Greetings From The Hobbyists Side

[Des-Lab]

Hello all. I am new to this site, but anything but new to tape and taping. My name is Matt. I go by the username of "Des-Lab" (as you can see). I found this site while doing some research relating to my site. I decided to join. Some of you may recognize the name.

Anyway, from what I gather based on a quick browsing here, this site appears to be geared more towards the Recording Engineers and garage bands who like to record their own demos of the world. I once wanted to be a recording engineer myself, but for other personal reasons, I abandoned the pursuit of that endeavor instead opting to stick with Hi Fi as purely a hobby.

I, on the other hand am more of an "end user" when it comes to recording music. More to the point, home recording in the sense of making dubs and compilations of CD's, LP's, other tapes, and the like. The heart of my system is quarter track reel to reel (Teac X-2000R) complimented by cassette (Denon DN-790R as the centerpiece in that regard).

I am also well versed on many of the basics such as bias, EQ, "IPS", Type I, II, IV, splicing, loading pancakes, and so on and so forth.

I also represent a small but fastidious and estoteric side of the hobby: Collecting and building stashes and hoards of both new and NOS reels and cassettes. To some (such as myself and few others I know of), the idea of collecting and displaying a complete line of...for example....the entire Maxell cassette lineup from a particular year...is a hobby in and of itself.

In short, I am a serious "Tape Head". And as I spend a few minutes lurking off my my site that caters to the interests above, I look forward to getting to know some of you. I have taught a lot. And I'm sure that some of you can teach ME a thing or two about recording.

Nice to meet you all.

-Des

 

[suprstar]

Hi, welcome to the board! Yeah, a lot of us are into tracking and mixing, the production stuff. But there's also a lot of old school'ers you'll be able to talk tape with, altho I'm not really one of them... Teac reel to reel, that takes me back, my old man had one of those when I was a kid.. Not that particular model I dont think, but idk, thatwas like 25 year ago! Never recorded anything with it, but I had a lot of fun loading tapes and running the tape thru the heads or whatever, getting it to just play was an accomplishment for me!

What the hell is 'loading a pancake' ??

 

[Des-Lab]

"Loading a pancake" is just taking a roll of tape that has no reel and putting it onto a reel.

 

[mikeh]

Welcome Des-Lab

While this newbies section will likely have ...well, newbies, the site in general has all levels from pros with successful commercial studios to 14 year old kids with a lap top in a bedroom.

There are some people who still record to 2" tape.....although the majority record digital to computers. I'm 56, so I spent a lot of time back in the 60's and 70"s with 2" tape and pancake reels and now use computers - In fact I'm the house drummer in a local studio that still records to 2" - so you can find people on this site with lots of experiance in various recording mediums.