rewind drum motor wonky and low gain on Tascam 38?

[A Reel Person]

Yo, hey, thanx.

Sorry to be so wordy! I swore off long posts a long time ago,... for the most part!

Even though I have a pretty set number of things I require in a mixer, fortunately within that subset of gear the field is still pretty wide open.

For as much as I could point out the virtues of the simple M30, there's nothing to say you'd not do just as well with an MX-80, a couple of PE-40'S and an M-1B. If you wanted the whole enchilada topped off you might throw in an MH-40. Likewise, just get an M308 or 312. The M216 & 200 series are a capable & more compact line of 4-buss mixers. M520, geez the list is nearly endless, but you get it!

I've seen (read) a rule of thumb, or perhaps just came to this realization thru common sense, that you scope the number of mixer busses (subgroups) to be half the number of (tape) tracks. If you have an 8-track, you're good with 4-buss. If you have a 16-track, you're good with 8-buss,... seems to be optimum,... by virtue or coincidence of the fact that on a Tascam recording mixer e'ry buss output has 2 jacks.

That's why you hear me go on like a broken record that Buss 1 hooks-to-Tracks 1/5, Buss 2-to-Tracks 2/6, Buss 3-to-Tracks 3/7 & Buss 4-to-Tracks 4/8. Then, while sending identical signal from the mixer Buss 1 to Tracks 1 & 4 simultaneously, (f/i), you differentiate which track gets recorded to by which Rec-Function button you put into "Rec-Ready" mode. It seems so simple, really, but might seem like rocket science to explain it to some Newbies, sometimes. No one in our present company, mind you, but you get it!

There's no mindset or conceptual grasp initially of Buss-Assign architecture when you come from a Mic-to-Preamp-to-Direct-Out-to-I/F-to-Track DAW architecture or concept. (But can be learned very easily).

That Buss-to-Track sizing calculation won't make sense by unimited DAW tracks,... but just think of it as how many track simul recording you'll really do, and shoot for that number. Your particular digital interface #of inputs would be a better way to size the number of mixer subgroups, but...

Yo, I'll curtail myself from advising anyone on any aspect of DAW recording!

 

[A Reel Person]

For a Tascam 38 & 1-Man-Band, a 4-Buss recording mixer would suffice.

For large ensembles, or if u just wanna go-big,... an 8-Buss/12-or-20-Channel mixer is premium. Bigger even? How big of a live recording are you gonna produce, how big do you want your console to be, and/or how much are you willing to spend?

Cascading a couple mixers together, anyone?

You can size things up and down, however much you want, based on a lot of factors.

Nothing says 4-buss is the golden rule with 8-tracks. A "stereo" (2-buss) mixer is workable, if not optimal. You could feed the tracks with a single preamp, and mix with a simple 8x2 line mixer (M-1B).

My point: the list of gear or field of qualified gear is nearly wide open, as well as the number of ways you can patch and the number of philopsophies or styles you can assume in production.

To go on further might just confuse the issue.

Forget choosing specific gear. I WANT IT ALL!!!

 

[Sonarcade]

the replies generated from this post have inspired many ideas -- one of which included snapping up a partially working Tascam m-216. I say partially working since the headphone monitor volume knob is very loose that I can't hear anything out of my cans unless I continue to press down on the knob. There are a number of other similar issues with this thing such as with the trim knobs, if turned at a certain point in a certain way, crackles and kills the output signal. I was told by the owner that it can be dealt with with some compressed air and it's just a matter of getting the pots cleaned. Hopefully I can enlist your help once more as I did when dealing with the Tascam 38 -- which I'm still working the kinks out of.

I bought a pancake of NOS of a Quantegy 456 over the BASF SM911 and hopefully it'll work out. The nab hubs or nab hub(singular) emit a squeak when winding regardless of the reel that's mounted.

Also, I stopped by my local Walgreens and could only find 91% hydrous alcohol. Is anhydrous isopropyl alcohol easily accessible or does it take a visit to some underground specialty store trafficked by gnomes and pixies to get it? thanks much.

it took a lot of willpower to write this since I was stunned at the length and depth of the recent back and forth between sweetbeatz and Dave. I mean how does one follow _that_?

 

[A Reel Person]

Sorry for writing that manifesto!

I guess I go over the top, sometimes. Heh, heh.

I'm just concerned you can't deflect the meters on the 38, and you clearly don't have anything that can adequately mix down 8-to-2 on the turnaround, using the Novation X-station. Maybe it's workable, and I'm just misjudging.

I know the old Tascam gear very well. There are maybe a hundred options to follow, and no single path to the solution. I like to talk about it very much, maybe too much, but at it's basis things are very simple. Even your issue could be very simple. I love this gear and it's served me very well. None of it's very complicated, but the scenarios you could construct with this gear are nearly limitless. I just wanna help. I'm prepared to help.

Aye!

