@@AlexBallMusic all in good fun, anytime you post something kind of obscure, I just notice prices go up slightly. I didn’t know Sansui made a tape machine. I have good amps from them, but this thing is a little beauty!
I really wish there was a new build four-track cassette recorder with three heads (so you can monitor the recorded tape while tracking). Even better if it was a Eurorack module 👍
@@TMeierI was legit just thinking about this. You could live track sound on sound looping. Especially if you could engage and disengage the erase head.
I have a Tascam Model 12 I've been regretting buying because, why deal with that UI for recording when I have a DAW? Obviously, it was just the No Computer (Look Mum!) fantasy I realistically have no time for. But now I have a whole new use for it. It's an instrument too! One thing I don't get though, is the slow ascending/descending melody, which I think is part of the sus chord tracks, just being kept in decent time with the 606 solely by using the speed knob? If so... siiick.
I started my multitrack journey back in 1982 using two stereo cassette recorders. I had a little Radio Shack mixer, and I recorded the first track, played that back along with my live bits to the other, back and forth. After about four bounces, there was a lot of noise, but I got my ideas out. If I screwed up, I'd rewind and start over...no punch ins. Fun times! Cool video, Alex!
You're not alone, that's exactly what I did when I was young! In the days of no online tutorials, there were only two kinds of people - the ones who figured this out on their own and the ones who didn't. The next discovery was using pawn shop guitar pedals for EQ, compression and reverb on vocals. And chorus and delay on a cheap keyboard. I recorded a whole album with my band that way, using a guitar into a mic'd bass amp to sound like a Marshall stack.
Yep, I did very much the same thing, but without a mixer! Bung keys, drum machine and a vocal on one track, then overdub more keys and backing vocals on the other, and bounce. Tremendous fun, and an inexpensive way to make some very basic demos.
More lo-fi tricks: -Stereo ins on a VHS VCR at the SP speed, really good sound quality -Designing cassette labels at double the size and then shrinking them down with a photocopier.
I had an old Fostex which I gave away, I used to do all my recording back in the 90s on it, and then I inherited a knackered Tascam 244, which I got Tetrakan, a great 4 track technician, to completely service and repair. Any recording I do now is done on the Tascam. They bring a level of serenity and thinking time to the recording process, waiting for tapes to rewind and getting set up that slightly changes your mindset. I really enjoy it. This was a great demo of what else you can use them for. Great job, as ever, Mr Ball.
Another interesting video, Alex - your work is always both informative and inspiring. And the sweeping Trident strings on that droney track sounded LUSH!
Absolutely! I used to have track sheets where I'd plan out how the arrangement and recording would work! It definitely made you work in different ways, as you say.
@@AlexBallMusic for me, it took a long time to get my "In the box" mixes to have that easy, organic sound of tape. We all went digital too early. Convenience isn't quality. ☹️
Agreed! Had a guitarist play a little reverbed pentatonic solo from high to low over a reversed cassette tape. He didn't have much fun playing but I got a great spooky solo out of it. Or what Alex describes, the way of thinking about the bouncing, or even the mistakes I made partially erasing tracks. Or even just the tension of getting it right quickly so the tape wouldn't wear out too much.
I'm still watching, but, that "playing the tape deck as an instrument" section reminds me so much of the Genesis track, "Fading Light" from "We Can't Dance" and it was absolutely lovely. Thanks for that!
One of my friends had a crappy 4-track recorder back in the early 90's and we would make just the worst metal/sludge albums. Like every few days we'd make a new band, different name, ad people, mix up who did what, "write" new songs, new album art, etc. We would give out the "Albums. At some point we switched to cds. Good lord that was fun. anywho, great video, brilliant ideas.
I love stories like this! I used to run off my cassette songs, draw artwork on the inserts and hand them out at school, same as you. Haha. I imagine they wound up straight in the bin.
@@AlexBallMusic Yup, exactly the same. I'm 100% sure 90% ended up in the rubbish or recorded over. But dang it if it wasn't fun, Always riding the edge of taking it way to serious and it's all a big joke.
Wow never knew Sansui made that kind of gear. Was so funny seeing you working on it while sitting on the ground. That was the way we did it when we where young.
That was a heck of a lot of fun. Thanks for reminding me why I loved the 80s. And also what it sounded like when the batteries were running out on my walkman.
Tascam 644 MIDIStudio owner here. :-) What people need to know today is how cassette-based multitrackers democratized recording in those days - when professional studio tape technology was completely unaffordable. A huge leap before digital recording became standard.
Alex! I didn't know your channel until you posted this in the multitrack cassette group.... stoked to check out your other vids, and this is awesome and you cover so many of the fun aspects of cassette recording 🙏 🙌🏻
Cheers! Although I spent a good 4 years recording on tape before I ever experienced a DAW, I've ironically not made a video about it, despite making videos about all sorts of other vintage things. I'm hoping to get a reel to reel too so I can revisit that.
Inspiring creativity, Alex. Especially the Trident ambient performance mixing, that's a great to way to achieve a unique recording from a bunch of simple ingredients.
I had a Fostex 4 track when I was 17. Recorded some guitars into it, couldnt really do much. Later at 18-19 I bought a Fostex D90 8 track ADAT compatible HDD recorder. It was a revelation, even with a behringer mixer and a sync'd drum machine at the time. We live in a Golden Age and we dont even know it. 😅
@@VirtualModular Sooo many pluggins to wreck your sound too. 😁 The D90 was something like 3 months wages for me but soooo good at the time. Like a big tape recorder but CD quality on every track
MAAAAAAAAN! I used to have one of those. Loved it! Really good rig. The heads started going on mine eventually- gargly sounds on the high pitch. I recorded mates' bands on it as well as my own stuff. My first real intro to recording. Very fond memories.
