What was it like 20 years ago.

  • Thread starter Thread starter tjohnston
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20 years ago my hearing wasn't trashed from tube amps, drum cymbals, concerts, gigs, loud mixing and playback yet. No ringing and everything sounded nice and crisp, even on crappy audio equipment.:)

I only recorded Cassette Mix tapes back then, made sure I used Hi-Bias when I could afford to.

Ahhh....I was a lot better looking too!:D

-Stanze(31 yr. old)
 
If you can remember the 70's you weren't really there. lol. :)

The cost as well as the size of some equipment has changed, but most things are pretty much the same.
 
Tascam model 5. TWO 3340's hand synced RE-16's Sm-57's and a mic my guitar player got from his uncle out in cal-i-for-ni-ehh, i believe it was something called a U-67. It didn't work cause none of us knew anything about remote power supplys or that microphones could have a tube.Finally the drummer took it to an electronics store and after the electronics guy quit crapping his pants he fixed it and we all saw god in the form of high-fidelity..the ampex 'i'm gonna fukin kill you all in your sleep' 8 track was next. thats where we learned to wiggle the cards and cords to make something work.Not much has changed.Just the address. To protect the innocent.Although I still can't bring myself to go multitrack in someones bedroom.Basement,yeah...bedroom,no.I had by this time, already been in several professional studio's but they wouldnt let ya talk to em too much about the goin's on.I was just a bass player and didnt get to see the cool mics and such.
 
Started out late 70's with a Philips N4504 Reel-to-reel, used sound-on-sound. Had an old hohner Symphonic organ, a Harmony Les Paul Copy, a Hondo Jazz bass copy and a mini-Korg syntheziser. A few years later I went Tascam 244 and had a Hohner Pianette, Crumar organizer, Jen Sm2007 (string machine!) and a Roland SH2000. Had real crappy mics. Apart from cheapos from A-T and Pearl some electrec microphones from Champion, that actually wasn't so bad considering the price, but they were a bit noisy. In those days I worked a lot more with other people, knew a lot of good musicians in fairly established bands and for some reason they liked recording on my sorry excuses for songs. now it's more of a solo-flight. Well, not so much flight actually.
 
And to answer your question to a little bit larger extent. I think the big shifts for me came with
1) The cassette multitrackers
2) Midi, especially when multitimbral synths started appearing. It was great putting down 16 tracks of midi on the first two tracks on the recorder (been using Cakewalk since DOS-version 2).
3) When audio/midi married in the same software package. I waited for that to happen for a long time. Couldn't understand why noone did it. I never liked syncing midi with tape.
 
Twenty years ago I was a long hair tracking to a Sony two track reel to reel in the basement while smoking copious quantities of weed. Now everything is different. I'm now a long hair tracking to an Alesis HD24 through a lot of expensive preamps in the basement while smoking copious quantities of weed.
 
LOL TR!

To quote a Rush tune from wayback:

Plus ca change
Plus c'est la meme chose


:D
 
20 years ago we payed $2000 for a mic. We were happy just to have the preamps on our mixer and didn't worry about fancy pants boutique preamps. We didn't edit takes, we tracked it until the band got it right and if we had to edit we cut our fingers on tape and razor blades and we liked it! We loaded most gigs uphill both ways through 2 feet of snow and we didn't complain.
 
What was it like?

I was 20 years younger!
Computers were just starting to make an appearance with very limited audio use but the writinig was on the wall.
Most people still were tracking with big analogue consoles to multitrack analogue tape.
Radio stations were just moving away from carts and lps to cds.
Outside recording was starting to use DAT.
Large Diaphram condensor mics were prohibitively expensive as were good dynamics.
Tape machines were horribly expensive as was most other pro audio gear.
Now you can pick up mult thousand dollar machines and desks for pennies on the dollar.
But the guys who can keep them running are like the computer geeks hired to fix alleged Y2K problems written in all but dead computer languages, commanding huge sums for repairs and upgrades and that's if they can find the parts.
Embrace change but don't sacrifice quality.
I know guys in their 50's who can barely get email on a computer while others take to them like ducks to water.
There'll aways be the "next big thing" but that doesn't mean that everything that came before automatically becomes obsolete.
 
20 years ago, right about this time,...

I was already a few months on the Tascam 244, and probably only a few months away from the Tascam 38 & M30 mixer.

[Besides the above Tascams], Equipment consisted of TEAC ME-10 lowend hi-z electret condenser mics, Radio Shack reverb, Fender Champ, Yamaha MA-10 headphone/preamp and MM-10 mini-mixer, DOD Distortion pedal, Ibanez compressor pedal, Ibanez Blazer guitar and Peavy T-40 bass.

Stuff was locked in a trundle-bed sized closet, less bed. Heavily burgular alarmed one bedroom apartment with gear in closet, also alarmed. At the time, I'm sure the 244 was the biggest asset I owned, [no furniture or anything], and I was very paranoid about it being stolen,... worse paranoia when I got the 38/M30,...

but I think I've gotten over the paranoia by now.

Personally, in Feb '83, I was hooked up with this "good Catholic girl", [reads: sex maniac], and was getting set to get married,... to my future ex-wife.

I still have the 244, 38 and M30 & all that gear, to this day, but I'm on my second marriage.
 
Excerpts from a Washington Post contest:

20 years ago, we didn't have hand-held calculators. We had to do addition on our fingers. To subtract, we had to have some fingers amputated...

20 years ago "60 Minutes" wasn't a bunch of gray-haired liberal 80 year old guys. It was a bunch of gray-haired liberal 60 year old guys...

20 years ago they didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an axe, you just had to hope you could outrun him...

:D
 
Dokorder 7140 7" 4-track, a Teac Model 2A mixer, a couple of Radio Shack electret condenser mics and a pair of Vanco MD-373 dynamics that were free with the deck. Mixed to a Teac A-640 Stereo cassette deck. Noise reduction and a 15 ips deck were on my wish list.

Wanted to play like Leo Kottke.

Swore I'd never switch from the "warmth" of vinyl to the "sterile" sound of CD's.

Wanted to make a "record album".

Well, I got the toys on my wish list and then some.

Still wish I could play like Leo.

Far too many dollars into that "warm" analog equipment to totally switch.

Big CD collection, though, and back working on my own after shelving it all for 12 years.
 
We did have a BSOD, only it was black, not blue.

I was longing after the big 2 keyboard and full pedal Hammond with the 2 Leslies......still am.
 
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