As a vintage tascam anolog junky, I'm also the winning bidder for a low use 234.I added this to my collection for these reasons. When I play live,and if the sound man is not harried,I'll only use my 238 if the sound man has the band miked and I can get individual tracks to the deck.The porta 1 I'm getting is for no hassel quick set up stereo mobile recordings.My 246 is my vintage home deck for messing with ideas and it produces suprisingly great cassette tapes.The reason I got the 234 is I can put the tape that I recorded in that deck and mix/play around with it in the 246,useing it's mixer.Also I read that the audio quality in the 234 was "professional" standard,the best ever for a tascam cassette 4 track.It should be easier to use and set up in tight time situations when I want a multi track recording because you can plug your mike right in the back of it with a 1/4 inch adapter and theres a gain control per track,unlike the 238.I'm very curious and hope some of you have used this and would love to hear your opinions about it about it as I am Not going digital,Nothing against it,I Just love my vintage tascam anolog gear