@@AlexBallMusic I don't think I had the imagination to drive it as hard as you did. It did crunch up a bit with resonant synths though- nice compression and crunch that I liked. I wonder if splitting a cassette into 6 tracks would reduce the dynamic range further and make it a bit crunchier. The second, stereo deck was a godsend for bounces and mixdowns- handles metal tape too.
@@AlexBallMusic Here's a demo I recorded for a mates' band back in 92. It's pretty lo-fi and crusty- one bounce for sure (bass and drums), then maybe another with rhythm guitars. This demo became a bit of a legend in the local metal scene. ua-cam.com/video/GhtrR-QDcvo/v-deo.html
Tape recordings always gives the sound a bit more of a mystical kind of quality, as if the sound is coming from some dreamy place. Such a vibe. Cassette / tape rules.
The fantastic thing about this Sansui, is you can actually record onto the 6 tracks at once. Most tascam units with more than 4 tracks are only able to record to 4 at once. Really nice to have an extra two for Effects returns, or to bounce 4 tracks to a stereo track. And then the beauty of this is the two decks, it’s soooo good to have a “master deck” to track to for a final mixdown.
Think modular with it's tiny knobs and crappy thin wires in the way everywhere and in the way. Then suck that up, and finally, you will appreciate this old piece of junk for what it is. Wonderful! Roomy!! Big knobs and sliders!!! Beautiful!!!!
I still have the rack mount of the Sansui 6-track recorder with the standalone 6-track mixer! In the old days, I would record a JL Cooper PPS-1 SMPTE sync on track 6 and then a few live things on tracks 1-4. With the SMPTE, I could sync my Amiga 500 which would then run my synths+samples via MIDI.
Because of Cortini, I came to know of the strange qualities of these. What I found especially nice is that you can sync a modular synthesizer with that quite easily. When you realise that you can add a syncpulse to one of the tracks (even some straigth drumhits) and later on still have three tracks left to mix (and pingpong), these things excel even today. To most clock-inputs on modular synths, it does even work while changing speed on the multitracker. I‘d really enjoy seeing you trying that with the System 100 :)
Great to see you exploring the WS-X1 on the channel, and looking forward to seeing the next videos in this series! Would be awesome to see you stripe the sync track and hook this up with your SP12!
That drone performance - it sounded really nice! It would never have crossed my mind to control a bass drone's notes by fader alone like that (maybe I'm just dim, but I'll own it). It's minimal but works so well, especially where the bass drones blend for a brief moment in a smeary but very pleasant way.
I know it’s across UA-cam and you are putting decent quality in to the Sansui, but the sound quality actually seems pretty good considering each track must be considerably less than 1mm on the tape. I remember my 4-track cassette experiments sounding very shonky indeed!
Neat! Im a musician devoted to recording using these outdated machines and trust me, I have never heard of an actual 6-track cassette multitracker until now. 4-tracks, yes. 8-tracks, absolutely. but 6? That's pretty cool, basically like having all the utility of the 8-tracks but doesn't take up quite so much board space with more knobs, buttons and inputs. I did like the sound of this machine too. Reminded me of the stability of the 424 mkII I used to own. And the fact that there are two tape slots is an added bonus to make duplicating that much easier. Or if your'e say trying something crazy like bouncing between two tapes, i guess that would be possible. Great video
genuinely you are my absolute favourite content creator on UA-cam, your videos are always educational and interesting. You have an awesome visual style, and of course brilliant jams and sound design. I always know when I click on an Alex Ball video, its going to be a fantastic video. Thanks for being so consistent with your videos man.
For a moment I was so confused when that clap came out of the 606. :) Great watch, as always. I love Sansui. I have the RG-7 that I use to lo-fi the Blofeld. Admittedly it had some modifications to make the BBD chorus/dubbeler stereo but it sounds great!
The hand clapper strikes! RG-7 - had to Google that. My, my, I could go down a rabbit hole with the stuff they've made. Nice work on the mod, that sounds ace.
I read that Revox is going to rebuild one of their tape recorder for an absurd amount of money the other day. I can't understand why someone cant build a decent cassette recorder today since a lot of people are buying old beaten up tascam and such for a ton of money
Also it's possible to run a DAW synced up to a multitrack tape machine, in case you either need more channels or want to switch the tape sound in and out. I've got a Portastudio 244 sitting in storage, it just needs new rubber parts. I've already have some projects for the winter, but I'll put resurrecting this machine on the list as well. Who knows, we might have a long winter :D
What an unexpected pleasure Alex. Never had a cassette multitrack, I inherited a Fostex A8 which is a whole different kettle of kippers. That deck of yours has one heck of a crazy tape speed range, Indeed, top joy of the varibold ips on the magnetoband as Stanley Unwin would have said...
Great video 👍. I recently got my 244 running again. I had hot-rodded it to add a bypass switch for the dbx to sync my Atari and Cubase. One thing that I think was helpful back then was first recording a demo and then planning the tracks and bounces. It usually meant improvements in the arrangement but more importantly it meant the turds didn't get polished unlike today where its too easy to keep wasting effort on a song that deserves a quiet death!
Manipulating the tape speed on one of these cassette-based machines is how Graham Fellows (aka John Shuttleworth) did the character voices on his show. Nifty music too.
