On the Tascam 488 MKII I get the same effects going through all channels?

M

Milk

New member
I couldn't type up a proper question.
Basically I'm using a Tascam 488 MkII and I plug in my "M300 Dual Engine Processor" for effects. Then I can see the effects work on all channels, which is great. Only, after I record some tracks, they will all have the same effect, say Reverb and what I want is to have different effects for different channels. I would want for example a flanger effect on my guitar and some reverb on the vocals. Except if I change the effect on my processor, it will change the effect on my guitar part as well, which is annoying. Giving me vocals with flanger effect...

How can I make it so I have different effects for different channels?

Thanks
 
How have you wired them together? You'd need to make sure the M300 has the rear switch set so that left and right act as independent inputs, so left in would be the generic effect and right would be the reverb.
You'd then need to have each of those connected to a different effects bus on the mixer, e.g. FX send 1 to the left input, FX send 2 to the right input.
 
Thanks a lot, i switch that little button on the M300 and now it works fine! I get the usual effects on FX 1 and Reverb on FX 2. Only, when I record I will have only two effects for all my channels? Or is there a possibility to have different effects for every channel. Because if I change my effects on the M300, it will also change the effects on the channel i recorded on, which is weird.
 
Milk said:
Thanks a lot, i switch that little button on the M300 and now it works fine! I get the usual effects on FX 1 and Reverb on FX 2. Only, when I record I will have only two effects for all my channels? Or is there a possibility to have different effects for every channel. Because if I change my effects on the M300, it will also change the effects on the channel i recorded on, which is weird.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you can't easily do that at mixdown. Most FX units can only do a single effect at a time - the M300 is the first unit I've ever heard of which can actually do two at once. You're also limited by the number of effects busses on the mixer, and that doesn't usually go above 3 unless you have a seriously expensive mixing desk - you're lucky you've even got two, because the original version of the 488 did not.

Anyway. There is an alternative approach - for certain effects like delay, chorusing, phasing etc, you can bake those in during recording. That means you have to rewire it so that the instrument or mic is wired into the FX unit and then back into the 488 instead of going directly into the 488's input, which will be a bit of a pain, and of course you can't go back and tweak the effect afterwards because it's being added during recording. This works best with mono effects - if you really need to record a stereo effect like that e.g. stereo tremolo on a piano or something, and you can't add it at mixdown, you'd have to use a pair of channels to record it in stereo.

This can be easier if your mixer supports an FX insert loop, but it doesn't look like the 488 does.
What I've done is get several FX units - a dedicated reverb unit for adding reverb at mixdown, and a multi-effects unit which I can use for baked-in effects. That saves me having to re-patch things each time I want to switch between tracking and mixing.
I also have a tape delay which I use as part of my vocal signal chain - again, that saves me having to re-patch things too often.
 
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