New setup?

[Montanawildlives]

Hi all, I’ve been watching youtube videos and surfing ebay for a week or so and I’m hooked. I’m a songwriter, piano player, and singer (in process) and want to do some analog recording. I’m just looking for some general advice and avenues to explore while I contemplate my new purchases.

I have a nice Petrof upright piano and will record it, probably with two dynamic mics (not yet purchased, but I guess my condenser mics won’t work without phantom power). Then, I’ll overdub my vocals. That *might* be it, but I’d leave the door open to some simple drums or bass. Right now, I record my piano with two stereo condenser mics then add my vocals later in Logic Pro, then sometimes add session drummers or session bass players (options in Logic Pro).

I want to try the analog cassette route. If I’m going to do it, I want to keep an analog chain throughout. I just emailed Zoom to ask them if my AMS 44 audio interface could provide phantom power to my condenser mics and keep the signal analog through the TRS output but they said no, that there is an digital conversion as soon as the signal enters the device which would be reconverted back to analog on the way out of the interface to the tascam. I’m not sure if I would even notice a difference in the sound, but…if I’m not going to keep it analog throughout I guess there is no reason to even go down this road.

The most pressing question I guess is which Tascam analog cassette recorder to buy. With my simple goals, I think that maybe I could make do with a porta 02 or 03; I don’t think I’ll need to record more than two sources at once (the two dynamic mics for my piano). I may want to bounce the L and R channels for the piano into one track. How necessary would it be to get the mkII versions?

I could bump it up to a 414 or 424 but don’t want to overly complicate things, although the options and flexibility seem dramatically higher. Possibly one of those situations where I will outgrow the 02 or 03 quickly?

For mixdown, I think that just about any used cassette deck on ebay would work, right? I just use the RCA lines out from the tascam via to the RCA stereo lines in on the cassette deck and record, right? Any recommendations for that?

Sorry if I’ve made any silly mistakes in describing my situation; I’m a total newb.

Thanks for any advice or thoughts.

 

[20 Years of Tascam]

A couple things think about:
- Judging by the post you made 2 days after this one, you've aready purchased a 424 mk!!. I started on that machine back in 1995 ...nice units, but they do have limitations.

- Yes, you would need a seperate phantom power generator to use condensor mics, but your dynamic mics should work just fine.

- You talked about recording your piano via dual mics (L & R). All your 424 channels are mono. The simplest thing to do is to plug your mics into open channel inputs & record them to to seperate channels. Unless you you find yourself needing additional trackspace, I wouldn't recommend bouncing to combine them. I see no advantage in doing that, but there are several disadvantages...loss of stereo effect, loss of your ability to seperately EQ R & L, the more you bounce the more tape noise you'll add.

- I get that you're looking for basic recordings, but keep in mind that your 424 has no onboard effects. So, if you end up wanting compression or reverb on your vocal, you'll need to find a way to add it premix. You can either record to your 424 with the desired effects already added, or add via your decks effect inputs as you're exporting your mix in real-time to your seperate cassette recorder.

Hope something I said here helps.

 

[Montanawildlives]

Hey, thanks for your response! Yes, very helpful and it gives me hope that I can get help from this forum when needed in the future. I’m used to photography sites like DP Review where you get a dozen responses to your post before you can even refresh your screen.

Yes, it didn’t take me long to pick my machine—the 424 seemed to be about everything I would need (and then some) with room to grow into it for a newb.

I’ll either pick up a couple dynamic mics, or just route the condensers through the zoom AMS-44 for the moment (disrupting the analog chain, but probably trivially so in terms of the sound if not philosophy).

Sounds good on routing the two mics from the piano into separate channels. I think at this point that I’m going to keep things simple and just do piano and vocals, so I can just use three tracks and then pan the piano left and right while centering the vocals as I mix down. I don’t play any other instruments anyway, so anything else would probably have to be digital at this point (e.g., doing drums on my Akai mini fed from the headphone jack on the Akai into an input channel on the Tascam) so…no hurry on that.

As for effects…yes at some point I might want to add some reverb or compression to my vocals (Lord knows I’m addicted to that in Logic Pro) but…I’m thinking/hoping that maybe the LoFi effect of the Tascam might provide the veil my vocals need LOL. I’m shopping around for cassettes and was even thinking that using Type I tapes might not hurt the piano much (compared to how much they might compromise a snare drum) and might provide an additional smoothing of the vocals.

Speaking of tapes, I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of 30 year old Type II tapes (seems to be about all you can find on ebay) versus new Type I tapes (and even those are maybe a few years old in most cases!). Any thoughts? Anybody else have tape recommendations or pros/cons of various brands/types for this kind of recording (simple piano and vocals).

Thanks again for your help!

 

[20 Years of Tascam]

Glad I could help.

Tascam recommends only high-bias Type II for the 424's.
I always ran type II, but I did use type 1 in my mixdown deck (Sony TC-WR550Z).

From page 9 of the owners manual...
"The Portastudio 424 MKIII is internally adjusted for HIGH BIAS Type II tape. This means that for best results, you should only use tapes of this type. TDK SA, Maxell XL-II or equivalent formulations are recommended."

https://tascam.jp/downloads/tascam/318/Porta_424mkIII_manual.pdf

 

[20 Years of Tascam]

I agree with you about 30 year old tape sounding iffy.
But a quick search of Amazon yeilded multiple sources for new high-bias type II.
Tascam brand sits top-of-the-list.

Amazon.com : type ii high bias cassette tapes