Question for you old guys...

[Lee Flier]

On an everyday basis, I don't find there's much less maintenance with computers than tape decks. It's just different jobs - with a tape deck, you have to clean the heads, and possibly degauss and tweak the alignment, depending how long it's been since you've done that. With computers, you have to do regular reformats or defragging, and back up after every session. It takes roughly the same amount of time, in fact sometimes the computer can take more time if you have a lot of backing up to do.

 

If something goes really wrong, of course, it's a more expensive proposition to repair the tape deck than the computer. But if your studio is/was that busy that you would need regular repairs to a tape deck, you generally had an in-house tech. With moderate use the decks are actually quite reliable. And computer interfaces/hard drives can also go bad, drivers can be incompatible, you might restore an old session (or a session from a different studio) and find that you don't have the right plugins installed or the right version of something or other... so there is plenty of potential for stuff to go wrong with digital sessions, too. In practice, if you are diligent about your maintenance and you're not changing your system around too much, you won't have these problems on a regular basis. But the same is true with tape, so...

[pickinatit]

Would have been around 1969 or so. I had two "Reel" tape recorders. I played guitar and sang and recorded that on one tape recorder. Then I played that back while I played the bass and sang harmony, recording the first tape + the bass and harmony on the other tape recorder. Then played that back and added rythmn guitar and third vocal. Get the picture? Quality? I was thrilled to be able to "lay down tracks" Ha Ha let alone worry about quality.

[WRGKMC]

Seems like most of us started off the same way. I did my first recordings about 1968. Who would know you had to clean the tape heads. I thought the recorder went bad. I wound up making into a badass distortion unit soldering a guitar cord to the playback head. It blew chunks. Also used to get car speakers from the junk yard. Learned about output Impedience by hooking up 20 of those suckers to an old bogen tube amp. After blowing out the transformer I finally figured out what 4-8-16 ohm and 70v was. By the 70s I used to use 2 cassettes through a Tapco mixer, Record 2 instruments on each track, Played that back and recorded to another cassette deck with instruments added through the mixer. I still have a wall of about a thousand cassettes of original music recorded that way. Whenever I need some inspiration I pull one down and give it a listen. Pretty wierd hearing yourself play and sing with a kids voice again mistakes and all. The drive for perfection was there though and in redoing some of them lately is a real blast. I really need to spend some time digitizing those tape before they melt. They are well storded though and have enough life in them for a few decent plays. My reel to reels are pretty much soup now. I dont think theres much on these except some doubble tracks and some doubble speed leads. Kind of stuff les paul did. I got my education by actually going to school for electronics. I actually learned tube configs up to digital level which was new then. Who would think Tube amps would be such a boone now. I work for Canon as a day job and its all board replacement, No component replacement anymore. The techs coming out of school cant black box troubleshoot no less know what a black box is. Music and electronics are such close sciences though. Knowing both and having 40 yrs experience in both along with building instruments from scratch is satisfying. If I had any advice to give a young artist is "If it only wasnt for the women in my life who drained my accounts and were jealous of my guitars I would Be rich, have had the best equipment and be a star to boot". Or do you have to blame your bad breaks on someone besides yourself, Hum?

[musicman65]

I started recording my bands in the early 60's with a sound-on-sound Voice of Music brand reel to reel tape recorder. Just two mics set up in the basement or garage (depending on the season). I could record myself doing either rhythm guitar and lead or rhythm guitar amd vocal, (no way to record all three). It seemed like very high tech to us at the time. My Jr. year of high school our band ordered new guitars and amps (I got a Jazzmaster and Twin Reverb amp) and a cheap Heathkit P.A.. I t had just a two channel mixer for the two Electrovoice 664 mics we ordered. They were shipped to us by train out of the big Lyon & Healy music store in Chicago. We lived in N.W. Indiana. We originally received all but the P.A. We contacted them and they said they would reship. In the end we received both the original shipment P.A. and then the second. When we contacted them and told them we got both and asked them what to do they said not to worry about it and just consider ourselves lucky.

The P.A. wasn't much really just a 20 watt amp/two channel mixer and two 12 inch speakers in cabinets that snapped together to make a cube of the two speakers for transporting. When seperated they just had open backs. The cabinets were just made of 1/4" pressed board covered with vinyl.

I later (middle 70's) got a TEAC 4 track reel-to reel recorder and really thought I had moved up in the recording end.

In high school I remember a lot of local bands recording on stereo Wollensak (3-M) reel to reel recorders.

[blue2blue]

