How to play 4 track tapes

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lbird2

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I have a bunch of cassette tapes that contain original recording created on an old Tascam Porta Studio One. The Tascam unit is long gone but I would like preserve these recordings by playing them and capturing the output.

I've looked at buying an old unit but they are not that easy to find in working condition, besides I don't really care to edit them. Is there an older Tascam product more readily available that will work?

Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.

-Luther
 
My guess is this.. if you are really stuck.. any device that plays tapes could be used.

Unfortunatley, you would only be able to dump 2 tracks at a time with a standard cassette deck.

Standard cassette is two tracks of stereo tape (Side A, Side B). Or, 4 tracks of mono, only on one side.

So if you really need to dump them...Record side A as a stereo track, then record side B as a stereo track,... then split the stereo tracks, and line em up in a DAW.
 
Paul Is Dead?

Hey Norris,

Thanks for the suggestion, but when I did play the tape in a regular player it came out sounding like the "Paul is dead" stuff from the Beatles White Album if you know what I mean - which you wouldn't if you born after 1970 or so.:o

It sounded like it was playing track 1 forward and track 2 backward at the same time...not sure how to separate those.
 
hmm.. then do the same thing i suggested... but add:

For the tracks that are 'backwards'... use a little program like Audacity (Free).. highlight the backward track, choose 'effect' menu, then choose 'reverse'.

Should do it. It is still gonna take a bit of work/mucking around on your part to get the things lined up, tracks split, etc. But we have the technology. If you have a computer, you should have all you need.

Wasn't Paul the Walrus?
 
oh yeah..

If you haven't figured out how to separate the normal track from the backwards one, try this.

a) Pan source tape deck hard left. Record the track.

b) rewind the tape, pan hard right. Record the track.

then try following the steps in the last post to flip the backwards track.
 
It's best to dump all of the tracks at once, as it's never gonna align otherwise, due to small fluctuations in tape deck speed.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the porta one uses regular 1 7/8 speed and has switchable dbx. All you need to do is get any 4 track which has those features and you're good to go.

There is a very cheap and easy answer but only if you didn't use dbx on your porta one. The MF-P01 or Porta02mkII can be had for peanuts on the used market and will do the trick but, again, only if you recorded your original tracks without dbx, as these units do not have that feature.

Another option but sadly a more expensive one is to get a 424mkII or mkIII or a 246 as these also have the normal speed and ability to switch dbx on / off.

Yet another one is to try and find a porta one or porta two.

Place a wanted ad in your local craigslist and try it that way.

My best recommendation, if you don't want to be bothered by servicing older units (belts etc..), is to get a more recent one, like the 424mkII or better mkIII or rent one from someone local or maybe a music store has one or give the tapes to someone to do it for you?

Depending on how many tapes we are talking about and if you used dbx or not, I can potentially help.
 
id like to reply because maybe my suggestion might help, maybe a two track mixerdowner might work or like a tascam archiver, might work or something like that, but thats if you have a 4 track recorder to play it through, but maybe the 2 track thing might work?
 
Thanks

Thanks for all the great suggestions! I'm watching some old Tascam gear on eBay. I'll let you know how it goes.
 
cjacek said:
My best recommendation, if you don't want to be bothered by servicing older units (belts etc..), is to get a more recent one
Click to expand...
Speaking as someone sitting beside a three foot stack of Tascams in various stages of disrepair, I'll definitely second that one.:D

The belts are the obvious issue, along with anything else rubber, and head wear. Then you've also got some brittle plastic parts in some which are under constant pressure and may break over time with no outside assistance. There's a Porta Two here which did that and the part is no longer available. I'd guess anything over ten years old (most of the machines mentioned) may need rubber stuff, but they'll also need alignment and calibration and unless you do it yourself, you don't know for certain how thorough a job a tech will do, and if he/she has to gut the machine to replace stuff, they may charge you as much as a brand new unit would have been. Another issue I found on one of my Teacs was that some of the capacitors had dried up (another possibility after 10 or 15 years). That problem sort of sucks, because the machine still appears to work but your tapes may sound thinner or lose some low end and you won't know if it's just the condition of the tapes or something. I didn't spot that until I got to the playback frequency response checks and the lowest tone was weak as crap.

Also, in addition to the speed differences (and dbx), the track spacing and width isn't exactly the same between stereo decks and the first two channels of a four track. It's close, but you won't get the exact same sound even if they're both perfectly calibrated. Non-Tascam four track decks also don't use the exact same spacing. I think theirs may match the Philips spec, which could also be the one for stereo decks. Tascam has some diagrams in one of their owner's manual PDFs online (maybe the Porta02).

I have a feeling one of those little rinky-dink portable units from just a few years back may give better results than a much nicer twenty year old unit. :(

Sorry for all the text and good luck on it.

George
 
There's a 4-track cassette PortaStudio on Atlanta Craig's List right now...
 
I was in a similar situation.

I had a yamaha 4-track that had died while in storage. The mechanism would operate, but none of the LEDs or channels would work.

I bought a tascam 424mkII off of ebay and so far it's working great. Tapes play without problem, even though they were recorded on the yamaha.
 
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