porta two question

[jswany]

First, I have both a Porta Two and a Porta One. Been trying to get em both fixed for years . Found a few things on the internet that have helped but nothing has worked yet. The Porta One just wont stay engaged play,rewind,ff ...turns off after about 3 seconds...
The Porta Two won't work at all. the carriage is stuck "up" so you can't get a tape in the deck. At this point they have just become a pile of parts.
Bottom line, are there any other compatible TASCAM products I could look at buying so I can take all the cassettes that I have recorded on the Porta Two and just play them back on it? I have a lot of work that is still on 4 tracks and I just want to get it bounced to 2 so I can play it back on a standard deck and finally get everything re-recorded on my pro tools system. Any help or suggestions will be appreciated.... thanks Jimi

 

[A Reel Person]

...

424mkII, 424mkIII, 246, several others

 

[jswany]

Thank you for the help. Wasn't sure if they were compatible. I have seen some information in the past that tape speeds run different on different cassette and ADAT decks and sometimes you can't run the tapes in machines other than the ones they were originally recorded on.... ?? Not sure if that was true but I trust I'll get some real info here..thanks again..

 

[A Reel Person]

246...

The 246 might be the best and most compatible choice, plus being a leading design for further production in the present tense.

The 424mkII/mkIII would also be easily accessible on the used market, compatible and useful going forward. However, between the years of the 246 and 424 Tascam changed the head phase design. This is usually no issue at all, but could be problematic if any of your original tapes were taped in stereo pairs, in which case you could have a phase cancellation problem. In cases of recording each track singularly this is not an issue.