"New" Scully

[lonewhitefly]

Sold off my Ampex gear and made some recordings on a Fostex 80, which sounded cool but wasn't right for my style.

Ended up really missing the 'big boys', so I went on a hunt for my favorite machine out of the all the decks I've had, a Scully 280 4-track. Found one in Riverside, CA, so took a weekend trip from Portland to pick it up.

Works fairly well (a couple problems on channel 1, which I can work around at the moment by swapping out some cards between tracks until I find some other cards/parts channels, or a tech to help out).

Also recently got a Martin "Sonomix" ... a 6-channel mixer from around 1968. Just a simple mono setup with no EQ, but man ... look at those knobs! It looks like it's made with really high class components. Currently in a local repair shop to get some XLR inputs attached to the funky unbalanced barrier strip inputs.

My plan has been to get an outboard EQ and use this mixer ... but I'm not sure, might go for a separate mixer. Still in the experimental phase of getting down to business on some new recordings. I've got well over an album's worth of stuff floating around in my head. Trying to balance the urgency to get it all down on tape vs. take it easy and get it all down on tape with the right sound.

Anyway, just a note to all of the analog folks ... re: that thread about who's still here ... I'm still here! Just haven't found much to post about lately.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Sweet and congrats on the acquisitions!

I'd love to add the Sonomix to the wallpaper thread but would need a nice level and centered head on shot of the face. Can you help me out with that?



Cheers!

 

[lonewhitefly]

Sweet and congrats on the acquisitions!

I'd love to add the Sonomix to the wallpaper thread but would need a nice level and centered head on shot of the face. Can you help me out with that?



Cheers!

Sure! Will take a nice clean shot when I get it back from the shop ... might be a few weeks though.

 

[rayc]

Lovely gear. Makes me want to to go back to tape.

 

[j.harv]

That Scully looks sweet! Congrats.

 

[Hammerstone]

Nice! I'm glad you went back to 1/2" 4-track, I think you were doing some pretty cool stuff there with the Sesame Street song and didn't really dig as deep as you could into that. I remember seeing a pic of that mixer on your FB feed, wondered what it was, now I know! Are you going back to doing mono mixes then? If only you hadn't offloaded your mono Ampex 440...

 

[miroslav]

Very nice looking piece of vintage analog tape recording gear.

Glad to see you dove back into it again.

 

[lonewhitefly]

Thanks guys ...

Nice! I'm glad you went back to 1/2" 4-track, I think you were doing some pretty cool stuff there with the Sesame Street song and didn't really dig as deep as you could into that. I remember seeing a pic of that mixer on your FB feed, wondered what it was, now I know! Are you going back to doing mono mixes then? If only you hadn't offloaded your mono Ampex 440...

Yeh in some ways, I always thought that was my best recording ... but for some reason, I couldn't dial in the 'Oak of the Golden Dream' album on 4-track (a handful of the basic tracks to that project were cut on my old Scully 4-track).

I'm not sure where I'm going with the mixes ... Right now everything is still in the experimental stage, just kind of getting used to it. My loose plan has been to use the Sono-Mix with a couple outboard EQ units, and patch echos in through creative routing. Since I haven't actually used it yet, I don't know how that will work or what it sounds like. The alternate is just to get a standard mixer ... I'd been trying to 'upgrade' from the Teac-type mixers, but it's been a challenge! If I ultimately use a regular mixer, I'll likely mix to stereo ... it also depends on what type of mix deck I come across when the time comes to mix. I'm leaning toward another 280 because of parts and upkeep.

Yeh, keeping that mono deck around might have been nice, but I needed to clear the air in order to get my head straight to move forward. I sold all of my machines to the same guy as a package deal.