Portable Mastering Deck

[Dr ZEE]

HERE:

instead of wasting time and money that I don't have in a proctologist office I've wasted some time which is money just simply being a perfect asshole, naturally.

The subjects of "investigation" were "headroom" and "distortion" when using mic inputs for recording.
I don't have tascam 22-2. I've made recording on Tascam 32, and that's all I could do. I have no clue how different mic preamps of 32 from 22-2, maybe non?

So, here we go.
Two hundred bucks acoustic guitar. Under hundred bucks AKG D-770 microphone, directly to tascam 32 mic input. Recorded on quantegy 457 tape at 15ips.

With this mic and close position pointed at the area of neck/hole and strumming sort of hard the input level was set at about between "3" and "4". Notice in the video, that VU meter during the recording (left channel) is actually "hitting" all the way.
Also, keep in mind, that the audio in the video is being "picked up" by the built in mic of Sony Cyber-Shot camera, and so that's what you hear.
During the recording I am standing behind the camera with guitar and mic-stand. During playback the sound comes from small speaker monitor.
Listen to mp3 file of the recording. The recording made on tape was recorded then to CD-Recorder and then I took it from CD to computer, converted to 192 kbps mp3, and that's what we have here.

Here is the mp3 file link:

Here's is the video file link: http://www.mzentertainment.com/pics/tascam_32/tascam_32_mic_input_test_recording.WMV

*********
-The conclusion?

-No conclusion.

rock on, people, and keep those decibels hot

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p.s.
If your headroom seems to end well below the zero-level - it's time to get a new leveler, assuming that you were "pointing" the old one at the right spot to begin with.
...allegorically speaking, of course.

 

[cjacek]

Here is the mp3 file link:

*********
-The conclusion?

Mike, first off, good post and one which puts to rest, IMHO, the notion of built in mic pres not being 'good enough', at least for the TASCAM recorders mentioned. Of interest is that the 20 and 30 series (both the so called 'budget' series) have a lot of shared components and thus would sound similar to one another. I recall using one of those Crown PZM's and my 1979 TEAC 3440's mic inputs to track an acoustic piano. The results, as the one above, proved to be clean, musical and hardly 'mediocre' sounding.

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[zoo_day]

Uher 4200

Tomorrow I'm picking up a Uher 4200. This will fit the bill well, I believe.
Thanks.

 

[jpmorris]

Tomorrow I'm picking up a Uher 4200. This will fit the bill well, I believe. Thanks.

Not precisely my choice, but I hope it works out for you. My 4000 is kind of noisy, although I suppose it would probably improve if the audio path was rebuilt.

What concerns me somewhat is that it tops out at 7.5ips (15 is usually the choice for mastering) and that it only takes 5" spools. Also, it can be a real bitch to connect to other equipment on account of the DIN connectors it uses instead of phono or jack. I managed to make an adaptor out of an old MIDI cable.

Also, unless you get the PSU as well, remember to pack a shedload of batteries. I modded mine slightly to run off a universal power adaptor.

It's a nice enough machine for field recording and apparently many bootleg tapes were made with these, but as a mastering deck, a B77 or something might have been a better choice.

On the plus side, if you have access to a 10.5" machine (or lots of patience) you can feed it quite cheaply by getting a job lot of empty 5" spools and a few 10.5" pancakes.

**EDIT**

One other annoyance on mine is that when you play it back, it always plays through the internal speaker as well as the output. This irritated me so I added an internal switch for the speaker.

 

[Dr ZEE]

Mr. Morris!
I've got a Q about Uher Rep.(s) machines. I was looking for sometime for some sort of small r-t-r unit to install into my VW Golf. It's time to upgrade my transportation unit, you know I had that idea for long time.
So, after searching around I kind of figured that a Uher 4200 is pretty much the only machine that would fit my bill It's a tough thing to score though

The questions are, since you've got one (I assume 4000 is pretty much the same as 4200 as power supply and trusport goes):
1. First, is the transport control all mechanical or some sort of "hybrid"?
2. would it be possible to addapt it to use with car's 12VDC as power source. Maybe with some sort of PSU adaptor?

Also, I assume, that these machines (4200) are pretty good for simply playing back stereo recordings at 7.5ips or maybe even 3-1/4. I would not really care about recording on it, just for playing back.

thanks for your time in advance

 

[jpmorris]

Mr. Morris!
The questions are, since you've got one (I assume 4000 is pretty much the same as 4200 as power supply and trusport goes):
1. First, is the transport control all mechanical or some sort of "hybrid"?

All-mechanical. IIRC the design is relatively unchanged from 1963 onwards - they seem to have switched from transistors to op-amps, pilots light to LEDs, but the core design seems to be mostly the same. It looks quite fantastic inside, everything is driven from a single motor so it has belts, drive shafts and other mechanisms all over the place - in the centre is a spoked flywheel which looks like it came from some Victorian steam-engine. But I digress. The transport controls are of the piano-key type you often find in portable and budget cassette decks.

There are several variants - ones designated 'Monitor' are three-head, mine is a 4000 Report-L which is a two-head model (incidentally the same as the one used in the film version of 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas').

2. would it be possible to addapt it to use with car's 12VDC as power source. Maybe with some sort of PSU adaptor? Also, I assume, that these machines (4200) are pretty good for simply playing back stereo recordings at 7.5ips or maybe even 3-1/4. I would not really care about recording on it, just for playing back.

IIRC the 4200 is half-track stereo - for quarter-track you'd want the 4400. Supported speeds are: 0.93, 1.87, 3.75 and 7.5 ips. They are selected by a somewhat strange control resembling a car gearbox. Putting it into 'neutral' shuts the deck down. I think the later versions use a more conventional rotary switch, but I'm not sure.

Voltage-wise it's designed to take around 7.5v (from 5 D-cell batteries) but runs quite happily off 6v which I fed it very crudely by soldering into two of the terminals in the battery compartment.
I understand there is an adaptor to run if from a 12v cigarette lighter supply, but it's probably hard to find. FWIW I would not want to try running it off a direct 12v supply without using some kind of regulator to step it down a little.

 

[Dr ZEE]

thanks!

wow, thanks a bunch for all the details. this all sonds pretty cool.
gotta try to hunt down one of those