I started with a MiniDisc 4-track. Skipped analog altogether. Even the semi-professional studio I recorded a few songs in with friends was using ADAT. I did get a bit of experience with analog tape at university, but only for one semester. We were on to digital tape after that...
I liked how you could record drum sounds (or a guitar solo or..), turn the tape around and record the reverb. Loved those reversed reverbs you can get out of it.
Cool J-guitar 🤘 Had the Sansui mixer that went along with the 6 track you have. I made a ton of music on it, with an ADAT. Sounded great! I liked the look, too.
Another great use for those love noise, if you chain the first input/output 1 to input 2... and so on, you add artifacts in each stage (4 tracks-4 stages...8 tracks 8 stages ). That's produce best warm noise ever ear 😊
Cassette multi-track machines were brilliant - I had a Tascam 414 - a fairly basic machine, but it worked fine, and pulling together quick demos was great fun. With some outboard effects (especially a compressor and a decent reverb unit), and a minidisc recorder to bounce back and forwards to, you could make some pretty convincing recordings. I miss the immediacy of kit like this - a song could be arranged and committed to a demo tape in literally an hour.
4:00 Patreon only idea: 24-hours of a full-tape rewind, eject, flip, repeat. Done live. I'd stay up for a whole livestream of that, then buy the recording for $20, maybe more.
i used to love turning the tape over and doing backwards singing, pads and guitars. I've always had a four track but don't really use it much these days. i know there are midi multi trackers but it would be really nice to have a new take on them and make some sort of grove box/sampler with all of the multi track ways of doing things, only it syncs to your daw flawlessly and with a tape built in that you sequence onto etc with all the modern scatter effects/looper/grain shifter/ id really appreciate experimenting with a machine like that.
With all the interest in tape machines some companies could easily make a brand new and totally reliable multitrack tape recorder these days, designed to work well with the less expensive new tapes being manufactured these days. Brand new tape recorders are being made so a new tape multitrack would be lots of fun especially if they market it as a killer analog mixer and make sure it's got all the goodies like double speed switch and pitch bend and two decks like this beast - which I assume allows you to mix down to a normal tape you can play on any machine. Interface looks really nice on this one! Korg made one that had speakers and Fostex made one that had an onboard mic if I remember correctly.
I remember this being reviewed on release in Music Technology magazine, and teenage me dreaming of owning one! Quite happy these days with my little Tascam four track that records to an SD card, but it's nowhere as cool as the Sansui.
Love these old multitrack recorders. My first recording setup was tascam’s most minimal 4-track - I recorded everything through a Behringer mixer w noisy built-in FX, and mix it down to tape recorder in an old karaoke machine. I’d record songs for my high school girlfriends and make album art with MS Paint, lol. All those layers of noisy FX and tape hiss must’ve been unlistenable for those poor girls.
A friend of mine got one of these for me in 2005. (It included a VHS tape where a musician named Todd Grace explained its functionality.) The recording system doesn’t work anymore (possibly needs a new belt), but I got into using the mixer section alone (I was already catapulting into the DAW stratosphere anyway). For most of the 3 years I lived alone, I ran it from one of the headphone outs into a bass combo. We ran 2 of my synthesizers, our drummer’s e-kit, a microphone, a bass and our other guitarist’s pedalboard into it. Not too shabby for a gut-bucket in-apartment P A. (I also had a true P A, but I never assembled it.)
Even Stock, Aitken and Waterman despite the plethora of digital recording equipment they had, stated in an interview sometime in the late 80s that they deliberately went and bought a bunch of analogue equipment to route everything through so it came out the other end with a certain *something* about it. I'm no professional by any stretch but a tape sim biased a certain way with a slow tape speed like 7.5ips on something like a Linn or DX/DMX kick drum really does give it this juicy crunch. Overdrive the PRS frequencies with a mid scoop going in and it never fails to THUMP hard! I am so damn tempted to grab this 1986 16-track Fostek open-reel recorder for sale up in Scotland for £300 and this video isn't helping. Even just routed through the circuits that little six track made the Drumtraks sound pretty full, and to tape it was almost like an aggressively coloured compressor.
Very interesting. Yeah, those digital drum machines sound 100% better through analogue outboard, as you say. I also have to run my 808 through a vintage Roland mixer because it's perfect, whereas the direct, audio interface equivalent totally lacks something. I think a little saturation and harmonic distortion is the big thing.
@@AlexBallMusic ya know, I wish I did buy it. It was a Fostex Model 80 (so an 8-track, not 16) for £300 on Gumtree. It's gone now :( There is one on eBay but it's £700. Damn, I should've bought the one on Gumtree when I saw it!
Oh no, I sold mine years ago, because of the terrible quality of Deck B. Also wires from the 6 track head came off. The built in reverb was surprisingly good. Great video.
Cool! I recently picked up the book Making 4-Track Music by John Peel in a charity bookshop for 50p. It got me thinking about digging out my old Yamaha MT3X from the loft and syncing it to Cubase Pro 12 using Cubase's SMPTE Generator. In the mid-90s, I picked up a dirt-cheap 4 MB Atari STE that came bundled with the Steinberg Midex+ key expander/Cubase dongle. At the time, I thought the ability to sync my 4-track to the Atari was akin to witchcraft! 😂
I'm not aware of any cassette multitracks that can sync (chase) a DAW, but you can get the DAW to chase the tape after laying down a SMPTE track. bigger tape decks with locators (including video) that can chase DAWs are absolutely magic. hit play and everything shuttles to position...
