Pitch/speed wheel question

[nate_dennis]

I just had a thought and decided to ask you all what you thought. My Tascam 488mk2 has a pitch or speed wheel. Obviously this slows down or speeds up the tape. If i were to "peg" this over to the fast side when tracking would it noticably effect my signal/noise ratio? I don't want to burn out my motors, but I thought this would be an effective way to get some extra tape speed/better sound. Is this off? Is this inadviseable? What do you all think? Thanks a lot.

[Cosmic]

Being indirectly familiar with the unit, you are sure the 'pitch' works on recording as well and not just playback (No offense, I am just asking to make sure as I have not owned that one)?

I would say that if Tascam put it on there, running the machine with pitch up in either recording or playback should not create any issues. The capstan motor runs faster either way, regardless of mode.

If you can squeeze a better sound (less tape hiss, better highs) out of the machine, go for it. I can't imagine Tascam would have put in a pot that would overstress their own motor design.

My reel-to-reel has it too, and I play with that as well for recording.

C.

[cjacek]

You lose the "pitch" control feature in favor of virtually no audible difference in sound quality. The 15% + - in speed change is not enough to offer any real benefit. dbx is gonna make a bigger difference in your recordings so make sure you have it engaged. Another thing you might wanna try is boosting a little high EQ on the way to record. (Set the EQ back to neutral on playback). That's gonna give you a nice perceptible fidelity boost. Yet another thing to try is Alesis Micro Enhancer.

[nate_dennis]

cool thanks a lot. yeah i figured it was a long shot. Thanks for the info

[sweetbeats]

Another point to note is that wow and flutter is typically at its minimum when the pitch control is defeated/off/centered. Whether or not you'd hear the difference I don't know.

You could always try it and see if you like it.

[A Reel Person]

I think the gains in high frequency response would be marginal at best, but then you lose the pitch control/pitch matching capability,... which to me seems like a bigger hinderance.

I've had to use the "pitch matching" in many practical circumstances and wouldn't want to do without it, but YMMV!