Help with a Reel-to-Reel!

[digitalshrub]

I'm very new to home recording in general (I use the Windows Sound Recorder on my computer, but that's about it), and I recently acquired an AKAI 1710W Reel-to-Reel recorder. It supposedly records four tracks. Perhaps I just don't understand the fundamental differences between mono and stereo, but I thought I did....anyhow, I've been unable to record more than one track on a tape. I tried once in stereo, recording a guitar line on the "Left" mic, then tried to add vocals on the "right" mic, but it didn't pay the left channel as I was trying to record, so I had no clue how to match up the vocals to the accompaniment, and I ended up recording blank noise over the guitar track rather than adding possible vocals to it. I tried recording in mono today, and I was able to add vocals, but they were all over the place because I couldn't hear the guitar part I'd already recorded. Any ideas? Am I missing something big? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[crankz1]

No that unit isn't going to work the way you would like .... You won't be able to do any over dubs with it .... unless you are handy with electronics and can find a way to disable half of the record head and enable the playback head during recording.

 

[Grizzly]

Howdy
A lot of the old stereo reel to reels were touted as being 4 track recorders. and they were they recorded 2 tracks in one direction and 2 in the other direction. . Most of the old decks had 3 heads 1 erase head 1 record head and 1 playback head. There would also be a monitor switch that when engaged would allow listening to the recorded signal as it was being recorded. If this deck has all of this then yes you can do voice overs. Here is an old trick from the 70's. Put a piece of film negitive over the erase head and press the record button and start singing. You'll getyour sound on sound and with some practice you will get it to sound pretty good.

Griz