Hi there

This is my first post on this board, although I have read it many times. Unfortunately it was spurred on by a supremely unfortunate incident - my Tascam four-track has seemingly shat itself.

The fourth track now seems to be non functioning, sound from the tape has been replaced by a low hiss/fuzz of a fairly standard noisy 1000th bounce type cassette pink noise nature. However a strange factor is also that it now makes a pretty vicious electronic clippy type noise when one presses the PLAY or STOP buttons. There's a general low hum type noise going on in the background too I think.

I wasn't doing anything particularly strange when it broke, although I was possibly abusing the rewind and play buttons with little lubrication from the stop or pause buttons.

Can anyone shed some light on this? It would be much appreciated. I basically just shut of the power, cleaned the heads and hoped it would be miraculously better in the morning.

I am pretty devvo, have had this four-track for about 10 years so if it's properly busted then it's rather sad.

On another note, I am moving to Amerika at the end of the year, can one still buy a half-decent cassette four-track new over there, from any brand? My research says possibly not, which is ultra lame. Although Ebay looked pretty good for the later models eg Tascam 424 MKIII (four channel simultaneous recording? holy shit I was not aware of this killer machine) so there's always that.

Anyhoo, thanks a lot

Cheers

David

New tascam cassette 4 tracks are like 50 bucks now, you know that right?

Marsupialized wrote:New tascam cassette 4 tracks are like 50 bucks now, you know that right?

Yep, those things are disposable. Blow your nose on it and toss it out.
They made so many 424's we will be able to buy them for another 10 years at least.

Oh great, well that's good to know. Thanks.

From what it sounds like, I think your machine may be done for. I doubt anyone could repair it, at this point in time...try finding good analog machine service, let alone for a cassette machine.

Sorry. You could probably do a head replacement, but that's about it. Maybe a cheap 50 dollar four-track that you could swap components with.

I'm pretty sure that getting a cassette four track fixed would probably be more expensive than picking up a used cassette four track on E-bay.

Truth, and I dread the thought of dealing with the greying buffoons in this town that double as electronics repairs people.

I will just adapt to life as a three-tracker until I move. Thanks!

disco david wrote:Truth, and I dread the thought of dealing with the greying buffoons in this town that double as electronics repairs people.

I will just adapt to life as a three-tracker until I move. Thanks!

Start the three-track revolution.

A related question: I am looking to get back into super small-time home recording after a long respite and am deliberating on what equipment to pick up.

There are tons of cassette 4-tracks on German Ebay for under 100 euros. Other than price, their main advantage in my book is familiarity, as I have used many different cassette 4-tracks over the years.

But there are also digital Tascam Portastudios available for not much more.

Are these things any good?

Not having to mess around with cassettes and the increasing costs thereof is a big advantage to me, but I wouldn't want one of these things if it is actually a piece of crap.
At this point in my life, I'm through with analogue purism, primarily since I'm just looking to do some multi-tracking to help the songwriting process.