Porta 01nightmare

[telboy]

I have just borrowed a friends Porta 01 and am having great difficulty using it due to the fact that there is no manual with it. I can record two tracks at the same time (01/02) but cannot record anything else onto 03 or 04. Can anyone help me. I am going crazy with this thing having spent 20 hours or so on it already

[T.J.Hooker]

Do you have the busses set on three and four ? The three and four channelswitch should be on mic/line. Channels one and two should be on tape. And you should hear your guitar or whatever coming through without the tape even running. Are you listening through cans with the cues down ? I think if I remember correctly that's how it works.
T.J.

[telboy]

okay guys here's what's happening. I put a click onto track one and a bass onto track two - at the same time. I then wanted to record a banjo part onto track three but couldn't do it. Also i have noticed a lot of 'spill' from other tracks when i am trying to record. All I am trying to do is record a simple bass/banjo backing track for minidisk. Is there a easier way to do this?

[Proveras]

sorry, but you cant rec 3 and 4 in the porta 01.
I have a 414 and i can´t rec 5-6 7-8, it´s just for the effects returns or for a keyboard or....

[Brad]

Of course you can record tracks 3 & 4!!!

telboy- your bleethrough probs sound like you don't have your pan controls set properly - let's simplify and see if this works.

First, just for the sake of simplicity, don't record 2 things at once. Try this:

Plug your drum machine or whatever you are using for click into channel 1 input. Make sure the buss/track selector is set to trk 1. Turn the pan knob for ch.1 all the way left - record. Plug your mic or your bass DI into channel 1 (yes, you can use channel 1 to lay all four tracks) select trk/buss 2, turn pan all the way right - record. Plub your mic, or however you are getting the banjo to line level, into channel 1, select track 3, pan hard left again- record. Plug whatever is next into channel 1, select track 4, pan back hard right - record.
When you mix down, you can adjust the pan of any track how you want - the panning during recording just ensures that the signal is getting to the correct track - remeber: odd track numbers - pan left, even track numbers - pan right.

Hope this helps.

Brad

[telboy]

Brad - a thousand thanks!! It works. Just when I was about to throw it out the window I finally managed to record something of use.
I owe you a night of fine beer drinking! And to everyone else - Cheers!
Telboy