Tape Gear!

[bellemnop]

the bevelled bit is really interesting, i was not aware of that, thanks! i haven’t given this “spool from the outside in” technique a shot yet anyways, but that might be something to look out for when i do, i’m sure. and that’s good to know about the tension too, maybe i’ve just been overthinking that part and trying to add too many elements inside the cartridge to keep things well-guided? hmmmmm, back to the drawing board!

[papernoise]

Anybody ever seen something like this? Saw this at a friend’s place.
I think you’re supposed to insert some sort of tape cartridge in the opening on the bottom, the play head in there is pretty big, twice the size of the ones you find in more common cassette players. But what puzzles me most is the writing “8 track”, especially since it does not seem to be able to record.

[petesasqwax]

It plays 8 track tapes - I’ve got the first Neu! album on 8 track somewhere

[papernoise]

Cool, didn’t know 8 track “consumer” tapes existed. What’s the advantage of the 8 tracks, or better, how do you take advantage of them when listening to music?

[fahmi_m]

Drone tape loops experiment in walkman mod (pitch/speed):

[dermo]

The tapes were 1/4" but much shorter lengths than cassette. The players would play 2 of the 8 tracks at a time for left and right (e.g track 1 & 5 as left and right, 2 & 6 etc). Once the end of the tape length is reached a metal strip trigger the tape head to shift down to play the next pair until the end of the tape is reached.
I think they look cool! Never heard one though. There was a full discrete quadraphonic 8 track tape format too - neat!

little diagram here:
http://www.8trackheaven.com/archive/work.html

[petesasqwax]

I think there was some kind of odd way that it dealt with the tape, so that it was more like there was 8 chunks to a tape - I don’t completely remember (I only have tapes, but no player these days) but I do recall that they’d split albums up into chunks so that a lot of the time they’d kind of fade down mid song, make this crazy clunking noise as they changed to the next segment on the tape, then fade back up and continue with the song. I think the tape is thicker than cassette so in theory I guess the quality is better, but just a strange format. My dad used to have old cars with 8-track tapes in them - they always reminded me of Atari 2600 consoles.

[emenel]

The short answer is that there was no benefit, it was a relatively short lived format before cassettes were common.

It didn’t play all eight tracks at once, it used them in stereo pairs for each song on the tape, so the tape length was short but it could play 4-ish songs.

They were mostly a cheap and portable format when records were still the main consumer music format but weren’t great for portability…

I don’t remember them ever sounding very good, and there was a lot of mechanical failure due to the moving read head design of the system.

[papernoise]

Huge thanks everybody! Another piece of tape history learned!
The infinite loop thing is interesting here…

[petesasqwax]

On a side note, I was happy to see the same model of cheap Fostex 4 track that I picked up last year make an appearance in Hainbach’s sound-on-sound video. I like the idea of adding a switch to allow me to enable and disable the erase head. No idea how to go about doing that at present though so I’m going to go and raid the kitchen foil.

[jlmitch5]

If you are interested in hearing some creative use of 8-tracks, check out Aaron Dilloway who uses them a lot. I saw him at Moogfest this past year and it was a really interesting set.

Also, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the keeping things in time technique you mentioned @madeofoak…do some tape decks/reel to reels have separate outs for the playback and record heads? My guess is so, and you are basically recording both—the record head as the “raw source” (though I guess this is going through the preamp circuitry in the deck so it will be colored in some way too) and then the playbook head.

I’m kind of at a loss on how you’d implement this technique with recording a reverb track, as I’m not sure how the sending would be able to happen.

[jlmitch5]

I just recently got a reel to reel (teac/tascam 22-4) and tried to put a tape loop around it.

Speed works as expected in normal use (tape that flows from left reel to right), but the loop spins the reels at FF speeds (very fast).The tape itself seems to be moving at normal-ish speed through the pinch roller.

Is this expected? Should I just take the reels off when I want to use loops, and find something else to wrap the loop around to give things tension?

[Emile]

This is normal behavior. on my studer b62, I found out that if i pulled out a certain relay, the relay for the spooling motors, I could bypass them while using it for looping… maybe you can do something similar on your machine…

[dansimco]

Anyone in the know … know if this is a worthwhile get? Assuming it’s in working condition

[Samekid]

The GX series, generally speaking, is high-end consumer up to professional quality.

For a fully calibrated machine in this class you would pay 400 to 800 USD maybe.

If the machine is functioning a 100% mechanically and the heads are not worn, it might be worth it. Depends on what you want to do with it though.

If it has not been calibrated, you could not use it as a master recorder, or accurate playback machine. The playback/record speed might be inconsistent and the frequency response might be bad.

There are other uses though, use it just for the amp, tape echo etc.

[dansimco]

My intention was just master colouring / applying vibe

[Samekid]

Yeah, if you record a finished mix or stem onto this and then play it back you might have bad wow&flutter. Bad frequency response, lacking high end.

If the playback/record speed is inconsistent, you might find your stem being a couple seconds longer all of a sudden, when you record it back into your daw. In other words it will go in and out of tune and not match up with your project.

There is a way to (kind of) get round this, by recording and playing back at the same time using the headphone output. You would need a three head machine for that, I believe this one is a two head machine.

I have an Akai two head machine which hasn’t been serviced. So even though I got it functioning, it is not up to spec, so all it can be used for in my setup is for recording drum samples unto it to add tape saturation and the amp into the sound. Because drum samples are short, the wow&flutter problem isn’t gamebreaking.

Compare it to owning a seventies car, you have to know how to work on it for it to be a reliable driver.

[Hovercraft]

The big feature on that machine is the dual cassette/reel to reel function. Beyond that, it’s not that interesting, and the lack of three heads in both sections would be enough to make me move on. A reel to reel takes up a fair amount of space, and may be expensive to have serviced and calibrated–so I’d make a careful decision before buying. On the other hand it’s cheap–so if it works, and maybe the seller can throw in some vintage tape, you could have some fun.

[dansimco]

Thanks! It’s a bit of a drive to get to so I’m going to pass.

[antiphon]

Never thought of adding a tape head to the cassette case itself. Very lo-fi results: