Trade some Quantegy tape for a Porta07???

[MartyMcFly]

OK...
Now that i got my buzzing problem fixed...I have a question about a TascamPorta 07. See I recorded a bunch of $h!t about 10 years ago or so on one. Then like an idiot I sold it before I mastered down what I had recorded. So now I have a crap load of tapes that i want to atleast transfer to my computer or to the Tascam 32 I just bought.
I guess my question is...Are pretty much all the 4 track cassette type of porta studios the same. Meaning do they all record the tracks the same width? So I could basically get any other 4-track cassette recorder and pop in one of my tapes and it should work? Or Not? Do I need a porta 07 to get to my tapes?

Id be willing to trade a couple of those Quantegy 456 tapes for one.

 

[A Reel Person]

They all record the same track width, but they are not all the same.

Some Portastudios run 2x/High speed and some 1x/Normal speed, and some do both. There was an effort to name the 1x-speed Portas "Ministudios" but there's not an absolute distinction in the Tascam line between "Portastudio" and "Ministudio". Anyway, the Porta07 is a 2x-speed recorder.

The other difference would be that a select few Portas have Dolby-B NR as opposed to dbx, however the large majority of Tascam Portastudios have dbx NR. Some of the "Ministudios" have no NR at all, but finding a dbx unit is pretty much a slam dunk.

There's another lesser known difference between models in the Tascam Portastudio line, and that's the phase orientation of the track elements in the heads. The old line of Tascam Portastudios had the adjacent tracks reversed in polarity from each other, which is a clever design to help reduce crosstalk. But, there was a turning point when Tascam Portastudios gave their head a "normal" un-staggered phase in the head elements. In a basic sense, tapes recorded on the "old line" of Portastudios are not compatible with the "newer" lines of Portas, due to track phasing. The good news is this would only be a technical problem you'd actually hear if you recorded 2-tracks simultaneously, either as a stereo pair or a coincidental pair of 2 tracks where there's any amount of track bleed, then you'd be in big trouble for obvious phase cancellation problems. Unfortunately, I can't say for sure if the Porta 07 would fall in the "old line" or "new line" of Tascam 4-track head configuration, so you're kind of on your own with that. I only found this track phase issue through testing of various models. If, by chance, you'd have a sample Porta 07 tape with a single test tone across all 4-tracks, I could test it in "the lab" and come up with more definitive information.

Those are the issues I'd watch out for.

 

[MartyMcFly]

No one want to trade a porta 07 for some 1/4 Quantegy 456 GM 2500 tape?