PS: Beatz & I could talk about this stuff literally endlessly, as we're both up to our ears in it. Often times we do,... and some of these topics go very deep,... even taken offline by PM sometimes. We both welcome new blood, inquisitive Newbies and solving problems. This is a helpful crowd of really good guyz. Glad u joined. Ur issues will get worked out. No worries./DA

 

[RRuskin]

I bought a pancake of NOS of a Quantegy 456 over the BASF SM911 and hopefully it'll work out. The nab hubs or nab hub(singular) emit a squeak when winding regardless of the reel that's mounted.

That squeak is probably the excess friction caused by "sticky-shed" syndrome of the tape you bought. An excellent way to ruin your deck. Throw that stuff away and buy newly manufactured tape. All Quantegy/Ampex tape is suspect and not worth bothering with.

 

[sweetbeats]

Sonarcade,

Yeah...manifesto...

Think of it this way...the info is now "out there". It may not all make sense now, but you will revisit it and pick something up each time. That's the nice thing about dialoguing in public forum...

Just let us know what you want us to drill down on. I can empathize with you . I've learned a ton the past couple years, mainly operations and maintenance stuff. I'm somewhat competent at that. I'm still a baby for sure on the electronics stuff, and maybe always will be, but whatever kind of information it is all good and it is really liberating to learn the stuff. Most if not all of us here know that, so even if we get rambling you usually just need to bring us back down and ask for some specifics on something, okay? Sorry for pouring a bunch of stuff out on the thread.

I got anhydrous iso alcohol at Wal Mart..91%. I'd like to find 99% but that is a little harder. Just check different drug stores. I actually use a video/audio head cleaner made by MG Chemical for cleaning the tape path. Or use a good quality denatured alcohol. Beck swears by it. It is a well-reputed option, even a better option according to some sources and it can be found at most department stores and definitely hardware stores.

Good job on the M-216. That will serve you well.

The headphone "knob"...do you mean jack? Like you're having to push down on the plug in the jack?

Scratchy pots can usually be resolved using a product called DeoxIT. You can get it online or most any electronics shop will have it. You have to open up the board though so you can get to the body of the pot, not just the knob part...usually there's a little hole in the body of the pot and you can squirt the cleaner in there using the little straw that comes with the cleaner and then take a shoestring and wrap it around the knob and enthusiastically spin the knob from stop to stop using the shoestring to do so.

t took a lot of willpower to write this since I was stunned at the length and depth of the recent back and forth between sweetbeatz and Dave. I mean how does one follow _that_?

Again, Sonarcade, welcome. We are glad you are here contributing. Maybe you don't feel like you are contributing but you are. Search out threads I've started or posted on, or better yet go further back and look for threads of mine over on the Tascam Analog Forum. You will find lots of "newbie" posts. Sorry if our bantering is intimidating or whatever but take it as a compliment...your thread got the juices flowing and I respect you just as much as other people here that are scary-smart relative to my brain, and not that you aren't. We're not about who's smarter/better than the other. We're enthusiasts and we get excited when anybody is interested in this stuff. Make sense? We're having fun. Keep up the posts.

 

[A Reel Person]

Yo, I may seem long winded on these posts.

I've been trying not to be. I've not been posting much, long or short, but some subjects really hook me in.

Anyway, for the outside observer this may seem like a lot of pointless chatter, but I always put my money where my mouth is! My recommendations come from practical experience, and I'd never recommed u do anything that I'd not do myself, (or may have already done). For people coming from a DAW experience, some of this gear is a bit confusing at first. Once you grasp the big picture aspect of mixers and recorders, it becomes a snap!

An M216 in a bit of disrepair could turn into a really decent component in the system, in the long run. Crackling pots can almost always be worked in by twisting them vigorously for a few minutes. They will clean up. There's also Pot-and-Tuner Cleaner you can get. Sometimes that works, if u spray it down the shaft of the pots, other times might require a bit of disassembly for access. The headphone pot that's loose may have to be replaced. You'd have to determine if it's loose on the chassis-mount and maybe an accomanying loose wire,... or worse that the pot is damaged internally and has a bit of play. 16 channels and 4 pgm busses gives you plenty of flexibilioty with the 38. I guess u r the deal hound! (is what it sounds like!)

Aw shucks, squeaky tape? The more of that you get, the more a Snackmaster becomes a practical purchase, or so I'd think.

Carry on!

 

[RRuskin]

Aw shucks, squeaky tape? The more of that you get, the more a Snackmaster becomes a practical purchase, or so I'd think.

Carry on!

By the time you factor in the cost of the Snackmaster, the power it takes to run it, and the additional wear on your deck from using tape that's turned to crap, how much money do you think you've saved over buying new (not n.o.s.) tape?

I have a 30 + year old Tascam 25-2 that up until recently was in constant use. The only time "baked" tape has been on it was to retrieve material for archiving. Otherwise, all tape was "sticky-shed" free. This machine is still flat to 20Khz with plenty of adjustment left to compensate for head wear. I doubt your machines will match this kind of performance longevity with the regular use of "bake before using" media.

It's your gear and can be treated as you wish but please stop telling people using tape with sticky-shed, baked or not, is a smart thing to do.

 

[sweetbeats]

Rick,

With all due respect (truly), I think the important thing is to have information that is pro or con to one's own situation available.

