budget analogue tape machine

[kip4]

Whats a good reel to reel recorder for a beginner in analogue.
Probably 4 tracks at a time.
bear in mind i'm in the uk
and have no money so budget is a factor.
Advise me please thanks

 

[jpmorris]

These are quite well regarded here:
Tascam 22-4 Reel to Reel, 4 Channel Recorder | eBay (Tascam 22/4)

There's also this:
Fostex R8 8 track Reel to Reel Recorder - FAULTY | eBay
...but it's a bit of a gamble. It's probably just the capstan belt, or the problem the R8 sometimes has where the drive wheel comes loose off the shaft and has to be glued back on.
If it's not, getting it fixed could be expensive.

 

[miroslav]

Probably 4 tracks at a time.

I get the feeling that you are planning to dump into a DAW, and keep doing more tracks & dumping...?

You can get by with a 2-track for that purpose and never have any need for syncronization, though you don't ever keep the tape tracks. You just use the tape machine as a real-time effect/processor, while actually recording from the DAW but through the tape deck.
So...with a 2-track, you get serious tape width, and you can get by using 1/4" tape. Plus you get more mileage out of each reel of tape.

 

[kip4]

Thanks for that guys.
So is it common practice to use tape machines in this way miro?
Is it possible also to use the tape machine as part of a mastering chain too?
Looks like i'm gonna have to do more homework on this,

with a 2-track, you get serious tape width, and you can get by using 1/4" tape.

I'm not even sure what that means but thanks all the same.

 

[WarmJetGuitar]

Thanks for that guys.
So is it common practice to use tape machines in this way miro?
Is it possible also to use the tape machine as part of a mastering chain too?
Looks like i'm gonna have to do more homework on this,

with a 2-track, you get serious tape width, and you can get by using 1/4" tape.

I'm not even sure what that means but thanks all the same.

By tape width he means the physical width on the tape per tracks. The more width the less likely will it be that your recordings suffer from drop-offs, cross talk (that tracks blend with another even though there's no leakage from mics) or noise. Some also find the sound of machines with a wider tracks more full sounding.

1/4" tape is the most narrow tape you can find and also the most common. In the professional world it's just almost exclusively for mastering/mixdown with 2" tapes being the most common for multitrack recording. However good resoults can be archieved with up to 8-tracks on this format - and they're MUCH cheaper than 2". Actually I've picked up my best Fostex 8 track at half the price of a new "2 tape.

If you want to be able to do most of your recordings on tape go find yourself a Fostex (1/4" tape) or Tascam (1/2" tape) eight track in good condition.

 

[jpmorris]

Okay, to be clear, there are several ways of working. Traditionally, you'd record all the tracks of your song onto the multitrack, and then mix that down to a 2-track tape deck. This would then be the master - you'd make copies of that to send to the duplicators the record company or whatever you were doing with it.

If you have 8 tracks or more that works quite well for most material. With 4 tracks it's a bit of a problem, unless you're only tracking four mono instruments or less. What they did in the sixties before 8-track became available much, was they recorded four tracks, mixed them to one or two tracks on a second machine, and then recorded a few more tracks, mixed it back to a track or two on the first machine and so on. This gives you a fair bit of generation loss and it's a real hassle, but it can be done. (It's why I started with 8 tracks as a minimum, I knew what four tracks would entail and it wasn't suitable for the kind of music I'm doing)

What people do more recently is track to tape, and then dump the tracks into a DAW and mix in that. Personally I'm not fond of that approach, it feels like cheating to me (and this is coming from someone who arranges and composes all their music on a computer*) but people do it.
Advantages are that you have less generation loss, you can reuse the tape after dumping to DAW and so forth.
Disadvantages are that you're essentially recording to the DAW anyway (the limitations of tape can be helpful sometimes), and you'll have a hard time lining the tracks up again later as there will be timing drift.

Some people track to DAW through the tape machine, by putting all the tracks into record, and sending the output from the playback head into the DAW. That's supposedly a cheap way to get a 'tape' sound for the price of a 1/15 second delay. It will only work on decks with three heads (The R8 and the TSR-8 don't), the 22-4 might.

* In some ways I like the extra work involved in tracking and mixing to tape because if the entire thing was done from start to finish in software, I wouldn't feel like I'd accomplished anything.

 

[kip4]

Thanks for the help guys. its appreciated.

 

[witzendoz]

If you get tempted to go down the 1/2" tape road, have a look for a Tascam TSR8, pro tape width (same as a 1" 16 track and only a bit less than a 2" 24 track),built in noise reduction, can record all 8 tracks at once and can record 7 tracks and have a code track if you want to sync.

There are a lot of good condition units out there and they were a late model as they only came out a few years before the Adats killed the reel market (idiots).

Alan.