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My first attempts at home recording were done on a Tascam 488 MKII, for which I paid a small fortune for about 20-odd years ago. I sold it, stupidly, as I needed dosh after getting married. I didn't get good money for it since digital recording was the new thing and cassette tape based recording was seen as a bit 'old'.
I still have all my old tapes, goodness knows if they're still playable, and they have some good ideas on. I'd like to be able to revisit what I was writing and recording, if the tapes still work, but obviously I don't have the machine on which they were made.
Will the tapes play on anything else other than the Tascam, or do I need to find another 488 to access the recordings?
Ironically they are now sometimes fetching good money. Being mostly brassic most of the time I'd not want to spend £lots for something I probably won't ever use for anything else than listening to old recordings to glean ideas from 20 years ago, and cringing with embarrassment in the process.
TIA
There is no 'H' in Aych, you know that don't you? ~ Wife
Turns out there is an H in Haych! ~ Sporky
Bit of trading feedback here.
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But, frankly, if they're fetching good money, that's in your favour. Just buy one, transfer the tape tracks to your DAW - http://homerecording.com/tas488tips.html - and then sell it on and get the same money back.
Mine is gathering dust in the loft, unused for many a year. I've been planning on flogging it but it never reaches top priority. That's assuming that the wife hasn't thrown it out!
Yes, eight track cassette tape. I like your thinking but experience has told me that I rarely, if ever, make money on musical equipment, so it's a risk I don't know I want to take.
Yeah it was a good bit of kit, I paid about a grand for mine when it was new! A friend's band did an album on one so it was definitely up to it. The album was crap but that's no slur on the tech used to record it.
If you feel inclined to sell yours drop me a PM.
There is no 'H' in Aych, you know that don't you? ~ Wife
Turns out there is an H in Haych! ~ Sporky
Bit of trading feedback here.
- Tape transport speed
- playback head layout
- dbx II noise reduction
- user adjustable replay head alignment
My initial home recording experience is similar to Haych except I had a Tascam 234 and a separate mixing console. In more recent years, when the time came to transfer multi-track recordings to a digital workstation, I had to invest in a 644.One other brand that might work for the replay of cassette tapes originally recorded on a Tascam, is Yamaha. For a while, they adopted the same dbx II compansion system.
I simply want to be to be able to reference it so I can decide if it’s worth re-recording properly. I probably have about ten 90 minute cassettes worth. 90 minutes is obviously a lot faster at 488 tape speeds, though.
If I could get only one song into my DAW I might be tempted as I’m quite proud of one of them. I sent it to a sound engineer friend of mine a few years ago and he liked it so much he aired it on local radio. That’s my one claim to fame lol. I should probably mention that local radio was probably an Albuquerque university station or something.
There is no 'H' in Aych, you know that don't you? ~ Wife
Turns out there is an H in Haych! ~ Sporky
Bit of trading feedback here.
If you can transcribe the music content and still have access to the same instruments, it will be possible to make new recordings of the ideas.
If what you like about the analogue recordings is their sound, re-recording from scratch may fail to recapture this aspect. dbx II noise reduction is a compansion system. I used to greatly enjoy abusing it to extract monstrous drum sounds from the fairly run-of-the-mill MIDI instruments then at my disposal.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
There is no 'H' in Aych, you know that don't you? ~ Wife
Turns out there is an H in Haych! ~ Sporky
Bit of trading feedback here.
Somebody has put this obscure record on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/YrO9qRYD5c0
i don’t know what kind of nick it is in but it was fine when I put it in
if you spring for the courier to you and back when you are done I’d be cool to lend it to you FOC