I guess I've been recording since I was maybe 10 years old, using a cheapie little battery powered reel to reel recorder. That got me hooked. When I was in high school, I saved up my grocery store pay and bought a Sony reel to reel deck that did sound on sound and sound with sound. Sound with sound makes it basically a multitrack machine that happens to have just two tracks. Sound ON sound turns the erase head off, so you can add as many overdubs as you like, provided you guess the volume levels right on the initial tracks. Otherwise, you have to start over. I wore that Sony machine out, both listening to music and making it. Sometimes I would make a twelve track or more demo with all the instruments I could play and a lot of vocal overdubs. I learned a tremendous amount from all the hours I spend doing that. I guess next I bought a Teac 4 track. You could basically do two tracks on what would be the front side of the tape, then use the "back" side for another two. That machine forced me to learn how to modify tape machines, since it didn't (originally) have a way to turn off the erase head or to record on a single track at a time. Round about the late 70's and early 80's true multitrack, prosumer format decks came out and slowly became affordable. First really good one was the Tascam 80-8 which was a half inch 8 track. The model 38 replaced that and was even more affordable, and offered (optional) dBx noise reduction. Fostex also made a popular 8 track machine. My Model 38 paid for itself a hundred times over. A partner and I opened a small studio in the small college town we lived in, and were quickly booked 24/7, doing corporate work in the day and recording hopeful bands in the evenings. We were limited only by the constant maintenance and repair the machines required. We literally beat those machines to death at $40/hr, which was a fortune back in the day. On top of this income was the money we shared with our writers and talent for all the ad jingles we produced, which were the bread and butter of our business. We were so successful with our recordings and various promotions (concerts, contests, etc) that in 1983 the local newspaper featured us on the front page - they even gave us the headline. Several hours after that newspaper came out, I was fired from my day job at the university (see groupie stories link below for details). Several days later, my partner was fired from his job at the bank. We couldn't have cared less. By that time we were easily making maybe 5 times as much from the studio as we were making at our suit and tie day jobs. Besides, we were both dead tired from lack of sleep running the studio and we could use the extra time. I used the extra time to open a second business which also prospered. If only I had the energy, balls, and drive now that I did then. I still have a lot of the money and equipment, though. Terry D.

 

You were able to get $40/hr with a Model 38?!?

 

Holy cow, around here in that time I don't think you could get over $15/hr. I recorded a punk compilation for one label in an $8 an hour studio with a 38. (It really was a crap studio, though. I did my own engineering -- and would not have let the bozos from studio lay a hand on it, anyhow. They were... nice guys, though. Skater dudes.)

 

My favored studio was $15/hr with an engineer -- who was quite good. The best TASCAM-based studio I worked in was a 16 track -- $25/hr with an excellent engineer (he later got a grammy working on a Hellecaster's album). The studio had a baby grand (he just didn't have room for the real thing but he said he regretted it), U47, and a small but quite nice mic locker.

 

You might ask yourself what he was doing with a TASCAM narrow format machine... it was a strategic decision. He knew a lot of people -- like the project I brought to him -- were starting out projects on 1" 16 TASCAM machines and then needing fixes and mixes and he decided to go after that market. It also allowed him to cheap out on his multi-track at a time in the early 80s when they were not cheap. IIRC, a new 16/1" TASCAM was about ten grand. Much cheaper than a "real" machine but still, adjusted for inflation about $40-$50K. So he was able to keep busy while building a nice mic locker, buying some very nice compressors and even a boutique preamp (at a time when the notion was just coming into vogue). Since a lot of what he did was overdubs (we were doing full trackings, mostly, ourselves), he felt he was able to deliver a real high end sheen even working into the distinct and notable compromises of a TASCAM machine running dbx NR. (He didn't use dbx on drum or bass tracks. Those experienced with its quirky operation and implicit compromises and problems will understand. And that allowed him to track his drums hot for tape saturation, which was very definitely a buzz concept in the early 80s when I was getting into recording from the knob side.)

 

 

PS... What are those monitors mounted above the glass, Terry? They look vaguely familiar but I can't put my finger on it. Also, I'm guessing your studio was no where near the San Andreas or other fault lines... judging from the precarious perch (from a Cali perspective) of your mixdown machine up there on top of that rack box.

[Marshall Jeffer]

 

I started recording my bands in the early 60's with a sound-on-sound Voice of Music brand reel to reel tape recorder.

 

 

 

Would have been around 1969 or so.

 

 

 

In the mid seventies I found it hard to find much info on recording.

 

 

I had no idea there were guys older than me here. Geritol Power!

[UstadKhanAli]

On an everyday basis, I don't find there's much less maintenance with computers than tape decks. It's just different jobs - with a tape deck, you have to clean the heads, and possibly degauss and tweak the alignment, depending how long it's been since you've done that. With computers, you have to do regular reformats or defragging, and back up after every session. It takes roughly the same amount of time, in fact sometimes the computer can take more time if you have a lot of backing up to do.

 

 

If you include upgrading, moving files around, chasing down problems, etc., computers are probably more work and maintenance than a tape machine ever was. It's certainly more effort than the Akai MG1214. I'd demagnetize the thing and clean the heads and bring it in for servicing once a year and that'd be it.

[C JoGo]

Started drumming in 63'-64 , in a place called Indiana --first recording on mono Sony cassette and the dreaded 8 track cart ( no rewind) ..moved to stereo cassette > 2 track tube reel > SOny SOS 2 track bouncing to another 2 track > Four Track Dokorder reel > 4 track cassette > 8 track cassette > 4 track Akai digital --slew of 8 track digitals -- & finally to a Roland VS 2480

 

....still have a cassette in my Acura RL ~~ no iPod ~~ no wave editing --No PC /Mac editing at all.

[GZsound]

There are some neat stories here..and obviously a couple thousand years of exerience.

I wonder what the stories will be like in thirty years when folks talk about how they started recording in 2008?

"Man, when I started I had to suffer with a dual core 4 meg computer with a couple of 250 gig hard drives. I could only record 50 tracks at a time on that old slow pig"..

Ha..