@@poofygoof Yep, that's what I mean. Striping the tape on your multi-track with timecode then using the tape machine as the master. I only vaguely remember how all that stuff works, it's been decades since I actually used it.
Don’t forget to do the Fostex A8. I recorded complete albums on it. Later even with MIDI sync via a JL Cooper time code writer / reader, although that cost me an extra track to avoid recording head crosstalk issues. 😁
The technique of using a tape machine as an instrument dates back to the early 70's. 10cc used it on I'm not in love, and much later Mike Mill's from REM used it on Star me Kitten.
Opposite view here : I’m into 80's, Alessandro Cortini and Legowelt too, and I get that people love to glorify this stuff. But honestly, after messing with a Sansui MX12 and a Tascam 434, they straight-up made everything sound worse. You could use it as an effect here and there, use it to warm up drum samples, but with longer takes the tapes get the drift issues and the device is just way too big for just that. In the end I sold both, better get something like cheap distort / compress as insert pedals, and maybe some drift / detune pedals too. This is just my take 🙂 Love your video's!
Yeah, totally understand that. Once I left tape behind, I did touch it for nearly 25 years. It's beautiful, but very impractical in most settings. I guess it's a luxury option for the audio nerds. 😀
The keyboards and drum machine sound better pitched up and down than the guitar. Interesting. Also.. KORG TRIDENT!!! Just lovely, and built for mood and atmosphere.
Just picked up a Marantz stereo field tape recorder off of eBay last week. Need to replace the wonky slipping belts, but it has stereo 1/4 jack & RCA inputs/outputs, and I tried some test recordings last night. Sounds amazing and so unique, can't wait to do more with it.
I’ve always thought about getting this machine, it’s one of the cleaner looking of the tape recorders. I’ve used an mt8x as my current workhorse with a mt400 being my last one.
You're actually not supposed to use metal cassettes in these. The formulation combined with the double speed transport is not good for the heads. All manufacturers of multi track cassette recorders recommended cobalt-doped type IIs (TDK SA, Maxwell XLII or similar). Pretty sure he's using an ordinary ferric, though?
I come for the educational content, I stay for some of the best music on UA-cam.
Being clever, creative, organized, and a talented musician to be boot, it’s fun to watch the magic in action.
True. Alex can pen some catchy tunes.
You just made this tape machine jump in price on reverb, thanks a lot!😂
They've been overpriced for a while. Hence I grabbed the first one I saw under £100, even though it's not the cleanest.
@@AlexBallMusic all in good fun, anytime you post something kind of obscure, I just notice prices go up slightly. I didn’t know Sansui made a tape machine. I have good amps from them, but this thing is a little beauty!
LOLZ
One unit for spairs and repairs is available on ebay for £480 😅
Until everyone finds out how crap it was to use them
I think a well known German music equipment company would make a tidy profit if they released an 8 track cassette recorder. Loved the vapour wave.
It's time to bring it back. 😎
I really wish there was a new build four-track cassette recorder with three heads (so you can monitor the recorded tape while tracking). Even better if it was a Eurorack module 👍
Are you talking about Behringer oder Schneider meine freund?
Uli Behringer is swiss. The company Behringer has its registered business address in Malaysia.
@@TMeierI was legit just thinking about this. You could live track sound on sound looping. Especially if you could engage and disengage the erase head.
Cool!! Drone jamm with 6 track is beautiful.
Thanks! A bit different from my usual sproinging.
I have a Tascam Model 12 I've been regretting buying because, why deal with that UI for recording when I have a DAW? Obviously, it was just the No Computer (Look Mum!) fantasy I realistically have no time for. But now I have a whole new use for it. It's an instrument too! One thing I don't get though, is the slow ascending/descending melody, which I think is part of the sus chord tracks, just being kept in decent time with the 606 solely by using the speed knob? If so... siiick.
I started my multitrack journey back in 1982 using two stereo cassette recorders. I had a little Radio Shack mixer, and I recorded the first track, played that back along with my live bits to the other, back and forth. After about four bounces, there was a lot of noise, but I got my ideas out. If I screwed up, I'd rewind and start over...no punch ins.
Fun times!
Cool video, Alex!
You're not alone, that's exactly what I did when I was young! In the days of no online tutorials, there were only two kinds of people - the ones who figured this out on their own and the ones who didn't. The next discovery was using pawn shop guitar pedals for EQ, compression and reverb on vocals. And chorus and delay on a cheap keyboard. I recorded a whole album with my band that way, using a guitar into a mic'd bass amp to sound like a Marshall stack.
Excellent! Yeah, the noise floor starts at 50/50 and then goes up from there. 😀
But these things were invaluable.
Yep, I did very much the same thing, but without a mixer! Bung keys, drum machine and a vocal on one track, then overdub more keys and backing vocals on the other, and bounce. Tremendous fun, and an inexpensive way to make some very basic demos.
Coming from 4 track machines I did that kind bouncing with the pretty revolutionary minidisk walkmans a lot.
More lo-fi tricks:
-Stereo ins on a VHS VCR at the SP speed, really good sound quality
-Designing cassette labels at double the size and then shrinking them down with a photocopier.
Alex is one of the best 80s composers of our time. 😆
He's literally an 80's kid too, like me.
