One more question - reverb on a 4 track cassette - best solution?

If you can get all the tracks into the digital machine, you could add it at that point. Or you could add it to the stereo mix as I think they did with some of the Jefferson Airplane stuff, but that's not necessarily a good solution.

If you have to mix inside the 414, you will need an external unit, but there are a huge variety of those at different prices. Most of them are digital, and most digital rackmount effects have a stereo reverb of some kind, usually a plate emulation.
There are analogue reverbs, but they tend to be either expensive or not particularly great-sounding. Most classic recordings either used a genuine echo chamber to do the reverb, an EMT plate (huge, heavy, expensive) or occasionally a spring reverb for the budget studios.
 
Some engineers swear by spring reverbs for adding depth to an instrument or making it stand out. That usually involves EQing and/or gating the reverb, and has a different goal than the typical use of reverb, which is adding a sense of space. A couple of manufacturers made BBD analog reverb pedals in the 80s, but these are rare and expensive, and they generally only sound good in a guitar effects chain. A rackmount digital reverb is the way you want to go if you need a variety of reverb types for different purposes.
 
Use the Boss RV5 reverb pedal. plug it into the send/returns on the 414. It has lots of nice reverb settings, it's inexpensive and small, and it sounds good.
 
I've used individual spring reverbs as well. E.g. I have separated out the drums mix, vocals, and acoustic guitar on individual springs, so the signal coming back from the reverb wouldn't be as "muddy." If you have a stereo reverb, try using individual channels that way and see if you like it if you have enough effects/aux send/returns.

Also guitar pedals are designed for a relatively low level signal going in, and they often have volume knobs directly on the output.

For the input you'll have to make sure you don't overload the pedal. On the output, you should keep the volume knob as high as possible. As pedals usually have a volume knob right on the output, these are can be 50k to 100k ohms, and depending on the input impedance of whatever you are driving, could affect the sound in a bad way. I.e. the lower the volume knob, the higher the impedance your input is seeing. Your effects returns are probably in the range of 10-50k.

(The pedal isn't a problem for your guitar amp, which expects a pretty high impedance output from your guitar pickups.)
 
Just so you know, there are many, many rackmount processors that wound sound as good/be more flexible than the Boss pedal and be cheaper too. That pedal's not exactly chump change. $170 new .. maybe $110 or $125 used.

If I were you, I'd look for a slightly older used rack piece like an Alesis Quadraverb, Midiverb 3 (or 4), Nanoverb, Digitech DSP 128, Lexicon MPX 1, etc. You can find these units used on ebay right now going for anywhere between $20-$50. Check out some of these completed listings:


Alesis Nanoverb 18 Bit Digital Effects Processor | eBay

Alesis Quadaverb | eBay

Vintage DigiTech DSP 128 Effects Processor DSP128 Multi FX | eBay

Lexicon MPX 1 | eBay
 
famous beagle said:
Just so you know, there are many, many rackmount processors that wound sound as good/be more flexible than the Boss pedal and be cheaper too. That pedal's not exactly chump change. $170 new .. maybe $110 or $125 used.

If I were you, I'd look for a slightly older used rack piece like an Alesis Quadraverb, Midiverb 3 (or 4), Nanoverb, Digitech DSP 128, Lexicon MPX 1, etc. You can find these units used on ebay right now going for anywhere between $20-$50. Check out some of these completed listings:


Alesis Nanoverb 18 Bit Digital Effects Processor | eBay

Alesis Quadaverb | eBay

Vintage DigiTech DSP 128 Effects Processor DSP128 Multi FX | eBay

Lexicon MPX 1 | eBay
Click to expand...

Yeah good point. The microverb ain't half bad either.
 
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