It has been quite some time since I've gotten on to post anything. I've been quietly lurking and reading your posts occasionally, but just not much has felt worthy to share.
However, I recently got back into purchasing used 2488 Portastudios (even though I now use a OG DP32 (the one with MIDI)), I still love the 2488s, digging into them, and troubleshooting them to bring them back to life (or try to). I get them, typically, through eBay and Reverb as "Parts Only" and then see what's wrong with them.
On occasion they are just filthy because they weren't taken care of very well and need a good cleaning. Sometimes it's a bad drive and changing out the drive or circuit for the drive does the trick.
I have a 2488 MKII that I spent a good part of yesterday poking at (I must have pulled it apart 5 or 6 complete times trying different things that I can now pull one apart in my sleep).
It worked great in general, except no audio out (monitor output of headphones). Testing the circuit boards and wiring harnesses, everything seemed to be clean and working. It ended up being the circuit where the power supply is. Something in there must have gotten fried or ??? (I haven't dug too deeply into that yet) because replacing that with a known good working circuit brought it all back to life.
The Mystery Treasures part of my story is... you never know what you might find. Opening these things up could be a disgusting mess of roach carcasses or dirt, spiders and spider webs as if they had been tossed into the attic for years.
But the wonderful Mystery Treasures I have found is music left on the drive from a previous owner.
Sometimes, I find recordings that are, well, "interesting" to say the least, that I just put out of their misery with a format of the drive.
On rare occasions though, there are tunes that are wonderfully recorded that I catch myself staying and listening for a while and then decide they are worth doing a quick mix to listen to later and also backing up. This MKII was FULL of these quality tunes (so much that it's going to take a while to mix stuff down and backup). It also made the time I spent with this repair, well worth it.
The other thing I found, which I have never found on a used 2488 before, was the TASCAM demo. (That thing is usually long deleted off of the hard drive.) The demo is the same tune that was included with most TASCAM Portastudios, it seems. Not sure why I find that the original demo as TASCAM intended it still on the recorder so cool, but I do.
So, I am sure most of you would factory reset a recorder you decide to sell, right?
I find it's weird to not remove stuff before parting with the device. But the stories that "could be" with finding stuff like this. The band just simply broke up or they didn't care to delete it all. Or someone in the band passed away and dealing with it was too painful. My mind drifts off thinking about the possibilities.
In any scenario, just deleting really good music left on this 2488MKII by a "mysterious" band seems so wrong.
Who knows, maybe someone on this forum may have once owned this 2488MKII.
How do you feel about someone else finding your music left on a recorder and not just deleting it, but saving it instead?
However, I recently got back into purchasing used 2488 Portastudios (even though I now use a OG DP32 (the one with MIDI)), I still love the 2488s, digging into them, and troubleshooting them to bring them back to life (or try to). I get them, typically, through eBay and Reverb as "Parts Only" and then see what's wrong with them.
On occasion they are just filthy because they weren't taken care of very well and need a good cleaning. Sometimes it's a bad drive and changing out the drive or circuit for the drive does the trick.
I have a 2488 MKII that I spent a good part of yesterday poking at (I must have pulled it apart 5 or 6 complete times trying different things that I can now pull one apart in my sleep).
It worked great in general, except no audio out (monitor output of headphones). Testing the circuit boards and wiring harnesses, everything seemed to be clean and working. It ended up being the circuit where the power supply is. Something in there must have gotten fried or ??? (I haven't dug too deeply into that yet) because replacing that with a known good working circuit brought it all back to life.
The Mystery Treasures part of my story is... you never know what you might find. Opening these things up could be a disgusting mess of roach carcasses or dirt, spiders and spider webs as if they had been tossed into the attic for years.
But the wonderful Mystery Treasures I have found is music left on the drive from a previous owner.
Sometimes, I find recordings that are, well, "interesting" to say the least, that I just put out of their misery with a format of the drive.
On rare occasions though, there are tunes that are wonderfully recorded that I catch myself staying and listening for a while and then decide they are worth doing a quick mix to listen to later and also backing up. This MKII was FULL of these quality tunes (so much that it's going to take a while to mix stuff down and backup). It also made the time I spent with this repair, well worth it.
The other thing I found, which I have never found on a used 2488 before, was the TASCAM demo. (That thing is usually long deleted off of the hard drive.) The demo is the same tune that was included with most TASCAM Portastudios, it seems. Not sure why I find that the original demo as TASCAM intended it still on the recorder so cool, but I do.
So, I am sure most of you would factory reset a recorder you decide to sell, right?
I find it's weird to not remove stuff before parting with the device. But the stories that "could be" with finding stuff like this. The band just simply broke up or they didn't care to delete it all. Or someone in the band passed away and dealing with it was too painful. My mind drifts off thinking about the possibilities.
In any scenario, just deleting really good music left on this 2488MKII by a "mysterious" band seems so wrong.
Who knows, maybe someone on this forum may have once owned this 2488MKII.
How do you feel about someone else finding your music left on a recorder and not just deleting it, but saving it instead?