I had an old Fostex which I gave away, I used to do all my recording back in the 90s on it, and then I inherited a knackered Tascam 244, which I got Tetrakan, a great 4 track technician, to completely service and repair. Any recording I do now is done on the Tascam. They bring a level of serenity and thinking time to the recording process, waiting for tapes to rewind and getting set up that slightly changes your mindset. I really enjoy it. This was a great demo of what else you can use them for. Great job, as ever, Mr Ball.
Another interesting video, Alex - your work is always both informative and inspiring. And the sweeping Trident strings on that droney track sounded LUSH!
Thanks! The Trident always delivers.
I have fond memories of my Fostex 8 track. All the bouncing of tracks forced my creative decision making. Boundaries are great things to work against.
Absolutely! I used to have track sheets where I'd plan out how the arrangement and recording would work! It definitely made you work in different ways, as you say.
@@AlexBallMusic for me, it took a long time to get my "In the box" mixes to have that easy, organic sound of tape. We all went digital too early. Convenience isn't quality. ☹️
@@FatNorthernBigotYep. A lot of work making it do things that tape naturally did.
Agreed!
Had a guitarist play a little reverbed pentatonic solo from high to low over a reversed cassette tape.
He didn't have much fun playing but I got a great spooky solo out of it.
Or what Alex describes, the way of thinking about the bouncing, or even the mistakes I made partially erasing tracks.
Or even just the tension of getting it right quickly so the tape wouldn't wear out too much.
I'm still watching, but, that "playing the tape deck as an instrument" section reminds me so much of the Genesis track, "Fading Light" from "We Can't Dance" and it was absolutely lovely. Thanks for that!
I'm not mistaken, choir parts in 10cc's "I'm not in love" were also performed like that, although AFAIK they used 24-track for that ;)
The 'use it as an instrument' jam is brilliant
One of my friends had a crappy 4-track recorder back in the early 90's and we would make just the worst metal/sludge albums. Like every few days we'd make a new band, different name, ad people, mix up who did what, "write" new songs, new album art, etc. We would give out the "Albums. At some point we switched to cds. Good lord that was fun. anywho, great video, brilliant ideas.
I love stories like this! I used to run off my cassette songs, draw artwork on the inserts and hand them out at school, same as you. Haha.
I imagine they wound up straight in the bin.
@@AlexBallMusic Yup, exactly the same. I'm 100% sure 90% ended up in the rubbish or recorded over. But dang it if it wasn't fun, Always riding the edge of taking it way to serious and it's all a big joke.
Halcyon days.
The punch, the crunch, and the rolling off of some upper frequencies is such a vibe.
When I first got my Tascam Portastudio, the VU meters were always maxxed out at +6db. I mean, I thought that was the point. Great video!
I like the way the tape doesn't sound as crisp as the DAW version. Brilliant and educational as always, thank you.
Really noisy and fuzzed out with a limited frequency range. It's lovely. 😍
Great vid Alex. Although I certainly love the nostalgia, this video reminded me why I never want to touch tape again. hehe ;)
I've given it 24 years before going back. 😂
Watching your videos is like traveling in a Time Machine. Bravo.
Wow never knew Sansui made that kind of gear. Was so funny seeing you working on it while sitting on the ground. That was the way we did it when we where young.
That was a heck of a lot of fun. Thanks for reminding me why I loved the 80s. And also what it sounded like when the batteries were running out on my walkman.
This thing is gorgeous ,thank you for this masterful demonstration ❤
Tascam 644 MIDIStudio owner here. :-) What people need to know today is how cassette-based multitrackers democratized recording in those days - when professional studio tape technology was completely unaffordable. A huge leap before digital recording became standard.
Alex! I didn't know your channel until you posted this in the multitrack cassette group.... stoked to check out your other vids, and this is awesome and you cover so many of the fun aspects of cassette recording 🙏 🙌🏻
Cheers! Although I spent a good 4 years recording on tape before I ever experienced a DAW, I've ironically not made a video about it, despite making videos about all sorts of other vintage things. I'm hoping to get a reel to reel too so I can revisit that.
Nice video. You've inspired my to repair my dads old Tascam 246 now. I've been using it as a mixer, nice and crunchy.
that thing bigger than my 8 track tascam.... sheesh!
Yep! Small in the 80s meant large.
Bigger size - Bigger sound (or hiss)!
Inspiring creativity, Alex. Especially the Trident ambient performance mixing, that's a great to way to achieve a unique recording from a bunch of simple ingredients.
I had a Fostex 4 track when I was 17. Recorded some guitars into it, couldnt really do much. Later at 18-19 I bought a Fostex D90 8 track ADAT compatible HDD recorder. It was a revelation, even with a behringer mixer and a sync'd drum machine at the time. We live in a Golden Age and we dont even know it. 😅
Yep, I used to dream of clean digital reordings. Now people actully pay good money to make it sound like crappy old tape agin. World gone mad 😂
@@VirtualModular Sooo many pluggins to wreck your sound too. 😁
The D90 was something like 3 months wages for me but soooo good at the time. Like a big tape recorder but CD quality on every track
MAAAAAAAAN! I used to have one of those. Loved it! Really good rig. The heads started going on mine eventually- gargly sounds on the high pitch. I recorded mates' bands on it as well as my own stuff. My first real intro to recording. Very fond memories.
I imagine the heads on this unit aren't right too. Do you remember if yours sounded this crusty?
@@AlexBallMusic I don't think I had the imagination to drive it as hard as you did. It did crunch up a bit with resonant synths though- nice compression and crunch that I liked. I wonder if splitting a cassette into 6 tracks would reduce the dynamic range further and make it a bit crunchier. The second, stereo deck was a godsend for bounces and mixdowns- handles metal tape too.
