R
Rodney Winsor
New member
Hi all -
First post, long-term lurker.
I use a Tascam 424mkIII 4 track cassette recorder. So far so bad. One thing I love to do is record vocals through a guitar amp. Not to get that kind of lo-fi "Strokes" thing. Although that has its place. No, the thing is this. Through the amp I manage to get a very smooth, sweet sounding vocal. I was surprised. In fact, I nearly didn't try it because I thought it was a bad idea. But - partly as a consequence of the little spring reverb tank and the gain (a slight amount of distortion gets a lovely mid-'60s kind of sound, or so I like to imagine), the results are imo good-to-great for what I'm doing.
But here's the issue. I don't mic the amp. Rather, I take a lead out of the back from a headphone socket - then straight into the 424.
So far nothing has gone wrong. However, I'm a little twitchy that there's something really bad about this technique - although my knowledge of currents, impedance matching, electrical-disasters-waiting-to-happen etc, is virtually non-existent.
The amp in question is an old '80s Carlsbro 50w Hornet designed for guitars (a single 12" speaker solid-state combo, basically). It's not actually very good for guitars, however. Or at least, I don't rate it. But as I said, I've managed to find something it's brilliant for. I'm just scared I might knacker it, or the 424, or both. I do *not* want to mic and would very much like to continue using it in the way I do, but not at the expense of the Tascam - obviously. So can anyone reassure me here please? Hope so. Thanks.
First post, long-term lurker.
I use a Tascam 424mkIII 4 track cassette recorder. So far so bad. One thing I love to do is record vocals through a guitar amp. Not to get that kind of lo-fi "Strokes" thing. Although that has its place. No, the thing is this. Through the amp I manage to get a very smooth, sweet sounding vocal. I was surprised. In fact, I nearly didn't try it because I thought it was a bad idea. But - partly as a consequence of the little spring reverb tank and the gain (a slight amount of distortion gets a lovely mid-'60s kind of sound, or so I like to imagine), the results are imo good-to-great for what I'm doing.
But here's the issue. I don't mic the amp. Rather, I take a lead out of the back from a headphone socket - then straight into the 424.
So far nothing has gone wrong. However, I'm a little twitchy that there's something really bad about this technique - although my knowledge of currents, impedance matching, electrical-disasters-waiting-to-happen etc, is virtually non-existent.
The amp in question is an old '80s Carlsbro 50w Hornet designed for guitars (a single 12" speaker solid-state combo, basically). It's not actually very good for guitars, however. Or at least, I don't rate it. But as I said, I've managed to find something it's brilliant for. I'm just scared I might knacker it, or the 424, or both. I do *not* want to mic and would very much like to continue using it in the way I do, but not at the expense of the Tascam - obviously. So can anyone reassure me here please? Hope so. Thanks.
