Fostex 8-track

[SilentSound]

well.. it turns out that santa brought/is bringing a fostex 8 track. it has small take up reels and i'm worried i might have to buy a proprietary spin of tape. otherwise, how do i load 1/4 inch tape on to the reel? i've been drenched in ones and zeros soooo long..

thanks and happy holidays

matt

[regebro]

You just buy a tape with the correct reel size. It's in fact the most common one.

[The Ghost of FM]

It sounds like the Fostex R-8 if it's an all black model?

I used to own one of those.

It's a nice machine that runs best at 15ips.

Like Regebro said; Buy a roll of Quantegy456 on a 7" reel, 1200 ft should give you 16 minutes of recording time. If you need more time, buy more reels. The 1800 ft reels would work too but they are thinner and more prone to drop outs and stretching and print-through.

Good luck with the recording project!

[eh91311]

Quantegy 457 is the thinner tape referred to... 1800' on 7" reel.
Same formulation as 456, just not as thick. Easier for the machine's hardware to work with. If you don't record at insane levels over zero and store the reels "tails out", it should work fine for you.

[Cliff K]

Fostex 1/4" 8-trk is great. I picked up a Fostex A-8 (I think this was the first version with old needle VU meters) for cheap about four years ago and have been using it regularly with no problems. It's a good sounding machine, very musical and warm. When I first got mine I found a 1/4" splicing block on Ebay for $5, got some grease pencils at an art supply store, a friend gave me an old Teac head demagnetizer (probably too small), and I ordered some 7.5" 456 tape, leader tape, splicing tape, head cleaner and razor blades from Pro Tape Northwest (http://www.protapenw.com/). Their prices are good and I had the tape in a couple of days. It's a lot easier ordering from them than running around trying to find this stuff (nobody seems to stock reel-to-reel tape or supplies). It's really nice using an analog machine. I used to edit a lot on an analog two-track, and that's a lot of fun. Working with analog tape is nice....it's a slower, more connected experince in some ways than using a digital machine or computer....sort of like going through the process/ritual of smoking a nice tobacco pipe compared to smoking a cigarette.