This is the Tascam 34b, my reel-to-reel four track tape recorder. In times past it has recorded some decent sounding tunes; now it seems to be faltering. Instead of selling it on eBay, I've decided to go learn the art of repairing (please, no) and maintaining (yes) this 25 year old beast of a machine. A great magazine and book, Tape Op, has been a huge motivator in my interest in resurrecting the 34b from becoming a hiss and byword. Also inspirational is jogging thru campus with my new iPod shuffle, listening to words and sounds of varying modernity. ...3 years removed from headphones, but I've been re-activated. All these things have culminated in a desire to create something interesting, unique, and worthwhile with the small amount of time and equipment I have. Now what I really want is a tambourine.
1 comments:
Very nice. i have a 34B myself, but wanting another off Ebay even though the only thing wrong with mine is that it's not too fit cosmetically.
It has a great sound, though the spill between tracks is something which irks me a touch. It too may be noisy, but it's a good-un.
These days I would use it as an insert unit to warm sounds up in real-time on their way to my DAW. Either that or I could use it as a psuedo 8-track by striping track 4 with timecode to slave the PC to it and record as many taped tracks as I please. Then it's just a case of copying them to the DAW and laying down more tracks over the top of the old ones on the tape. You can repeat the cycle as often as desired, the synchronised PC locked into time providing the already copied trracks to guide you before mixing.
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