Just Got A Tascam 414 MKII, Boy Am I Impressed

Bristol Posse

Okey Dokey
Just picked up a Tascam 414 MkII off craigslist for $45.

Wow I'm impressed. First of all the guy who had it before me barely used it it's absolutely mint!!

Aside from that I did a thorough cleaning and RBR rejuvinaion on the pinch wheel and a de gaussing of all heads and anything else metal in the tape path.

I hooked up my TLM 102 to my auteur and then to a splitter. sent one signal straight to converters and recorded in the DAW. Recorded the other signal to a track on the 414 and then dumped the tape recording into the DAW

Got to say I was pretty impressed with the performance of the 414. noise floor was very low and far far below the ambient noise floor in the recording space. It was easy to line up the recordings and match the speed of the tape since I recorded a click and a 440 hz test tone at the start of the session.

Ok so this is a million miles away from two inch tape, but even so there was plenty of clarity and top end in the track from the 414 as well as some subtle rounding of the transients at lower levels all the way to full on saturation and soft clipping as I pushed the levels by increasing the preamp gain on the Auteur

I'm really floored. Why on earth did they stop making the cassette versions of these? they sound great, give you the flexibility to record all over the place, can easilly play in a digital/hybrid set up with no obvious "oh well that came from the 414" hiss or loss of dynamic range AND you get some of the tape effects that everyone is now trying to emulate (mostly poorly) in digital
 
Just picked up a Tascam 414 MkII off craigslist for $45.

Wow I'm impressed. First of all the guy who had it before me barely used it it's absolutely mint!!

Aside from that I did a thorough cleaning and RBR rejuvinaion on the pinch wheel and a de gaussing of all heads and anything else metal in the tape path.

I hooked up my TLM 102 to my auteur and then to a splitter. sent one signal straight to converters and recorded in the DAW. Recorded the other signal to a track on the 414 and then dumped the tape recording into the DAW

Got to say I was pretty impressed with the performance of the 414. noise floor was very low and far far below the ambient noise floor in the recording space. It was easy to line up the recordings and match the speed of the tape since I recorded a click and a 440 hz test tone at the start of the session.

Ok so this is a million miles away from two inch tape, but even so there was plenty of clarity and top end in the track from the 414 as well as some subtle rounding of the transients at lower levels all the way to full on saturation and soft clipping as I pushed the levels by increasing the preamp gain on the Auteur

I'm really floored. Why on earth did they stop making the cassette versions of these? they sound great, give you the flexibility to record all over the place, can easilly play in a digital/hybrid set up with no obvious "oh well that came from the 414" hiss or loss of dynamic range AND you get some of the tape effects that everyone is now trying to emulate (mostly poorly) in digital

That's a good idea. They SHOULD consider making a hybrid version.
 
I used to wish there was a three-head 4-track. If you recorded onto tape and took the playback from the play head into your PC on the same pass, you could just about eliminate any wow and flutter. Take that out of the equation and cassettes can sound pretty good, assuming 3.75 IPS with NR anyway.

Obviously that can be done with most open reel decks. I just like the sound of cassette sometimes.
 
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