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Such a Deal! Crappy Old Music in Exchange for 4-Track Recording Tips
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Hey, gang!
Say, I need your help. I just traded in my old Saturn sedan for an old Toyota pickup truck, and -- as the Toyota is of a vintage that features a cassette deck -- I've been rediscovering old cassette tapes that I've not listened to in about 20 years. What's really frustrating is that I've taken to reaching into my old cassette box at random and listening to whatever the hell I pull out -- and a good number of the tapes I've been pulling out are actually old 4-track cassettes full of 4-track demos, recorded on my 1989 Tascam Porta 05 Ministudio. Those of you familiar with systems like these know that popping a 4-track cassette into a plain old (i.e., "2-track") cassette deck will allow you to hear only 2 of the 4 tracks originally recorded. So the net-net is that I've been tooling around DeeCee listening to these bizarro, dub-like "mixes" of partial songs (most of which suck) -- maybe a bass and vocal track in this one, or guitar and drums in that -- and it's driving me crazy!
So here's the deal: I managed to find my old Tascam Porta 05 in the basement, carefully wrapped in a bath towel and shoved in a box. But... no power supply, dude! So I'm stuck. Here I am, proud owner of a gajillion-dollar recording studio, and I can't even listen to shit I recorded 20 years ago on a $150 cassette deck. I tried eBay for a power supply, but came up empty. There aren't even any used Porta 05s out there for purchase anymore. I need help! If any of you can furnish me with some helpful tips for unlocking all this old music, I promise -- I PROMISE -- to post 3 of the most noteworthy tracks I uncover. This will likely provide many posts-worth of amusement at my expense, but no matter. I must have these crappy old songs back!
Any ideas?
Thanking you in advance,
HVB
p.s.: Mod, I also found the original box (though not, sadly, the cassette) of Three Miles Island!
6 comments
I know exactly what you're going through. I have boxes full of cassettes made on our original 4-track, including those Three Miles Island mixes, but the entire deck itself is long gone. With your gajillion-dollar technology and know-how, can't you record the 2 tracks on each side onto a computer and digitally reunite these treasured recordings? Surely you've got plenty of free time for such a mission:) Honestly, if I hear of/see a power supply for this bad boy, I'll do my part to help. Is there no universal power supply for folks in your condition?
By the way, I should have the cassette "masters" of the Three Miles Island recordings. Remind me to send them to you. Do you want them in their original cassette format? I even have circa-1986 cassettes sitting around onto which I could dub the stuff.
That might be kind of dicey. You'd be at the whim of slight variations in tape speed as cassette motors tend to run the tape at ever-so slightly different rates on each pass, making matching, say tracks 1 and 2 with tracks 3 and 4 next to impossible. CD players don't even run (or burn, for that matter) at exactly the same as one another (which is why one should transfer a track digitally rather than as analog if you wish to fly it into a mix on a different computer). Best bet is to get another 4-track cassette machine. It doesn't even have to be a Porta-5. I'll bet the 4 track tape heads on most of those machines are pretty much the same in terms of spacing of each track on the head.
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