@@AlexBallMusic Here's a demo I recorded for a mates' band back in 92. It's pretty lo-fi and crusty- one bounce for sure (bass and drums), then maybe another with rhythm guitars. This demo became a bit of a legend in the local metal scene.
ua-cam.com/video/GhtrR-QDcvo/v-deo.html
@@thedonalSo good that Ken Danger commented.
@@AlexBallMusic He looks dangerous..
Oh wow this is so much bigger than I realized from your previous instagram posts. I love it. It is *BEAUTIFUL* ugh....
That unit sounds awesome, man.
The right kind of wrong.
Radioland feel on that live dialed Trident track! Love it
Tape recordings always gives the sound a bit more of a mystical kind of quality, as if the sound is coming from some dreamy place. Such a vibe. Cassette / tape rules.
Yeah, totally do.
Sansui-tional.
The fantastic thing about this Sansui, is you can actually record onto the 6 tracks at once. Most tascam units with more than 4 tracks are only able to record to 4 at once. Really nice to have an extra two for Effects returns, or to bounce 4 tracks to a stereo track. And then the beauty of this is the two decks, it’s soooo good to have a “master deck” to track to for a final mixdown.
Yeah, it seems they were able to learn from others products and make it better.
Goes to show the thing that we really miss with digital audio is that perfection doesn’t actually sound all that good
The same reason we have filters on Instagram. We don't like accuracy.
Who would’ve known it was that big?!?!! Those are beautiful! Seem to need service sometimes. Love it. Good luck and have fun 🌊✨🌊
Ah the WS-X1 - I spent my entire childhood with that thing. Still have it around somewhere...
Excellent! Still got the tapes?
@@AlexBallMusic yeah, some of them!
@@PianoVampire Nice. I wonder if they'll sound like you remember.
Another great video, Alex. I started on Fostex X-15 on I still love the vibe on those recordings when I had limited gear but maybe more imagination!
It definitely has a vibe! 🙌
Think modular with it's tiny knobs and crappy thin wires in the way everywhere and in the way. Then suck that up, and finally, you will appreciate this old piece of junk for what it is. Wonderful! Roomy!! Big knobs and sliders!!! Beautiful!!!!
Everyone! 2 hands together for Alex Ball creating amazing content without hipster lighting or plants in the mix! Hip Hip Horray!
I still have the rack mount of the Sansui 6-track recorder with the standalone 6-track mixer! In the old days, I would record a JL Cooper PPS-1 SMPTE sync on track 6 and then a few live things on tracks 1-4. With the SMPTE, I could sync my Amiga 500 which would then run my synths+samples via MIDI.
Because of Cortini, I came to know of the strange qualities of these. What I found especially nice is that you can sync a modular synthesizer with that quite easily. When you realise that you can add a syncpulse to one of the tracks (even some straigth drumhits) and later on still have three tracks left to mix (and pingpong), these things excel even today. To most clock-inputs on modular synths, it does even work while changing speed on the multitracker.
I‘d really enjoy seeing you trying that with the System 100 :)
That was a really nice performance. I love it
brilliant vid alex, thanks a bunch for all your music and inspiration
Hey Woody! Straight back at you. 🫵😎
6 tracks? You’re a baller! 😂 I started with a 4-track Porta Studio.
Oh honey, he's teasing you. Nobody has 6 tracks.
@@jason3898let's send him back to the future 🎉
Great to see you exploring the WS-X1 on the channel, and looking forward to seeing the next videos in this series!
Would be awesome to see you stripe the sync track and hook this up with your SP12!
Amazing tracks. Thanks for sharing Alex!!!
Lovely deck and video! Are you going reel-to-reel next?
That's the plan. Looking to grab an 8-track reel-to-reel or something.
That drone example is how they did the choir on 'I'm not in Love' by 10cc and OMD's 'Souviner'
Thanks the one!
Oh, yeah, that bizarre 6 track cassette recorder. I had forgotten about that one. Six tracks. So weird.
Yeah, even has a digital reverb built into it too. Quite unusual.
@@AlexBallMusic Really quite the portable little studio.
That drone performance - it sounded really nice! It would never have crossed my mind to control a bass drone's notes by fader alone like that (maybe I'm just dim, but I'll own it). It's minimal but works so well, especially where the bass drones blend for a brief moment in a smeary but very pleasant way.
Yeah, that smudgy note cross is lovely.
I know it’s across UA-cam and you are putting decent quality in to the Sansui, but the sound quality actually seems pretty good considering each track must be considerably less than 1mm on the tape. I remember my 4-track cassette experiments sounding very shonky indeed!
Neat! Im a musician devoted to recording using these outdated machines and trust me, I have never heard of an actual 6-track cassette multitracker until now. 4-tracks, yes. 8-tracks, absolutely. but 6? That's pretty cool, basically like having all the utility of the 8-tracks but doesn't take up quite so much board space with more knobs, buttons and inputs. I did like the sound of this machine too. Reminded me of the stability of the 424 mkII I used to own. And the fact that there are two tape slots is an added bonus to make duplicating that much easier. Or if your'e say trying something crazy like bouncing between two tapes, i guess that would be possible. Great video
Yeah, it's quite unusual. I definitely want to try bouncing, as you said.
genuinely you are my absolute favourite content creator on UA-cam, your videos are always educational and interesting. You have an awesome visual style, and of course brilliant jams and sound design. I always know when I click on an Alex Ball video, its going to be a fantastic video. Thanks for being so consistent with your videos man.
