Tascam Porta 02 MKII Help

B

bnzps

New member
Hey. Firstly, apologies if any of this sounds idiotic, I am totally new to home tape recording and generally not confident with stuff like this:

I've just acquired a Tascam Porta 02 mkii and I'm just trying to piece together what other gear I'd need to record and master tapes. I'll simply be recording acoustic guitar, and I've got the following:

guitar (good start)
mic
porta 02
denon DRM-710

I obviously need an amp/speakers, but I was thinking maybe active/powered speakers would be a cheaper alternative?

Will I be able to master using the above tape deck? What else might I need?

Any other advice on how to set all this up would be much appreciated.

Also, I like the idea of not having to rely on my laptop with recording. I like things lo-fi, so no need to try and convince me to get set-up with a PC etc (although it may be sensible!)

Thanks all.
 
Yeah, you will need either an amp and passive speakers or powered speakers to listen to your recorded tracks in the room, rather than headphones.
Are you going to be multi-tracking - recording more than one acoustic guitar track? If so, you'll be 'bouncing down' the track on the Tascam to a final stereo track. You really can't do any 'mastering' on it. Mastering is taking a mix (usually stereo) and applying final processing (EQ, compression, limiting) to it.
 
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Thanks for getting back. I will look in to what I can pick up fairly cheap - amp and passive speakers or powered speakers...

And yeah, I will probably be going multi-tracking, so really it's the bouncing down (rather than mastering) process that I was concerned about - do I already have all the necessary gear? Are the Tascam and Denon tape deck compatible in terms of inputs/outputs? Is there anything else I need to know, or is it a fairly simple process?
 
The simplest thing you could do with this set up is to record 4 separate tracks on the Tascam, and then bounce them to a stereo track on the Denon.
You can also use the Tascam by itself - record 2 tracks, bounce them down to 1 track, record 2 more tracks bounce that down to another 1 track, then take those two bounced tracks, bounce them down to a single track, etc.
Every time you bounce with cassettes you lose a little clarity and frequency response. And of course since you end up tracking over prevous recorded tracks as you keep bouncing, you can't go back and fix something easily without retracking - you need to plan things out and try to get levels right on each bounce.

So a session might be:

Track 1: guitar > Bounce to track 3 (combine with guitar)
Track 2: vocal > Bounce to track 3 (combine with vocal)

Track 1: lead guitar > Bounce to track 4 (combine with bu vocal)
Track 2: backup vocal > Bounce to track 4 (combine with lead guitar)

Track 1: bass guitar
Track 2: 2nd backup vocal

Then
Track 1, 2, 3, 4 > Bounce to Denon track 1/2 stereo
 
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