Wanna hear what stupid Porta trick I did today?

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Sennheiser

Sennheiser

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I started about 9AM today after I got home from work, a 16 hour shift. I had been up since 8AM Friday morning.

I'm expecting a new compressor in a few days so I take the insert cables and plug them into channels 1 & 2. Note, there is nothing hooked up on the other end of the cables.

I was redoing my wiring harness and making sure I had enough strain relief on the finished cable. That's why they were plugged in. My Tascam 488 MkII is on a roll-around stand.

Now I should explain here that I built an oak cabinet to house my 488 MkII and built a padded 4" wide armrest on the front edge of the cabinet. There are holes bored into the front for access to the punch-in/out, headphone, and the two insert jacks under the armrest. Unfortunately, these cannot be seen without crawling under the console. Inserting a plug is by feel.

So here I am with a completed wiring harness that looks great. I'm patting myself on the back for doing such a neat job. A little later instead of going to bed I decide to lay a couple of stereo drum tracks from the drum machine on tracks one and two through, you guessed it, channels one and two.

Can't figure out why nothing is going to tape. Got levels on the channels, got levels on the stereo buss, and nothing on tape. Now I'm starting to scratch my head thinking I've got two channels that just went tits-up. Mind you, I cannot see the insert cables plugged in under the armrest and the cables are routed under the cabinet to the rear where they join the rest of the harness. So I buss the channels over to tracks three and four, then five and six, and so on. Nothing. I'm ready to scream. I know this board inside and out and I can't for the life of me figure out where in the hell my signal is going...or not going.

I recheck every damn connection into the board, into the amp, into the reverb, into the mix-down deck and the return, and then I happen to see four plugs on the end of the harness not doing anything at the rack. The ends of my two insert cables that I had forgotten about.

DAMN! I cannot believe I forgot about the insert cables I inserted into the front jacks. I wasted two hours of recording time tring to find/fix something that was literally right in front of me, though I couldn't see it.

I don't think I'll be doing any more recording work after being up for over 24 hours. The mind just is not as sharp without sleep. You become forgetful, thinking logically is impaired, and frustration comes very easily as I found out.

Sorry for the long post. :o
 
That's not so bad, Sen.

Anyway, you gotta give yourself credit. 1) You found it. 2) You'd even consider doing some recording after working 'round the clock.

Funny, but your job sounds like mine, and I know when I've been up over 24 hours, the last thing I want to do is record or play. Well, not exactly true,... I may want to, but I can't, due to fatigue. The best I can do is eat and space in front of the tv, 'til I"m ready for bed.

I've got other stories that are similar, and different ones, that I've wasted many, many hours on certain things.

Don't feel too bad.

488mkII, cool. I'm a Tascam person too. The 488mkII is one I've not gotten yet. Maybe someday soon, after these 24 hour workdays, I can afford more toys!;)
 
Sennheiser said:
..... The mind just is not as sharp without sleep. You become forgetful, thinking logically is impaired, and frustration comes very easily as I found out.....
I agree totally with you. ;)
 
DAMN! I cannot believe I forgot about the insert cables I inserted into the front jacks. I wasted two hours of recording time tring to find/fix something that was literally right in front of me, though I couldn't see it.

You'll find that most studio owners, pro and not, have similar stories.

While under pressure, its very easy to overlook the obvious. Sometimes the obvious is so darn embarrassing ya don't want to admit it :)

Hooking outputs to outputs and forgetting to plug something in is probably the most common goof :)

I spent an entire weekend wanting to kick my pair of otari's because they didn't record squat. 350' of nothing on the tapes.

Why? The tube preamps were connected backwards. out to out and in to in.

Oooooops.
 
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