Ah, cheers. That's nice.
Really cool idea for a video (and cool video itself), especially with a multitrack cassette recorder that's different from the more popular choices.
For a moment I was so confused when that clap came out of the 606. :)
Great watch, as always. I love Sansui. I have the RG-7 that I use to lo-fi the Blofeld. Admittedly it had some modifications to make the BBD chorus/dubbeler stereo but it sounds great!
The hand clapper strikes!
RG-7 - had to Google that. My, my, I could go down a rabbit hole with the stuff they've made. Nice work on the mod, that sounds ace.
I love all that old shit. No matter how good technology gets, just gimme some old devices.
I read that Revox is going to rebuild one of their tape recorder for an absurd amount of money the other day. I can't understand why someone cant build a decent cassette recorder today since a lot of people are buying old beaten up tascam and such for a ton of money
Great one! Can't wait for the next episodes with tapes 🙂
4:00 I really miss this. My old Tascam died unfortunately 😐
Also it's possible to run a DAW synced up to a multitrack tape machine, in case you either need more channels or want to switch the tape sound in and out. I've got a Portastudio 244 sitting in storage, it just needs new rubber parts. I've already have some projects for the winter, but I'll put resurrecting this machine on the list as well. Who knows, we might have a long winter :D
Such vibes!
What an unexpected pleasure Alex. Never had a cassette multitrack, I inherited a Fostex A8 which is a whole different kettle of kippers.
That deck of yours has one heck of a crazy tape speed range, Indeed, top joy of the varibold ips on the magnetoband as Stanley Unwin would have said...
The A8 is one I'm considering. Is it good?
Great video 👍. I recently got my 244 running again. I had hot-rodded it to add a bypass switch for the dbx to sync my Atari and Cubase. One thing that I think was helpful back then was first recording a demo and then planning the tracks and bounces. It usually meant improvements in the arrangement but more importantly it meant the turds didn't get polished unlike today where its too easy to keep wasting effort on a song that deserves a quiet death!
I have one of these, really cool bit of kit
Going to be worth a lot more now.
Manipulating the tape speed on one of these cassette-based machines is how Graham Fellows (aka John Shuttleworth) did the character voices on his show. Nifty music too.
I started with a MiniDisc 4-track. Skipped analog altogether. Even the semi-professional studio I recorded a few songs in with friends was using ADAT. I did get a bit of experience with analog tape at university, but only for one semester. We were on to digital tape after that...
I remember ADAT. I also remember people using ADATs to run audio through that then went to a PCI sound card.
I liked how you could record drum sounds (or a guitar solo or..), turn the tape around and record the reverb.
Loved those reversed reverbs you can get out of it.
Great idea!
Cool J-guitar 🤘 Had the Sansui mixer that went along with the 6 track you have. I made a ton of music on it, with an ADAT. Sounded great! I liked the look, too.
that yellow font fits perfectly
Wow Alex that jam at 4:22 is so good. I need that to dj out.
Very jamal moss...
Another great use for those love noise, if you chain the first input/output 1 to input 2... and so on, you add artifacts in each stage (4 tracks-4 stages...8 tracks 8 stages ). That's produce best warm noise ever ear 😊
Nice idea, thank you!
Cassette multi-track machines were brilliant - I had a Tascam 414 - a fairly basic machine, but it worked fine, and pulling together quick demos was great fun. With some outboard effects (especially a compressor and a decent reverb unit), and a minidisc recorder to bounce back and forwards to, you could make some pretty convincing recordings. I miss the immediacy of kit like this - a song could be arranged and committed to a demo tape in literally an hour.
Just brilliant
Ha ha got the dolby sound all over the tape sections, love it
I always do the Spinal Tap joke when I see Dolby.
4:00 Patreon only idea: 24-hours of a full-tape rewind, eject, flip, repeat. Done live. I'd stay up for a whole livestream of that, then buy the recording for $20, maybe more.
😂
That thing is freaking huge! Back when technology was most impressive because of its physicality.
i used to love turning the tape over and doing backwards singing, pads and guitars. I've always had a four track but don't really use it much these days. i know there are midi multi trackers but it would be really nice to have a new take on them and make some sort of grove box/sampler with all of the multi track ways of doing things, only it syncs to your daw flawlessly and with a tape built in that you sequence onto etc with all the modern scatter effects/looper/grain shifter/ id really appreciate experimenting with a machine like that.
👍and ❤️to the end credits: stem, tone and vintage video fx as an obvious tribute to Benge 🤩
The pitch manipulation sounds like something Adran Belew did while in King Crimson in the 80s.
With all the interest in tape machines some companies could easily make a brand new and totally reliable multitrack tape recorder these days, designed to work well with the less expensive new tapes being manufactured these days. Brand new tape recorders are being made so a new tape multitrack would be lots of fun especially if they market it as a killer analog mixer and make sure it's got all the goodies like double speed switch and pitch bend and two decks like this beast - which I assume allows you to mix down to a normal tape you can play on any machine. Interface looks really nice on this one! Korg made one that had speakers and Fostex made one that had an onboard mic if I remember correctly.
I remember this being reviewed on release in Music Technology magazine, and teenage me dreaming of owning one! Quite happy these days with my little Tascam four track that records to an SD card, but it's nowhere as cool as the Sansui.
