cheap tape saturation

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livecollective
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Re: cheap tape saturation

Post by livecollective »

Oh man I love tape. The cheaper the better in my opinion. Handheld walkman recorders, microcassette machines, cheap portable 1/4 inch reel to reels, nothing can fck with sound better for me.

I can't recommend enough the power of cheap tape.
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Phase Ghost
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Re: cheap tape saturation

Post by Phase Ghost »

Thanks oblio. Now I have to go hunt down a tape deck today. :x
lem
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Re: cheap tape saturation

Post by lem »

livecollective wrote:Oh man I love tape. The cheaper the better in my opinion...
Yes Yes YES!
steevio
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Re: cheap tape saturation

Post by steevio »

kdgh wrote:I use a tascam portastudio 414.
Don't know if it has 3 heads, but it works damn good for some good dirt on the sounds!

Also planning buying a revox 77 with 15 ips to use it as a mastertape for all my pre-masters
i think all portastudios must have had three heads.

i used to record all my stuff in the 1980's on a Studiomaster Studio4 4 track portastudio, on metal tape. (using both sides of the tape) they were like a portastudio but with a good quality analogue mixer integral. only trouble is everything i recorded at that time has dropouts and missing tracks. i think the metal tape was to blame. the sound was awesome when freshly recorded, virtually no hiss, but the tapes deteriorated real quick. I've lost so much work from that time.

http://www.studiomaster.com/1982%20-%201984.htm

edit, if you can find one of these beasts, grab it for sure, superb piece of kit.
oblioblioblio
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Re: cheap tape saturation

Post by oblioblioblio »

i have the first teac portastudio 144 which they still sell spare parts for, and i don't think it does real time monitoring of just recorded signal, only monitoring of signal already recorded (that could be user error though).

It does do some very useable distortion of the input though if you want, as it uses a cheap design that input goes through an instrument preamp, and you can't bypass it for line, you just turn the level down.

I've been using it as a mixer, as I'm waiting on the talented Graham Hinton to release a modular mixer and don't want to get anything in the interim.
mehta
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Re: cheap tape saturation

Post by mehta »

cassette players are great for live sets too
simonb
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Re: cheap tape saturation

Post by simonb »

I've got a Technics dual hi-fi deck that I picked up for £20 at a charity shop, it seems like a pretty good quality bit of consumer kit. I keep meaning to buy some blank tapes and mess about with overloading the input etc.
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