jeancoltrane
New member
hey guys, i'll try to give you a little background on my story and how i came to be here. i've been playing guitar for years now, recording in nice studios and recording myself on a low end digital setup at home. ive never really been happy with the guitar sound (or any of the other instrument sounds for that matter) even in the nicer studios. it always seemed a bit too clean & harsh, no matter what external processing was done.
fast forward to a few months ago i decided to dig out an old sony tc 355 that was decaying in my girlfriends basement. i found some tape laying around that turned out to be 30 year old recordings of my girlfriends now deceased father, and they sounded unusually good. quite the surprise for both my girlfriend and i! this really piqued my interest, and i decided to search out some tape to try to record on. i eventually found some old opera tapes at a yard sale and decided to do the world a favour and try to record over them
the tc 355 was in really bad shape, with it literally falling apart and only one of the channels working - needless to say i was very surprised that a test recording with just a radio shack mic produced a guitar sound that was so natural and true to what i heard in the room. heres a recording of the first test if anyone is interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJrDzgqgM_k
after the first few experiments i realized tape is what ive been missing all these years. luckily, we also had a teac 2340 with simul sync in the basement, untouched for many years. we couldnt get it to run at all, but the preamps and electronics sounded great. with the help of this forums archives, i realized it was likely just a bad switch on one of the tape guides that engages the capstan. so off it went for servicing, and it returned in excellent shape recently.
rewind about 6 years ago, i found an audio technica rmx 64 mixer/cassette recorder covered in dust in an old warehouse rehearsal facility. it looked like a piece of junk to me at the time, so i gave it to a friend who relayed to me that it still worked & sounded great. hes been using it as the front end to his digital setup. as fate would have it, he had to move out of his studio space and it wound up back in my hands a month ago. now the fun begins...
it seems to be a fairly high quality mixer for pro sumer gear, with a lot of routing options, various +4 and -10 input and output options, direct outs, phantom power etc. given that i'm both new to reel to reel recording, and using an analog mixer i'm looking for advice on how to make this setup work. i'm trying to wrap my head around the various bus and send options, but it seems theres multiple ways to accomplish the same thing - i'm just not sure what the 'correct' way is. i've only so far used the mixer for its preamps and direct outs, it sounds great but i know i can do so much more with it.
ideally, i would like to use it for bouncing tracks down while adding fx like moog pedals, guitar pedals, reverb, etc and live mixing it onto the free track. it would be nice to control what effect goes to which track. also, i would like to do the above mentioned except bouncing the tracks to my computer while adding fx. i have a 4 input interface, so it would be ideal if i could bounce the 4 recorded tracks on the a2340 to the 4 separate inputs on the interface, using the mixer to add the fx. i'm not sure if this would be possible, or if i would just have to settle for a stereo mix to the interface. it seems most of the outputs of the mixer are +4 and the teac is -10, i did have to crank the line inputs on the teac to make up for the +4 when using the direct outs, but it still seemed to sound fine with not much noise. if i remember correctly, there are unbalanced -10 inputs into the mixer, so im guessing i should use those when bouncing. my interface is switchable between -10 and +4.
so given all that, i guess my question is how would you folks rig together this setup? i've read a fair amount on setting up an analog mixer and rtr, but am still at a kind of stand still on how to apply that to my current gear. any practical advice is welcome, as i'm a hands on learner and just need some tips to get me started. i'm sure it will all make sense the more i use it. here is a link to the manual for the mixer - http://www.studio250.fr/docs/divers enregistrement/atspecif.pdf
sorry for the incredibly long post, i look forward to diving into the world of tape with this forum. thanks.
fast forward to a few months ago i decided to dig out an old sony tc 355 that was decaying in my girlfriends basement. i found some tape laying around that turned out to be 30 year old recordings of my girlfriends now deceased father, and they sounded unusually good. quite the surprise for both my girlfriend and i! this really piqued my interest, and i decided to search out some tape to try to record on. i eventually found some old opera tapes at a yard sale and decided to do the world a favour and try to record over them
the tc 355 was in really bad shape, with it literally falling apart and only one of the channels working - needless to say i was very surprised that a test recording with just a radio shack mic produced a guitar sound that was so natural and true to what i heard in the room. heres a recording of the first test if anyone is interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJrDzgqgM_kafter the first few experiments i realized tape is what ive been missing all these years. luckily, we also had a teac 2340 with simul sync in the basement, untouched for many years. we couldnt get it to run at all, but the preamps and electronics sounded great. with the help of this forums archives, i realized it was likely just a bad switch on one of the tape guides that engages the capstan. so off it went for servicing, and it returned in excellent shape recently.
rewind about 6 years ago, i found an audio technica rmx 64 mixer/cassette recorder covered in dust in an old warehouse rehearsal facility. it looked like a piece of junk to me at the time, so i gave it to a friend who relayed to me that it still worked & sounded great. hes been using it as the front end to his digital setup. as fate would have it, he had to move out of his studio space and it wound up back in my hands a month ago. now the fun begins...
it seems to be a fairly high quality mixer for pro sumer gear, with a lot of routing options, various +4 and -10 input and output options, direct outs, phantom power etc. given that i'm both new to reel to reel recording, and using an analog mixer i'm looking for advice on how to make this setup work. i'm trying to wrap my head around the various bus and send options, but it seems theres multiple ways to accomplish the same thing - i'm just not sure what the 'correct' way is. i've only so far used the mixer for its preamps and direct outs, it sounds great but i know i can do so much more with it.
ideally, i would like to use it for bouncing tracks down while adding fx like moog pedals, guitar pedals, reverb, etc and live mixing it onto the free track. it would be nice to control what effect goes to which track. also, i would like to do the above mentioned except bouncing the tracks to my computer while adding fx. i have a 4 input interface, so it would be ideal if i could bounce the 4 recorded tracks on the a2340 to the 4 separate inputs on the interface, using the mixer to add the fx. i'm not sure if this would be possible, or if i would just have to settle for a stereo mix to the interface. it seems most of the outputs of the mixer are +4 and the teac is -10, i did have to crank the line inputs on the teac to make up for the +4 when using the direct outs, but it still seemed to sound fine with not much noise. if i remember correctly, there are unbalanced -10 inputs into the mixer, so im guessing i should use those when bouncing. my interface is switchable between -10 and +4.
so given all that, i guess my question is how would you folks rig together this setup? i've read a fair amount on setting up an analog mixer and rtr, but am still at a kind of stand still on how to apply that to my current gear. any practical advice is welcome, as i'm a hands on learner and just need some tips to get me started. i'm sure it will all make sense the more i use it. here is a link to the manual for the mixer - http://www.studio250.fr/docs/divers enregistrement/atspecif.pdf
sorry for the incredibly long post, i look forward to diving into the world of tape with this forum. thanks.
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