'70s Analog "studio," felt like bragging....

MusicalSound

MusicalSound

New member
This gear is MY PRIDE AND JOY MY FRIENDS! I have been finally reunited with this gear, and after 4 long years I finally came back to it to find it still working and kicking butt in the sound quality department.....what makes this setup special is that even the reel of tape is '70s....I was really trying to get an old sound with this studio. Let me just take this time to also say if ANYONE has half inch tape from the '60s or '70s and is WILLING to sell it, PLEASE let me know!!!!!!

The deal-
Teac 80-8 (about 1977ish, very hard to date 80-8 units)
Dx-8 DBX noise reduction module (about 1977 ish)
Teac Model 5B (late '70s...again, tough to date)
Half inch reel of scotch 203 (from the EARLY '70s!!!!)
Octave Cat synth (dated 1976)
Univox Echo Chamber (dated 1976)
Arp Axxe (dated 1976)
Voice of Music half track 1/4" reel to reel, all tube, sounds wonderful (from 1964ish)
Yamaha MSP5 Monitors (purchased in 2002)

I hooked it all and used the Univox Echo chamber in the FX loop of the M5B board....sounds wicked! Please hear it! (I came up with this dity on the fly to hear the sound.....instruments used - '70s homemade elec. guitar, '60s fiddle bass, 1976 octave cat synth...)

MP3s !!!!

MusicalSound - Jazz Outing (ROUGH sketch) (Valencia) on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

MusicalSound - Blues Jam (Valencia) on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

Please take a looksie too, uploaded some photos...



stud1.jpgstud2.jpgstud3.jpgstud4.jpgstud5.jpgstud6.jpg
 
Pardon my language but that sounds F#$%in' great!!!!
Very 70's fusion-ish.
Love the synth.Nice recording for sure.Good job.
 
I'd also like to add..Great looking gear!!!!
I still think when walking into a studio set up,this looks soooo much better than just seeing a little
computer,and interface.
Kinda reminds me of cars of yesterday and today.Older cars just looked so much cooler.
 
Nice, sounds great! What kind of rack do you have the 80-8 in?
By "60's fiddle bass" do you mean, like the Hoffner? The bass sounds nice. How did you record it?
I heard some static in the L channel. Don't know if that's on the recording.
 
I too enjoy the look of it.....I've come around to PCs tho, they have their place and one day they will offer a vintage sound I should imagine.....but for now they're too new for that! The rack is actually the original 80-8 rack...from what photos tell me, there are about 3-4 different racks Tascam made for this unit....it used to have wheels but one was messed up so i knocked em all off.
As for the bass yeah it is like a hofner, maybe a little larger, but I am going to guess it's a 1960's Univox of some sort or Teisco....it's dark green burst with rosewood board...very pretty. I have LaBella Beetle bass strings on it....very gutsy sounding bass on its own - two single coil pickups fed directly into one channel of the Model 5 (channel 4). The synth is on channel 6, and when I went to pan left - right and vise versa, I discovered the pan pot for chan. 6 IS crusty so that's the scratching you're hearing. They're not all scratchy...just 6 and few others...
 
My "Stuff"

Well, guess it's time to show my very small setup. Have been working on alot of things. Like learning to play again ;) Just using an ol' Teac A-3340S as I only play four instruments. Using a Teac/Tascam Model 5B mixer, Teac AN300 Noise reduction, Teac 64 in/out patch bay, a pioneer amplifier, Teac CX650R Cassette, and someone kick me in the but for saying this :spank: but am using Nady Digital 31 band equalizers and a Lexicon Alex for special affects. Would have loved to stay all analog but was having trouble finding.
 

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poor_boy_record said:
Well, guess it's time to show my very small setup. Have been working on alot of things. Like learning to play again ;) Just using an ol' Teac A-3340S as I only play four instruments. Using a Teac/Tascam Model 5B mixer, Teac AN300 Noise reduction, Teac 64 in/out patch bay, a pioneer amplifier, Teac CX650R Cassette, and someone kick me in the but for saying this :spank: but am using Nady Digital 31 band equalizers and a Lexicon Alex for special affects. Would have loved to stay all analog but was having trouble finding.
Click to expand...

Try not to wake the guy sleeping. :D
 
Awesome setups, everyone! That includes both the all analog and analog/digital hybrid ones. Digital/analog hybrid setups are already spawning some of the most creative and best sounding art of this modern era. These guys use analog synthesizers with CPUs and the result is astonishing:

Modular på Myspace Music
 
Jazz Outing wouldn't work for me, but the bass tone in "Blues Jam" is about as f-ing cool as bass tones get. Sounds unbelievably awesome.

Please tell me the signal chain for the bass track! Direct or miked amp?
 
Famous beagle jazz outing should work, i just clicked it - the bass is direct into the board. Since the M5B is XLR in, I soldered my own cable (1/4" male to XLR male) so the bass is straight direct into the board, no di box.

j harv, poor boy, lonewhite - do you guys have any examples of how your setups actually sound?
 
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WOW!
Awesome system, song, and even better recording.

I had this same setup but I sold it to upgrade
to a Tascam MS-16 and M-520 Mixing Board.
I am having bad gear nostalgia for my old 80-8 and Model 5B.

I have to say, I'm jealous of the sound quality you're
getting from that setup. Mine was pretty noisy.
 
lonewhite - awesome sounding recordings....I take it you don't have NR? I still think they sound gutsy.....the four track machine you have is transistorized, no?
mixing down to the small deck might be fun for some things, but it's mono and just stack the noise up, which is something I hate
Rhoads, does your tape deck have NR? might have something to do with it...i have to say this early '70s 203 tape i'm running on it has a lot to do with sound. if I spool up some newer tape like my new reels of 456 the sound isn't as "funny"
 
MusicalSound said:
lonewhite - awesome sounding recordings....I take it you don't have NR? I still think they sound gutsy.....the four track machine you have is transistorized, no?
mixing down to the small deck might be fun for some things, but it's mono and just stack the noise up, which is something I hate
Click to expand...

right, i have experimented with NR but prefer without. i feel like i can saturate the tape better and it breathes more. i like tape noise, so it's a preference for more of a '60s (as opposed to '70s) sound. the result is it ends up sounding somewhere in between (like '69-'70 era) because i have a lot of '70s equipment.

i just use the 80-8 for the multis (with lots of bouncing) and the ampex 440 mono for mixdown. the ampex is solid-state but has a thick transformer sound compared to the teac stuff. the first album was mixed to a teac 3300 1/2 track at 15 ips (stereo). some of the original tracks on the first album were done on a teac 3340 4-track and then transferred to the 80-8 for overdubs. i also have a tascam 22-2 (early '80s era) that i use for tape delay and a biamp spring reverb.
 
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