Tascam 424 Heavy Mic Buzz

ricco002

New member
Greetings
I posted this over at tapeheads to no avail so figured I’d try over here.

Earlier this year I bought a 424 mki that was not working correctly. I recently had it fixed up (new motor, loose joint soldered) and cleaned inside and out. But I've run into an issue I can't figure out. When I record guitar or bass by direct input on any of the channels, the recording comes out great. But when I try to use my mic (SM57), I get a pretty harsh buzz/hum that makes recording with it almost pointless. The audio that gets recorded is super quiet too- I have to basically yell into the mic to get the meters to spike into the red. Recording an acoustic guitar for instance is pretty much impossible.

A few more notes to put the issue into context:

- the mic and cable (XLR female - 1/4 in) both seem fine. Sound and work great just plugged into an amp or when recording with interface/computer. Cable is almost brand new, mic is in great shape
- I've tried multiple power outlets in my house and the issue persists. I also know I'm using the correct power supply
- the buzz changes a bit if I move the mic around or jiggle on the 1/4 in input
-gain on Tascam is set correctly for mic

My thought is that this might be a grounding issue, though I'm not electric savvy enough to know what to do about that. I have a small mixer that I may try hooking up between the mic and tascam to see if that helps, though I'm missing the power supply for that currently. I wish I had more mics and cables to test out but I don't.

Any help is greatly appreciated! thanks
 
Make sure that the power supply is away from the 424 and the mic lead.
Try all 4 inputs, if they all perform the same, that's probably as good as it gets.
Something to try would be to use a mic preamp before going into the 424.

Edit: Also the XLR - 1/4" cable is unbalanced. You want to keep those as short as possible for mic-level signals.
 
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Make sure that the power supply is away from the 424 and the mic lead.
Try all 4 inputs, if they all perform the same, that's probably as good as it gets.
Something to try would be to use a mic preamp before going into the 424.

Edit: Also the XLR - 1/4" cable is unbalanced. You want to keep those as short as possible for mic-level signals.

Thanks for your reply Chris. I definitely would like to see if a preamp will help. What’s frustrating is I remember borrowing a friend’s Porta-02 a few years back and recording with the same mic with no issue. I’ll take your advice into account and see if anything helps. Thanks again
 
In case anyone comes across this thread with the same problem I had, I'll share the solution.

If you own a 424 mki, you know that it only has 1/4 inch inputs, where the mkii and mkiii have 1/4 inch and xlr. Because of this, you might try to do what I did and run a mic into your mki with a xlr - 1/4 inch cable. As Chris Drums mentioned, this cable is unbalanced. In order to get a balanced connection, you need a low to high impedance transformer (they are built into the mkii and mkiii). These adapters will let you run a standard xlr cable into the 1/4 input on the mki. In my case it completely solved the problems I described and only cost around $15.
 
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