B
billisa
New member
Let's see, we had a monophonic RCA Victrola on which to play Meet the Beatles through Let It Be. The first stereo we had was a Hitachi cassette based stereo my dad brought back from Kuwait, along with a more portable Panasonic stereo unit. My first recordings were made on a "?" 3 1/2 inch reel to reel, via mike, so when the phone rang, I had to redo Revolution #9 AGAIN!!!
My first attempt (successful by the way!) at sound-on-sound recording was accomplished literally by taping some thin cardboard over the erase head on the Panasonic unit and just adding more material. Since I couldn't play any instruments, I "sampled" from records we had around the house. Not long after I got a Toshiba 7.5 inch reel-to-reel, stereo deck with built in amp/speakers that, via the owner's manual, was my first "reel" intro to English as attempted by "experts" who have never spoken the language.
By the time college came along, I began a career in radio and got to use other people stuff that was state of the art at the time (Ampex 2-channel 10.5 inch deck, UREA 16 channel board, patchbays that were NEVER labelled, etc). I remember being pretty damn good editing with a razor blade and spinning the capstan to get the tape up to speed sooner! I will also claim some award for perhaps being the first to practice the art of "cueing" (translate: scratching) on the air, which some thought was zany, but I KNEW was cool!
I bought a TEAC 1230 stereo deck that was built like a Hummer, but my most fascinating personal gear was a JVC KD-2 portable cassette deck and a pair of JVC HM200E binaural recording mic/headphones that still fascinate people today (though now I record with them on a Fostex VF80). I still have a cassette of a birthday party, where my now deceased father still sounds like he's sitting just 45 degrees to my right... The "reel" challenge today is not so much to understand all the new and wonderful ways we have to record life, but to enjoy it and be as fascinated by it as we were back 30 years ago.
My first attempt (successful by the way!) at sound-on-sound recording was accomplished literally by taping some thin cardboard over the erase head on the Panasonic unit and just adding more material. Since I couldn't play any instruments, I "sampled" from records we had around the house. Not long after I got a Toshiba 7.5 inch reel-to-reel, stereo deck with built in amp/speakers that, via the owner's manual, was my first "reel" intro to English as attempted by "experts" who have never spoken the language.
By the time college came along, I began a career in radio and got to use other people stuff that was state of the art at the time (Ampex 2-channel 10.5 inch deck, UREA 16 channel board, patchbays that were NEVER labelled, etc). I remember being pretty damn good editing with a razor blade and spinning the capstan to get the tape up to speed sooner! I will also claim some award for perhaps being the first to practice the art of "cueing" (translate: scratching) on the air, which some thought was zany, but I KNEW was cool!
I bought a TEAC 1230 stereo deck that was built like a Hummer, but my most fascinating personal gear was a JVC KD-2 portable cassette deck and a pair of JVC HM200E binaural recording mic/headphones that still fascinate people today (though now I record with them on a Fostex VF80). I still have a cassette of a birthday party, where my now deceased father still sounds like he's sitting just 45 degrees to my right... The "reel" challenge today is not so much to understand all the new and wonderful ways we have to record life, but to enjoy it and be as fascinated by it as we were back 30 years ago.