The Cassette thread

[HisMostDarxxxellent]

Yoooooooo @kairos!

Sorry again for the lack of convo, pal.
Hope you are well. How’s the cassette deck hunt going? It’s a troubling experience unless you come out guns blazing with cash, cash, cash. A cassette is reliable to play from start to finish. It’s a is reliable as a spade. They aren’t the issue… it’s the aged playback device. My advice is to save up and get something that will give little to no problems. Something recently serviced and/or repaired. I bought a Sony from a used shop (talked about in a previous post on this thread). That said deck was in the premium section of the store, aside from the junk. After I tested it and got it replaced due to its undiagnosed faults. It now resides in the JUNK section for under $20 - almost $100 slashed off the price. Luckily, the store is a 5 minute bike ride. If that was eBay then I would have been so annoyed. The process of it all… ugh.

So my advice, if you haven’t already made your purchase would be to get something very good. I hope my Denon will keep me going for the rest of my days.

@kairos

Do you do any specific mastering yourself, or do you get help with that?

Yep! My musical journey seems to have been backwards to most. Started wanting to make music but never learned how to play an instrument. I spent more time with sound design type of stuff. Jerome Mardaga agreed to release his album on my label and although it had been mastered I wanted to give it the same sort of sound that my album had plus I couldn’t help myself. I tried out some things and it simply sounded better to my ears. Mastering for cassette or printing to cassette in general needs a certain touch IMO. There are some wonderfully extensive details explained by @JunkRunner on the other cassette thread. It is entitled Our Music On Cassette.

Sorry again for the really late reply.
Look forward to hearing from you!

[Mistercharlie]

Where are folks in Europe buying blank tapes now? My last batch came from Cassette Comeback, but the owner moved to Canada or some such.

Is there another good store that ships in the EU? Looking for some BASF chromes, and SA90s, but anything will do.

[jefones]

The label I am part of DTHXCMP released this cassette a little bit ago

[colectivo_triangular]

I’ve bought mine at Thomann:

RTM FOX C90 Type 1

[Airyck]

This thread is a reminder of incomplete projects laying around.

Both need work.
One will become a tape delay eventually.

[Mistercharlie]

I ordered some of those to try out. Any good?

[subduct]

Cassette ambitions:

• Tascam 424 mkIII black
• TDK Pro SM20 tapes

(plus money to buy and space to put it somewhere)

[colectivo_triangular]

I am using these and the ones from ATR with a Tascam 424 MKII. No issues here, so far. But maybe I’m not too finicky, either.

[JamesM]

Get all mine on eBay, mostly TDK SA, SA-X and AD, but I see loads of BASF chromes too.

[Mistercharlie]

I’ll probably end up there.

[nilsec]

I got a really nice review from a podcasts that reviews cassettes!

Tabs Out | Cassilda and Carcosa – Tubes, Transformers, Transistors, & Tap

The 8 minute closer, “Cloud Waves,” practically dives into the sound of the crevices of sunlight from under a childhood bed.

[acidk]

Fantastic thread!

Any recommendations for affordable tape decks?
What’s your signal chain? Synth --> Analogue(?) Mixer --> Tape?

Do you keep your music on tape only - or do you finally do a digital overdub?

Cheers

flo

[Scot_Solida]

I take many approaches. I use a few decks. For eight tracks, I tend to use a 1/4” reel-to-reel in the form of a Fostex A8. I also have some 1/2” decks, but the Fostex is more reliable and has a more distinctive (read “lo-fi”) sound.

For four tracks I use either a Teac 1/4” reel-to-reel (22-4) or (more often) a Tascam 424 MkIII cassette Portastudio.

Mixing down is done differently depending on the material. For the reel-to-reel machines, I might mix down through an outboard mixer (Tascam Model-16, currently) to either a cassette deck (Tascam CD-A580) or the computer. I might also MkI down to the Model-16’s internal SD recorder.

Sometimes I record each track individually to the DAW and mix down there. It just depends on my mood or the material/project.

As for recommendations, that’s difficult. The Tascam Portastudios are classics, but any tape machine is going to be a gamble at this point. These machines are getting old and that means worn belts, relays (the latter is especially true of reel-to-reel machines, less so for cassette-based units), poor heads and shaky transports. If you can, test drive before buying. If not, expect issues, and be glad if there are none. If there are, where possible you might think of it as a lo-fi feature

When looking for a 4-track, look for auxiliary outputs, extra mixer inputs, and high tape speeds. The cheaper units will be more limited, but that’s okay. Maybe it won’t have any effects sends… that just means committing your effects while tracking. I personally love working this way. Be sure to get a unit that supports the number of inputs you will need to record simultaneously. Some budget units might only have two inputs, while others will have an input for each track or even more, for extra mixer channels.

[Analogue5]

I get my tapes from Goodwill stores. Some times I come across new ones sealed, but I’m plenty fine with dubbing over some random album of whatever after I decide to sample or not to sample. Gotta love that polka music right? I played with a Marantz pmd 201 I think, for about a year. It was fun messing with the playback speed, but my wife has a dual cassette magnavox boombox from the 90’s and I picked up for like 3.00 a dual cassette deck that was, well, a steal!

I looked into the the “Hi-Fi” of cassette and people seem to go crazy for some Sony walkman. It’s cool but, I liked the more lo-fi idea in the first place, so for me, the cheaper the better.

[joeyfivecents]

[JunkRunner]

PSA

A short description of a solution to a seemingly common problem.

Make: Tascam Porta 05 Ministudio
Problem: Play keeps slapping back (Rewind and Fast-forward function normally).
Source of Problem: A small metal tension bar (held in place by a black plastic piece under the heads) is likely broken - reducing the tension.
Solution: Remove the heads and the black plastic piece. Bend the metal piece to create tension on white plastic piece that helps move the whole mechanism up.
Note: The bend is necessary because the broken plastic piece can’t hold the small arm of the tension bar. By moving the small arm to the outside of the plastic piece, the bar is offset. The bend fixes this offset and repositions it to properly work with the white plastic piece.

Removed parts & important parts color coded:

Pre bend (mini zip tie not used in final version):

Solution configuration:

[Scot_Solida]

Nice work. I made many a tune on Porta 05s over the years,

[JunkRunner]

Thought it was a goner

[Scot_Solida]

Glad to see it wasn’t!

[bwo]

Managed to find a very nice 3head akai gxc 760d thrifting, sounds so dang good and I’ve heard the heads in it are near indestructible. Stoked on it, just seems to need a new lamp on one of the VU meters.