i was recording on a yamaha mt 44 until it broke! i went and bougt myself a new tascam 414 mk2 only to find that my cassette wouldn`t work because it is of a different format. i was wondering what format the mt44 was and what kind of machine i could use to complete my project. i`m also curious about 4 track formats in general.
I've also done some comparison swapping of tapes between Tascams and a friend's Yamaha MT120.
It seems the phase relationship of the head on the Tascam & Yamaha are different. Seems that I read somewhere, that the adjacent head elements in the Tascam 4-track heads were reversed from each other, to reduce crosstalk. I don't believe Yamaha followed that design, and I don't believe Yamaha's 4-trackers were licenced clones of Tascams. That's the main difference I know of, but there may be subtleties of differences I've not discovered or covered in this post. All I know, is that the Tascam and Yamaha 4-track cassettes did not sound too good, when swapped between machines.
That's not news to you, I guess.
The good part, I suppose, is that you bought a brand new 414mk2, and that should be a fine machine for projects, moving forward. Not so good for your original Yamaha project, in progress, though.
Just make sure that you follow the cleaning instructions in the manual to a T. Or you will regret it. Keep that thing CLEAN!!!!! Reel just helped hold my hand through one of these situations so he knows what I'm talking about.
