Reel to Reel ...... I know this is not the forum, but any old shoolers wanna help me?

[LocusLarsen]

Okay! I just setup my dad old Akai 202d-ss reel to reel. Its quadrophonic....4 tracks-o-surround sound heaven. I got the Pioneer receiver too

I just ordered some blank tape and am going to try recording soon. What do you guys think of this model....or simular models?
It doesn't support recording one track, then go back and record another, but thats cool....I really need to get away from that anyways......

I am going to probably start out doing one mic on my acoustic, and one on my voice. But technically I can use four channels. Granted no one outside of my home will be able to listen to it in that means, but thats their loss........

I need an analog mixer now so I can mic my friends drums, my guitar, voice, etc and mix them properly. (I am not too fond of left speaker voice, right speaker guitar) I don't want to use my 1680 because that has A/D converters that will drop the sound to 20 bits, then convert it back to analog....even then its only 2 tracks output.

So my question is..............I don't know what my question is.........just, any suggestions on things to try with this new marvel of technology?




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[SS454]

Sounds like you're in for a fum time experimenting. I've never used a quadrophonic set-up before, so no advice here. I do have an all analog studio though. Just screw around with it.

[muttley]

If you record something on trk 1 , then lay down something on trk 2 ,you loose what was previously recorded if your'e not able to record each track seperately, armed with this knowlege, it's like having a 1 tracker.
The unit is best used as a mixdown deck,not multi-tracker.

[Hawking]

If you don't mind doing a little hacking....you can make a real 4 track out of what you have. You need to wire a switch to the erase head (the smallest head there) so you can record over a previously recorded track without erasing it. There's a catch though. Some decks use a combination record/playback head, and some use seperate heads. If your unit has the combination head, you're in luck. If it doesn't, it gets a litte more involved. Since the playback head will be playing a different location than where you are recording to, you wind up with an offset. A typical multitrack recorder gets around this by playing the previously recorded tracks using the record head (much decreased performance) while you are recording. When you switch over to payback only, you are listening to the true playback head. If all this makes sense to you, then you have the ability to make your reel to reel a real reel to reel (?) recorder. If not, I hope you are a better musician than myself, because I never get anything right on the first take. Either way, you'll have fun learning how the classic equipment works. All this new digital stuff still tries to emulate the old stuff in look, feel, and functionality. It's a great way to learn.

[LocusLarsen]

Thats some great info, Hawking. Thanks, I look at how it works. Don't knwoif I am up to that just yet.

I also heard that you can mod more extra reel speed. There is so mouch more to these than I ever imagined.