Two quick questions

[stevedo]

My apologies in advance - I'm a prospective new Tascam 4-track purchaser who's managed to sort out most questions by searching posts here (many thanks to all) but I have just a couple of things I can't find. Probably that's because they are idiotic questions, but here goes ...

* If I want to musically "doodle", just trying out ideas again and again, how often can you record over a track on a cassette tape before there's a problem with quality? Or is it best to keep spare cassettes for doing this, and switch to another when you decide to record something seriously?

* Is anyone worried about new cassettes becoming unavailable in the near future?

* How easy is it to buy the relevant cleaning materials, bearing in mind that the Tascam site only sells to US addresses, and I'm in Ireland? Is it standard stuff that most hi-fi stockists would have?

Okay, that's three questions, I admit. Thanks in advance if anyone can help me out.

steve

[Mark7]

Hey Steve!

As a former Tascam 414 owner (currently operating the 388 megaportastudio) I'll try to answer your questions in my own charmingly inept way.

1: ALWAYS use new tape for important stuff. Someone'll come along in a few hours or a few days and tell you the complete opposite, but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

2: Not really. Are you?

3: Go into any Hi-Fi store in your locality. Ask them for isopropyl alcohol (or just Head Cleaner) and a rubber cleaning solution. Be sure to take a camera as you'll want to capture that blank, gormless look of complete and utter incomprehension that will take up residence on the assistant's face as he/she tries to figure out why you don't just use the usual stuff to clean your CD/DVD player. Inevitably you'll have to use those cleaning cassete things and the all-in-one solutions (if only they were <s>) that are sold with them. Not as good as doing the job by hand, but it'll suffice.