Dave digs the snackmaster...I like the name for sure.

I don't think I'd be using sticky tape on my decks unless, like you said, it was necessary for archival, but, like you, that's my choice as well.

I think its good for people to know that there is an option if you've got sticky tape. I don't think Dave is suggesting that Sonarcade seek out sticky tape, but that there is an option to deal with what he's got, take it or leave it.

I also think you've done a good job of stating the antithesis (i.e. trash it, it ain't worth it) and now Sonarcade has a dual vantage from which he can choose a path or ask more questions.

My point is that I don't think Dave is suggesting that choosing sticky tape is a "smart thing to do".

My 2p.

 

[RRuskin]

My point is that I don't think Dave is suggesting that choosing sticky tape is a "smart thing to do".

Well, that's how I took it. At the very least, he is implying that it's a benign practice.

 

[sweetbeats]

I hear ya. I can see that. I think I'm filtering some because I know he is an incurable enthusiast and careful with his gear.

Your point is well taken from my vantage point.

I do dig the name "snackmaster" though...

 

[A Reel Person]

Naw,... come on now!

I don't advocate sourcing sticky-crapped-out tape to embark on new projects, but there's a whole lot of marginal and sticky tape out there being sourced by (mostly) Newbies, who end up in-gunk and are looking for a solution. "Baking" tape is that,... a stop-gap measure.

No doubt, the vast majority of tape-baking is proposed to salvage otherwise valuable masters from eternity, and it's not seen in any circles as a permanent solution. That's important on vast vaults full of masters from well known albums in pro studios.

I've not sourced any sticky tape that I know of, and only my oldest 10-or-so Ampex reels from the 80s suffer from a clear case of SSS. It's annoying, at best, as none of my masters are "valuable" in the commercial sense, but maybe only for me in sentimental value. To say the stickiness has developed over 10~15 years would be accurate, so that the stop-gap measure of "baking" might provide another 10~15 years of shelf life to my otherwise worthless recordings,... is something that I deem favorable. They are not masters that I'll play a lot or even transfer to new media. My best mixdowns have probably already been done off these reels,... so it's back to the worth in sentimental value.

I've not done a whole lot of reel recording lately, but SSS is not a big issue for me. I have plenty of stocks of non-sticky-prone media, and the sticky-prone media I might have acquired is AFAIK holding up well without issues. The high desert, low humidity climate I live in has at least helped in my case, however "baking" of my oldest masters is on tap for me sometime in the future.

I'm extending this scenario to (perhaps) Newbies that may have sourced a load of SSS tape and are looking for an alternative. OF COURSE buying brand new reel tape from RMGI is the best solution, at a cost, but leaves the users at a loss for what to do with the already acquired SSS problem-tape, sometimes at considerable cost to them, when otherwise they deemed new reel tape too expensive on the budget. Baking is that stop-gap measure.

I'm not against it categorically, and I don't abuse my equipment, thank you.

No one has to read or take my advice seriously, nor is it fatally flawed advice or anything that I'd not do myself. Just because it's focused not on salvaging valuable album masters, but on a different scenario,... eh,... I'll not repeat myself.

Of course, just buy brand new tape and call it a day. Toss the old tape, chalk it up to money badly spent, and source the budget for new. Sounds easy.

 

[A Reel Person]

Which brings up a question:...

We know the SSS tape is a TON more abrasive and harmful to the tape path,... but wouldn't a "restored" (baked) SSS-prone tape also have it's integrity and less abrasive properties restored? Thanx./DA

 

[RRuskin]

We know the SSS tape is a TON more abrasive and harmful to the tape path,... but wouldn't a "restored" (baked) SSS-prone tape also have it's integrity and less abrasive properties restored? Thanx./DA

Less to the point of playability but not to the degree of playing like new.

 

[Sonarcade]

if I may interject a bit, considering again this thread has exhibited a level of thoughtfulness on both ends of the "debate" (if we can call it that), I think that in my case, I had to hit that wall with my n00btastic SSS-ridden reels before I realized that a new reel would be the ideal investment. As Dave had pointed out earlier, I'm kind of a deal hunter not so much out of choice as it is out of necessity (if you had a nickel everytime you heard that one, eh?). I run a modest rig and my songs' demands don't go beyond a guitar and vocals and some pad-like instrument in the back. But back on topic, the low demands also seemed to work hand in glove to my frugal ways, but I've had to learn the hard way that the math shows a new reel to work for me.

going off-topic here, but I also noticed that my VU meters on the Tascam 38 either a) stopped responding b)intermittently respond c) swing between both extremes despite the low levels fed into it. Is this a common issue and something easily tweaked with?

Also, I removed all the knobs and started scrubbing away at the pots on my m-216 with some 71% isopropyl alcohol and found it to be inadequate to get the sticky grease-clay-gunk off the board. I've also noticed the right master channel out doesn't give a signal -- at all. Seeing as how I bought the mixer for the pre-s anyway, I suppose it doesn't matter, but there's a part of me that's itching to get that working again. As always, I appreciate any suggestions you have to offer, wise ones.