Old porta one and porta07 tapes

[Retrospecialist]

I have a large amount of old Tascam porta one and porta 07 tapes that I made decades ago. I would love to hear them again and see what is on them. Do I need to find those exact units to play them or will other Tascam machines play them? Is there a unit that will play all old tascam cassette 4 track tapes? Thanks in advance for any info anyone might have.

 

[-mjk-]

All cassette tapes are 4 track, but they're recorded in bidirectional stereo. If you could use a standard cassette player and copy them into your DAW, then you could flip the tracks around to line them up. The process would require two passes, and flipping the tape around to play the other side.

 

[Retrospecialist]

Thanks. I Knew that the tapes were bidirectional but I thought the track spacing was different on 4 track to normal cassette machines. I could give this a go as have logic X. It would be good as then I just need to find a standard cassette tape player.

 

[-mjk-]

Here in Taiwan I bought a really cool little cassette player that has a 16 bit USB interface built in. Specifically designed for dubbing cassettes, it also has extended bass and a headphone jack so you can use it as a player too.

 

[Retrospecialist]

Gosh that sounds super cool. I'll have a look around and see if I can find something like that. It would make transfer easier and might be more reliable and safer for old tapes. Thanks again.

 

[-mjk-]

This is basically what I got, but I got it locally: https://www.amazon.com/Handy-Cassette-Player-Digital-Converter/dp/B008ASIZR4

 

[Retrospecialist]

I can see that exact one on my UK eBay site, very cheap too. I'll get one. Thanks for your help.

 

[Caveman]

I’ve never had an issue playing 4 trk tapes made on a 7 on other tascam 4 trackers like 414.