Made my first cassette recording of an LP in over 30 years

dromunds

My best friend had this Nak 700. Sweetest looking and I got to use it plenty. Finicky is right tho.

mhardy6647

Yeppers. Nice deck though.

I had a good friend, back in those days, who had a 600 (their two-head "wedge-shaped" deck). It was a superb performer, but needed pretty constant fiddling with alignment, bias trim & whatnot.

... and, of course, the workhorse Nakamichi 500's guts were sold in OEM versions by many, many hifi brand names in the mid-1970s. Nice basic deck, was the 500.

honestaquarian

mhardy6647 wrote: »

... or...

AKAI, bless their hearts, made combination reel to reel eight track decks for quite a while. Perfect for dubbin' some music to play in that purple 1972 Eldorado Convertible with the white fur upholstery.

http://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/akai/x-1800sd.shtml


image source: http://classicaudio.com/gallery/audio/akaiX1800.html

Oh my gooooooooooood

mhardy6647

It was a different time

EDIT: Heh, I just had a thought -- imagine an alternate universe, in which... Nakamichi made an 8-track deck. Maybe a three head 8-track deck. Ooooh.

As an aside, just like "fanfic" and whatnot, I know there're folks who "design" audio equipment that never existed*. Seems like a real opportunity to re-imagine some 8-track decks. Maybe a Pioneer "Fluoroscan", too. A Luxman "suckface" 8-track. The mind boggles.

OK, I guess I need more coffee...

---

* Here's an example: http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/fake-sony-es-components.457099/

SONY ES TC-2000ES MASTER RECORDER by mastercontrolmedia, on Flickr

Maybe an Elcaset for the 21st Century? You all do remember the Elcaset, yes?

SONY ES ELCASET DECK EL-505ES by mastercontrolmedia, on Flickr

voltz

ohh I like the looks of that Sony!

Polkaguy58

I was out on a garage sale mission last year and stumbled on this Technics M02 direct drive cassette player for $10.
It's about 1/3 less the size of a standard player, yet weighs twice as much and no belts to replace !
Luckily for me, I still had my old RS demagnetizer and a Tascam cleaning kit from my 4-track recording days.
I use it mostly now to transcribe old tapes to Garageband, where I punch them up and digitize them for posterity.
My last project was for a college professor, who needed to have a 1970's taped conversation with an 80 year old Jewish/Russian immigrant digitized for a documentary he was making.
The tape had been "eaten", so I took an old Maxell tape apart (they have little srews), broke the old tape out of it's case and installed it into the Maxell's.
This conversation was probably recorded on a portable mono player and the background noise was distracting to say the least.
I EQ'd out anything above and below the human vocal range and added a little compression, which made a whole lot of difference in qualty.
To do these projects, one has to listen to the whole tape and index the spots where new questions are asked, which makes further editting much easier on the production end.
This woman had been through WWll and all and I learned a lot from the experience.

StantonZ

^ ^ ^ Fascinating!

Polkaguy58

My friend has a professional recording studio and gets asked to do these tape transcriptions from time to time, but usually refers these cases to me. He prefers to stick to music production.
I actually like trying to bring back tapes that would likely be trashed otherwise.
That russian lady has been dead for 40 years now, but her story remains.

Another project I once handled, was an ancient cassette recording of a hillbilly from the Blue Ridge Mountains who recorded himself singing and strumming his guitar many years ago.
(a song called "Digging Up Bones")
After enhancing the performance as best I could, I employed his female cousin and her boyfriend to join in with me to sing back up on my 4-track tape machine.
I then added electric, heavily reverbed "twang" guitar, piano and drums and even a dubbed live audience.
His cousin gave me a picture of him and his elderly mother sitting on a porch swing in front of their tin roof shack, which I aged with sepia tone and made a cassettes cover.
I mailed it to him and heard later that he was the toast of the "Holler'" !

Polkaguy58

voltz

I feel like a peeping tom looking in your window to check out the pic of Stevie Nick's

StantonZ

Just sold off the Maxell XLII-s cassettes that I had replaced with Maxell UDXL-II. In all, I (re-)recorded 10 90-minute tapes after modifying the "set list" for 3 of them (I had mixed another artist in that I have since bought CDs for). I just found out a (local) friend has a bunch of old Maxell cassettes, so I'm going to see what kind of condition they're in.

Polkaguy58

StantonZ wrote: »

Just sold off the Maxell XLII-s cassettes that I had replaced with Maxell UDXL-II. In all, I (re-)recorded 10 90-minute tapes after modifying the "set list" for 3 of them (I had mixed another artist in that I have since bought CDs for). I just found out a (local) friend has a bunch of old Maxell cassettes, so I'm going to see what kind of condition they're in.

A true Polkie, would've been "peeping" at the KLH Model 21 radio, but I get your point.