Skully has also mentioned, we learned lots with our beloved/but-hated Cassette PortaStudios. I was just talking to Beanie about it this morning - I want to set her up with a little work station in our bedroom (the "studio" has grown too big, and she says it scares her, bless her heart). She's an amazing producer, and did really cool stuff with the 4-track. This thing looks gorgeous, and it goes for the same $$$ we paid in 1990!!. Just check out the specs - it'll do the dishes AND walk the freakin' dog.



Yup, in 1990 I DID love my Porta-One. Now, though, it just seems silly not to jump on something like this - there are various makes & models out there.

mud

[Alnico Sunburst]

I got a used Fostex X-26 in 1994 and recorded a ton of stuff with it. Moved up to a new Tascam 414 in 1996. Neither unit functions properly now, which has left me a bit of a problem. I had originally planned to transfer all of those recordings to a digital format once I had appropriate gear to hook it up to. But even if I just choose to try and quickly mix down all those songs through my generic soundcard so they don't disappear forever, I have no way to do it (or at least, no good way - the 414 has intermittent crackling and frying noises, and the X-26 won't stop once it's going, at all). Add to this the Fostex recordings are at normal cassette speed and the Tascam are at twice that. Chances are, by the time I finally will have money to spend on getting a replacement machine, I will be SOL.

So, my theory is to try to use a normal cassette machine (Yamaha KX-260) and do it in multiple passes, ie run one pass to get tracks 1 and 2 off the cassette onto 2 tracks in digital, then flip the tape and get tracks 3 and 4. Of course, the latter two will be backwards, so I will reverse them in software, and then attempt to sync them up. For Tascam I would have to speed them up 2x.

Will this work? Or will it sound like garbage? Have any of you tried this? I mulled over trying to swap the playback head in the Yamaha deck for a four-track head and connect it through a DPDT switch to access the desired tracks, but this would actually mean having to rewind the tape in between passes, increasing the risk of breaking old tape.

And there's the rub. Them tapes are getting old. Time would seem to be not on my side here. I appreciate any other suggestions, especially of four track machines that could be made to be serviceable and do both speeds, as well as the ability to output all four tracks simultaneously but discretely.

Thanks for the thread!

[mudbean]

Originally Posted by Alnico Sunburst

So, my theory is to try to use a normal cassette machine (Yamaha KX-260) and do it in multiple passes, ie run one pass to get tracks 1 and 2 off the cassette onto 2 tracks in digital, then flip the tape and get tracks 3 and 4. Of course, the latter two will be backwards, so I will reverse them in software, and then attempt to sync them up. For Tascam I would have to speed them up 2x.

Will this work? Or will it sound like garbage? Have any of you tried this? ...

Hi Al, that's exactly what I was kicking around the idea of trying a while back (our old Porta-One is gone, I gave it to a friend a long time ago. The heads were worn down to bare metal, anyway.) - never got around to it. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work, though.

My latest pipedream project (pipedream, 'cause I never have time to do this stuff) is to hook up our old DAT deck and transfer all the masters we mixed to DAT from the 4-tracker, over to WAV files.

mud

[Alnico Sunburst]

"pipedream, 'cause I never have time to do this stuff"

How true. The necessity of making a living and the choice of being in a relationship take most of that up (time, that is).

[mudbean]

Originally Posted by Alnico Sunburst

"pipedream, 'cause I never have time to do this stuff"

How true. The necessity of making a living and the choice of being in a relationship take most of that up (time, that is).

Ha, yup. My wife is in the biz, too, though ... you'd think she'd be more understanding.

mud