Where are the tweakers on a Teac A-3304S?

[Muckelroy]

As much as I'd love to get started with my B-16, I don't have enough gear to back it up yet, so I'm gonna use a friend's Teac A-3340S 4-track 1/4" tape machine.

Since it's never been tinkered with since its purchase, I'm gonna try to calibrate the thing to max out the quality. But before I start digging around in a tape machine that's not mine, I wanna ask you guys --

Where are the calibration tweakers located on this thing? Anyone?

thanks!

-callie-

[The Ghost of FM]

What the heck is a 3304?

[Muckelroy]

OK, i edited the post- I meant Teac A-3340S. My fault.

-callie-

[lanterns]

i have that machine,
it's a piece of crap

i get much better results using my tascam 244's mixer into my PC.

[Herm]

I always had great luck with my 3340. It is a great machine and dont let someone tell you that its not.
More than likely if you cant get it to sound good its cause you dont know what the hell you are doing or the machine is not set up right.

[BRDTS]

......"Where are the calibration tweakers located on this thing? Anyone?..."

They're on the inside back of the machine. When you take off all the cabinet parts, the pb/rec pots are on a pcb (which folds down on some versions of 3340/3440) right there about where the i/o rca jacks are.

[snipeguy]

Originally Posted by lanterns

i have that machine,
it's a piece of crap

i get much better results using my tascam 244's mixer into my PC.

Sorry, but that's a negative. I have nothing but good things to say about my 3340 and 3440. If you're not getting good results then something is amiss.

[Muckelroy]

Hey, thanks for the help guys,



QUESTION -- Would 406 work fine? I used 456 before, and the transport ran a little slow after about 4 hours of recording. We let it cool off, and it worked fine after that, so would it help if I used a 1 mil tape like 407? Or would a 1.5 mil tape like 406 work fine? thanks!





I figured that's where the tweakers were, I just didn't want to dig around a machine aimlessly and play the guessing game

I too agree that it's a great machine. The one time I used it last year, I had good results. However, the recording was pretty noisy, only because we had no compressors, so most of the levels were pretty close to the noise floor. Recording classical piano required huge dynamic range, so tape distortion had to be avoided at all costs, but that's the only reason.

Plus, the thing hasn't been calibrated since it rolled out of the factory, so all things considered, it works GREAT. I can only imagine how much better it'll sound once it's calibrated, and we start record some nice, hot blues and funk onto the thing.

I don't think I wanna mess with the bias n' erase current and crap like that, just pb/rec levels. Gonna calibrate it to +3 dB, and use some 406/407 on it.

-callie-