nakamichi tape decks / cassette decks talk

anyone got experience of these?

what did u think?

anyone record choons on these ?

the 1000 seems a bit expensive - is it worth it? anyone tried the dragon?

basicall all the 303 acid fasions going around? why are we not recording on cassettes like the pioneers done????

lol i was using an ok technics deck but it got jammed with a car boot sale speccie tape oops

worth going for a nakamichi deck??

got a decent sony recordable walkman as well, it's ok... got an inbuilt speaker and mic and pitch up and down... quite noisy but a good laugh

as tape decks go, nakamichi are good.

why do you want a hiq cassette deck?

ieafs is right.

and youcould probably get a decent stero 15ips 1/4" tape for less than 1000 bucks on ebay.

the tape is expensive on reel to reel. it's damn attractive tho :-) didnt quantegy go bust or something:? is anyone still making tapes for reel to reel?

cassette is attractive cos it's the way of those acid fellas from the past... i just wanted to be a cheap magoon and copy them... if you follow the fashions and copy why not go all the way.

anyone tried type iv metal tape on a decent player? any good?

all nak/tape/reel to reel talk welcome here!

of course people are still making reel to reel tape.

i hadn't heard that quantegy went bust, but i'll be disappointed if it's true because they make great tape.

quality wise, it's all about the size of the surface of the tape, per second. so a cassette has 1/6", for four channels at approximately 1.75" per second.

a basic reel machine will have 1/4" tape for two channels, travelling at a minimum of 7 ips. more usually 15 ips.

no contest.

reel to reel is really attractive like a fit bird.

im still interested in cassettes as well despite extra noise and warped bass and high hats

method = as important as the sound to me

hehe, i lick my lips watching 8 track prices come down on ebay

yes! cassettes are ace. i have a fair few different machines for breaking sounds but lack a decent quality one, the nakimichis look amazing but sadly their prices haven't fallen as much as i'd have expected since tapes are pretty dead to most people. anyone have any suggestions for a properly good quality tape deck that is available for knock down prices now? or are all the high end ones holding value? uhh wait, all the same questions as chunky as well! are variable speed ones common? i have a 2 speed switchable but not a fully variable and that would be handy.

best i've got the now is probably a niceish marantz one with cool twin analogue VU meters but i'm sure theres a lot better out there, i've only got 2 big tape decks though, the rest are 'portables' (some are feckin' massive!) so i've not heard many to compare properly.

I know it's popular, but I want a Tascam 388 bad. I never get the gear I'm seeking though, something always just drops in my lap. Today I'm going to check out an old reel to reel to refurb myself and use.

probably 3 head is the way to go

me borked techincs 3 head was ok until it kept jamming up

any nakamichi owners in the house? :angry:

sony/techincs/ whoever cunts/ 3 heads??

come on i know one of u is a great engineer of tape machines show us your brains!!

tascam 122 MKIII

you can find it on e-bay for 200/250 $

good call on the tascam, that beast looks ace and is just about the price i'd be willing to pay for a damned good tape deck. even better - pitch control! that's the one! cheers!

  greenbank said:

pitch control!

:angry:

  dildo said:

  greenbank said:

pitch control!

 

:angry:

alright, i suppose i have a serious question too. i have a non-cheap computer recording setup i'm pretty happy with. for mobile or all hardware, i got a minidisc that hasn't let me down, despite a friend of mine attempting to vacuum it along with the rug after he'd had a little too much to drink. was a mess getting the wall wart cable out of that

last i used tapes - cassettes, i'm talking about here - i wasn't writing music. i taped stuff off the radio and made stuff for myself to listen to in the car, but that's it. i know there's some nice grainy compression, but aside from feel, state of mind, nostalgia - would you guys really consider cassettes important? or is it really about getting in the right headspace for you, because what i have works fine for me in that regard. maybe, in addition to the sound, it guides you to produce certain ways? i don't know much about them, really.

i'm looking at that tascam 122, i say, hmm... wouldn't mind having one or two of those... but my funds are quite limited, i have to prioritize. saving up for some decent monitors now... anyways, though it certainly looks FUN, i get the feeling i should probably stick with my recording setup and put my money into something like more fx racks...

i also have a ghetto reel to reel tape player that i don't use much.

  hahathhat said:

i get the feeling i should probably stick with my recording setup and put my money into something like more fx racks...

if you have a compressor rack,throw it in the trash bin.*

i'll answer seriously to your serious question: why get one of that analog tape recorders.

simply speaking:

-fatness

-warmness

technically speaking:

usually a digital track is full of peaks,so you use to compress it to improve its flow right?

doing this,you pratically affect all the dynamic range of the track even with the most sophisticated multiband compressor present on the market.

