Hi people! I own a very clean and very good shape TASCAM 122 MKIII tape deck, has been working fine in general. There is no physical nor any "systemic" damage so far. I own it since 2019 already in good shape.
I got it because I had a plan to switch to cassettes for home recording purposes (no, I am not trying to mimic reel-to-reel or anything like that). So I have a "flat" recording system integrated to tape deck (a analog mixer, some cable managment, aux sends, etc) and everything works great so far. I have done many recordings to it ("mastering" mixes and so on).
But I got used to something that, right now, I think that may be an issue: the low level recording metters for 10khz. I live in Brasil and the only affordable tapes you can find are Ferric type I (its ok, I like them) so these are my tapes, I have plenty of them (Samsung SQC 60, in my case).
The point is: I can calibrate the deck with the built-in OSC (400hz) and 10khz keys - and also I can input a generated tone and it works ok too. But I never get, no matter what, an aproximaton between 400hz and 10khz recording levels.
Maximum VU levels I get for 400hz is around -3db and for 10khz I get around -10db. I know it doesn't need to be at 0db, and also I am using only just good (not excelente) Type I tapes.
If anyone have any tips I would appreciate.
Thanks!
I got it because I had a plan to switch to cassettes for home recording purposes (no, I am not trying to mimic reel-to-reel or anything like that). So I have a "flat" recording system integrated to tape deck (a analog mixer, some cable managment, aux sends, etc) and everything works great so far. I have done many recordings to it ("mastering" mixes and so on).
But I got used to something that, right now, I think that may be an issue: the low level recording metters for 10khz. I live in Brasil and the only affordable tapes you can find are Ferric type I (its ok, I like them) so these are my tapes, I have plenty of them (Samsung SQC 60, in my case).
The point is: I can calibrate the deck with the built-in OSC (400hz) and 10khz keys - and also I can input a generated tone and it works ok too. But I never get, no matter what, an aproximaton between 400hz and 10khz recording levels.
Maximum VU levels I get for 400hz is around -3db and for 10khz I get around -10db. I know it doesn't need to be at 0db, and also I am using only just good (not excelente) Type I tapes.
If anyone have any tips I would appreciate.

Thanks!