Tascam tape speed mystery

[jrdInNWA]

I recently started using a 414mkII. About 20yrs ago I recorded a lot of music on a 424mkII. When I play my old tapes on the 414, they are all playing FAST, even with the pitch control at full slow. Was there an extreme range of tape speed on the 424’s that would make playback so different on the 414?

 

[Papanate]

The Portastudio 414 MKII records/plays at 9.5 cm/sec (3-3/4 ips) - The Tascam 424 MKII has two tape speeds: 9.5 cm/sec (3-3/4 ips) and 4.8 cm/sec (1-7/8 ips) - you probably recorded on the 424mkII at 1 7/8 ips -

 

[jrdInNWA]

Why would I do that? I’m assuming me from 20 years ago was trying to maximize the time on each cassette like a dweeb. So the pitch wheel speeds on each unit are different, or did the 424 allow me to access a whole different gear basically? Thanks for the help.

 

[rob aylestone]

The old cassettes just doubled the speed to get better quality - as in mainly the frequency response went up, and stability was a bit better. One of them just has two speeds available as a feature.

 

[sweetbeats]

Yep. High speed and standard speed. Sometimes it was helpful to be compatible with other machines of the same format that was only one or the other speed. Sometimes it was nice to have more record time with the standard speed. Most the time, and as is the case with most cassette multitrack machines, the only speed was high speed because of the enhanced record quality and stability.

 

[Papanate]

Why would I do that? I’m assuming me from 20 years ago was trying to maximize the time on each cassette like a dweeb. So the pitch wheel speeds on each unit are different, or did the 424 allow me to access a whole different gear basically? Thanks for the help.

You have to talk to yourself twenty years ago and find out - maybe you had long songs and wanted it to fit one side of a cassette - or it's possible you didn't have a lot of spare money - so you recorded at the slower speed to save money - or probably the real reason - you didn't know you could alter the speed.