| Re; -1
If you're talking $3k for both the 8-track and the mixer,
you are pretty much limited to 1/4 inch tape.
Although, don't forget the want-ads.
If you use a lot of electronic instruments (you didn't
say what you record), you can always 'go midi'. If you're into
acoustic guitars and voice, you're pretty much stuck with getting
a multi-track.
- Karl
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| Sorry to disagree, Karl. I happen to have a Tascam 38 1/2 inch 8-track and
two Tascam 6-to-4 mixers piggy-backed. I paid exactly $3000 for this stuff
four months ago at E. U. Wurlitzer. I'm sure that even better deals can be
found.
The Tascam 38 is an excellent machine and so are the mixers. When I first
got my setup, I was curious about noise levels from the tape and mixer. My
older Teac 3440 4-track is notoriously noisy when listening to all four
tracks. I now use that only for 2-track mastering for mass-producing cassettes.
To test tape and mixer noise I recorded 8 tracks of silence with all faders set
to 8. Then I played all eight tracks back. I only began to here some hiss when
I turned my amp up to a level that would be painfully loud had any signal been
on the tape. As you may know, Tascam is the proffesional division of Teac and
their equipment is of a very high quality. Crosstalk elimination and frequency
response are also excellent.
I too wanted at least two effect send circuits and 12 input channels on my
mixer. None of the 12 or more channel mixers I saw were under $1700 and none
had more than one effect send. So I got clever. My mixer has program sub-inputs
that allow piggy-backing any number of mixers together like building blocks.
So I bought 2. I think the model # is M160. I will post another reply if that's
wrong. Anyway, the two mixers give me 12 channels in and four out. There are
two output jacks for each program out channel so I have them stacked on the
left and right halves of the tape deck. I send AUX OUT to my digital delay
and EFFECT OUT to my digital reverb. The return from the digital delay goes
into EFFECT RETURN of mixer #1 and the digital reverb return goes to the
EFFECT RETURN of mixer #2. The effect return channels are just like the 12
input channels and can be assigned and panned to any or all program outputs.
They just don't have EQ or effect send (which would create a feedback loop).
For those special cases where I want to EQ the effect return, I patch it into
a regular channel input. Thus I am able to record a track with unique effects
live while not sending the playback from previous tracks through the effects.
Then at final mastering time, I can control how much of each playback track
goes to the effects and control the overall level of each effect separately.
I got the deck for $2000 and each mixer was $500.
By the way, I and two friends who are excellent musicians spent four days
in my studio making a demo tape of four songs. One of these friends is a
proffesional musician (voice and bass) who has been stalking the music scene
in New York for 2 years. Response to his work was that the songs were good
but the recording quality of his FOUR-TRACK system wasn't good enough to push
to record companies. But the tape we made caused a sensation. We are now
negotiating with 4 music promoters and A&M records for a contract based on
what we did in my little home studio. The tape was also taken to Florida
by one of the promoters while they were there promoting another band. The
Florida D.J.'s liked the tape and said they would be willing to give some
airplay to our songs if we make the last step to a proffesional studio
recording. So all you home-brew studio engineers, take heart. It is possible
to make really excellent recordings on 8-tracks for a relatively small amount
of money. I had done all this as a hobby but it has turned into an investment.
Ted
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| I just made the plunge and bought a TASCAM 38 8-track machine
from Sam Ashe in New York. It should arrive next week. EU
Wulitzers wanted $2300 (I think the price went up since you
bought yours, Ted). I called Sam Ashe about the MUSICNET, but
Jules wasn't in. While I had them on the phone I asked for a
quote on the Tascam 38 and they said they were on sale this week
week for $1895 so I ordered one immediately on my VISA card.
Last week I visited Ted Czotter and checked out his Tascam 38
and I liked it very much. Ted's got a nice setup with his MKB-1000
and Super Jupiter, TR-909, Alexeis XT reverb, and tape decks.
Great bass sounds on the Jupiter. I gotta get him over to my
house to program some good bass sounds on my Jupiter-6.
Dave
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