In some cases it happen the worst,so to get some bands loud,you completely damp down other fields of the whole mix.

well,if you record a digital track trough an analog tape deck,and then you reverse it in an audio editor ,you will se that the transients (peaks/spikes) of the track are nicely shaped,better than the digital one;its waveform is more filled in,and even if the db range sems the same..it magically sound louder! the digital one seems total shit compared to it.

so,pratically,*the simple tape recording process acted as a compressor,making the whole mix sound louder and warmer without minimally affect the range of the other sections of the spectrum,and the most important,without kill its whole dynamics.

it's wonderful isn't it? yay!

about the tascam and all those modern tape deck recorders then,i'm interested in testing a feature: the Dolby HX pro.

pratically the dolby HX is different than the other dolby type processes.

it provide an "headroom extension",so you will have an even better high frequency response and boost without affect the noise level of the mix.(i guess you know that the dolby noise reduction is archieved by reducing the hi-freqs range)

woah!

hope it was clear.

all of my favourite tracks that ive made were recorded on 4 track portastudios in the 90s

ive never made anything on a pc that i like as much as some of those tracks

ps: i used to have a nakamichi dragon poster on my wall in the 1980's - what a gimp

  LUDD said:

ps: i used to have a nakamichi dragon poster on my wall in the 1980's - what a gimp

the dragon seems to be the best in that field,but it's still damn expensive

mates, ive got 50 quid

what deck should i go for

if you just want a good 2 track tape deck then i'd forget nakamichi and get a good condition higher end aiwa from the 80s second hand

what model should i look for???

lol basterd :devil:

i dunno.. i just looked on ebay for examples but i could only find some cheap plasticky looking 90s models

i would strongly recommend a good working 80s deck with mechanical operation over a newer digital deck

(digital meaning fully electronic transport mechanism etc as opposed to a solid clunky mechanical model)

i mention Aiwa as they were notably good at producing high quality affordable tape decks back in the day when tape decks were worth building well

there seemed to be a sharp drop off in quality in the average tape deck in more recent years for obvious reasons

  LUDD said:

i would strongly recommend a good working 80s deck with mechanical operation over a newer digital deck

word.

  hahathhat said:

last i used tapes - cassettes, i'm talking about here - i wasn't writing music. i taped stuff off the radio and made stuff for myself to listen to in the car, but that's it. i know there's some nice grainy compression, but aside from feel, state of mind, nostalgia - would you guys really consider cassettes important? or is it really about getting in the right headspace for you, because what i have works fine for me in that regard. maybe, in addition to the sound, it guides you to produce certain ways? i don't know much about them, really.

personally i use them for graining up sounds and making mad tape squeals and sampling them, i'm after a decent deck so i can export stuff from tape without another massive quality drop or horrendous tape motor buzzing noises! softsynths sound amazing when dubbed to a broken old tape recorder and back to the computer, i use a lot of tape treated material in most of my tracks, some almost exclusively. basically tapes alter boring sounds in a way that i love! so uh yes, it makes me produce in different ways and also yes i consider cassettes important! accumulating a collection of old tape recorders is not something that's cost me much (if any) yet they're amazing for turning boring old clean digital softsynths into crusty broken monsters. it does take a fair bit of effort to set up stuff the way i do it though; first i collect some patches i want to put onto tape, i then set them up in a sequence that just does 8 second notes ascending from C3-C7. i record these being output for each patch either through speakers (for the most degraded crustiness) or through a line in on one of a variety of different recorders (which all fuck the sound to a greater or lesser degree and have different timbral qualities). once on tape i output them on one of the better machines back to the computer, sometimes i use a crappy one if i want the buzz or whatever too. the process varies a little for percussion and for short notes (these get lots of samples done per note) but that's basically it. once on the computer these get cut up to notes and put into the tracker as an instrument with one note spanning each octave (sometimes i go all out and do note for note but usually in a small range).

some examples:

TapeTrackSegment.mp3Fetching info...

lots of different softsynths dubbed to a variety of different tape recorders and back to the computer.

tapeorgansegment.mp3Fetching info...

a wee bit of 'towering tape organ' (i think an older version of this is up on my site) - this one has tape done percussion as well as tape melody bits. the clicky weird bits are sped up handclaps recorded on a crappy old portable cassette recorder. this is almost all tape actually, part of the snare and part of the bassdrum are not treated with tape i think and the rest is.

aamfa6p4segment.mp3Fetching info...

this has lots of non-tape sounds but the high melody parts and the arpegiatted backing bits are softsynths dubbed onto tape. some of them were done with the fast forward button held down for that high squealy wobble then pitched down to make it less piercing. (i do that a lot and am still finding new uses for it)