Tascam 244

puffin

puffin

New member
I have recently been fooling around with a tascam 244 given to me by a friend. I’m having a bit of trouble getting it to record, though. I have downloaded the manual and can’t see what I’m doing wrong

I have a condenser > RNP> input 4 on the Tascam.

The record section of the Tascam is set to ‘sync’, then buss L is set to the left (track1) and buss R (3/4) is set to ‘safe’.

I have my level set and am monitoring the cue mix (central position in the monitoring section)

Track 4 fader is up and all pans are turned hard left. The rec LED is flashing in a ready to record state, but when I hold it down and press play, the light continues to flash, rather than going to the solid recording light state.

When I review the tape, there’s nothing recorded. I can monitor the signal ok. It shows up on the meter, but doesn’t record. What am I doing wrong?
 
If I'm correct, channels 1 and 3 should be panned left, channels 2 and 4 should be panned right. Then again, this may just affect "direct" recording vs. selecting a buss.:confused:
 
Your setup sounds correct.

E'thing's ready, REC LED is flashing, but when you press REC-PLAY it should go on solid while recording in passes to tape.

I'd check that the tape is not protected. The little notch or tab up on the top/right corner of the cassette should be intact. If it's punched out, then the tape is protected. Any prerecorded commercial cassette/album would have it's tabs punched out. Any new/blank tape out of the wrapper should have the tabs intact. If the cassette checks out okay, then I'd look in the upper/right corner of the tape compartment for a little finger, or switch lever that senses the protect tab on the tape.

A proper Cr02/Type II cassette will have it's protect tab and another little gap beside it for auto-tape sensing to Type II. BTW, one on each upper corner of the the tape, one for side A and one for side B in a conventional cassette recorder. The Portastudio only cares about the upper right tab and the cassette records on one "side" only,... actually 4-tracks across the entire tape width in one direction only,... but that's technically speaking.

If the tape is protected, you can re-enable recording by putting some tape over the gap.:eek:;)
 
...

My other guess would be maybe the Record button is not activating properly. Is it solid and square, or squishy and caved in? Do you feel a definite click when the Record button microswitch is depressed?:eek:;)

Do you press and hold REC while then pressing PLAY?:eek::eek:;)
 
Cheers for the response ARP!

The CrO tapes I have were bought new quite recently and haven’t been tampered with, but I’ll check them and the ‘little finger’ on the deck tonight after work.

The rec button does click when depressed, as does the play button. They both feel solid. I am indeed holding down the rec button before pressing play. I have also tried rec and pause, then pressing play.

I guess it’s possible there’s something wrong with the rec button underneath and it’s just not catching properly…

It’s driving me nuts. I’ve had the deck for a while and have managed to record a little guitar about 6 months ago through trial and error. The deck is in good condition for an old piece of gear and the monitored signal sounds nice coming through the headphones... just seems like it should work fine
 
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I've had a 244 which had a stubborn REC button, which I had to press a bit harder than on my other 244, to get it to record. Try that.
 
Hi guys,

I just wanted to say thanks for your suggestions. I finally got it working.

Cjacek, it was actually the record button. It's just has to be pressed a bit harder than usual. Crazy.

Thanks again!

SC
 
Good news...

gets around!:eek:;)

I wish someone would have given me a 244! Back in the day they were $1100, & not quite the throw-away item people think they are today.:eek:;)
 
Yeah, it's been fun so far. I'm quite enjoying playing around with it. I've been bouncing electro and live drums to it, which sound pretty good. I've been doing things like adding effects in Cubase and recording the tracks to the cassette, then back into Cubase.

I recorded some nice acoustic guitar on it too. It just seems to have more personality than going straight into the digital converters.

I'd like to do more but I'd need some kind of timecode generator to sync it to my DAW. Any ideas? Is this actually possible with such an old unit?
 
Does the 244 allow you to turn off noise reduction on track 4?

If so, get a Tascam MTS-30 or a JL Cooper PPS-2 or something like that, turn of n/r on track 4, stripe SMPTE timecode on track 4 and then set Cubase to slave to incoming MIDI timecode. You may already know this but then when you press play on the 244 and you hook the output of track 4 to the MTS-30/PPS-2/whatever it takes the SMPTE timecode and converts it to MIDI timecode and then the DAW slaves to that. Depending on your DAW and how your hardware is setup and how many plugs you have running and all that you may have problems sync'ing to the cassette transport because the computer is clocking off of the cassette...could get pops and clicks as the DAW tries to constantly resolve to the mechanical transport, or it may work great. YMMV but that's how you do it as long as you can defeat n/r on track 4, or maybe you run without n/r altogether, and that'll work too. Bottom line: you can't track SMPTE timecode with n/r switched in...the sync box won't track and convert it to MTC properly.
 
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