I used to have something like this and I put drum machines and synths through it and everyone thought I was weird 😂 love it
Ahead of your time. 😀
Love these old multitrack recorders. My first recording setup was tascam’s most minimal 4-track - I recorded everything through a Behringer mixer w noisy built-in FX, and mix it down to tape recorder in an old karaoke machine. I’d record songs for my high school girlfriends and make album art with MS Paint, lol. All those layers of noisy FX and tape hiss must’ve been unlistenable for those poor girls.
A friend of mine got one of these for me in 2005. (It included a VHS tape where a musician named Todd Grace explained its functionality.) The recording system doesn’t work anymore (possibly needs a new belt), but I got into using the mixer section alone (I was already catapulting into the DAW stratosphere anyway). For most of the 3 years I lived alone, I ran it from one of the headphone outs into a bass combo. We ran 2 of my synthesizers, our drummer’s e-kit, a microphone, a bass and our other guitarist’s pedalboard into it. Not too shabby for a gut-bucket in-apartment P A.
(I also had a true P A, but I never assembled it.)
Interesting to hear your use of it. I'd love to see that VHS if it still exists.
Awesome content as per..
Even Stock, Aitken and Waterman despite the plethora of digital recording equipment they had, stated in an interview sometime in the late 80s that they deliberately went and bought a bunch of analogue equipment to route everything through so it came out the other end with a certain *something* about it. I'm no professional by any stretch but a tape sim biased a certain way with a slow tape speed like 7.5ips on something like a Linn or DX/DMX kick drum really does give it this juicy crunch. Overdrive the PRS frequencies with a mid scoop going in and it never fails to THUMP hard!
I am so damn tempted to grab this 1986 16-track Fostek open-reel recorder for sale up in Scotland for £300 and this video isn't helping. Even just routed through the circuits that little six track made the Drumtraks sound pretty full, and to tape it was almost like an aggressively coloured compressor.
Very interesting. Yeah, those digital drum machines sound 100% better through analogue outboard, as you say.
I also have to run my 808 through a vintage Roland mixer because it's perfect, whereas the direct, audio interface equivalent totally lacks something. I think a little saturation and harmonic distortion is the big thing.
PS - you're definitely buying that Fostex. Just give in to it. 😎
@@AlexBallMusic ya know, I wish I did buy it. It was a Fostex Model 80 (so an 8-track, not 16) for £300 on Gumtree. It's gone now :(
There is one on eBay but it's £700. Damn, I should've bought the one on Gumtree when I saw it!
Ah shucks. Yeah, the Model 80 has been on my hit list for a long time too.
I still have my Tascam 424 and 488. I love the workflow of tape.
Oh no, I sold mine years ago, because of the terrible quality of Deck B. Also wires from the 6 track head came off. The built in reverb was surprisingly good. Great video.
Cool! I recently picked up the book Making 4-Track Music by John Peel in a charity bookshop for 50p. It got me thinking about digging out my old Yamaha MT3X from the loft and syncing it to Cubase Pro 12 using Cubase's SMPTE Generator. In the mid-90s, I picked up a dirt-cheap 4 MB Atari STE that came bundled with the Steinberg Midex+ key expander/Cubase dongle. At the time, I thought the ability to sync my 4-track to the Atari was akin to witchcraft! 😂
I'm not aware of any cassette multitracks that can sync (chase) a DAW, but you can get the DAW to chase the tape after laying down a SMPTE track. bigger tape decks with locators (including video) that can chase DAWs are absolutely magic. hit play and everything shuttles to position...
@@poofygoof Yep, that's what I mean. Striping the tape on your multi-track with timecode then using the tape machine as the master. I only vaguely remember how all that stuff works, it's been decades since I actually used it.
Don’t forget to do the Fostex A8. I recorded complete albums on it. Later even with MIDI sync via a JL Cooper time code writer / reader, although that cost me an extra track to avoid recording head crosstalk issues. 😁
Yeah, would love to get hold of one of those, or perhaps a Model 80. That's the next video idea.
3:43 is pure funk.
The technique of using a tape machine as an instrument dates back to the early 70's. 10cc used it on I'm not in love, and much later Mike Mill's from REM used it on Star me Kitten.
That's the one, yep!
Wow! This awesome!
VHS vibes love it! I remember there were also 8 track cassette decks around this time e.g. Yamaha MT8X... I wonder how those fared?
wow that track
Opposite view here : I’m into 80's, Alessandro Cortini and Legowelt too, and I get that people love to glorify this stuff. But honestly, after messing with a Sansui MX12 and a Tascam 434, they straight-up made everything sound worse.
You could use it as an effect here and there, use it to warm up drum samples, but with longer takes the tapes get the drift issues and the device is just way too big for just that. In the end I sold both, better get something like cheap distort / compress as insert pedals, and maybe some drift / detune pedals too.
This is just my take 🙂
Love your video's!
Yeah, totally understand that. Once I left tape behind, I did touch it for nearly 25 years. It's beautiful, but very impractical in most settings. I guess it's a luxury option for the audio nerds. 😀
The keyboards and drum machine sound better pitched up and down than the guitar. Interesting. Also.. KORG TRIDENT!!! Just lovely, and built for mood and atmosphere.
Just picked up a Marantz stereo field tape recorder off of eBay last week. Need to replace the wonky slipping belts, but it has stereo 1/4 jack & RCA inputs/outputs, and I tried some test recordings last night. Sounds amazing and so unique, can't wait to do more with it.
Nice!
I’ve always thought about getting this machine, it’s one of the cleaner looking of the tape recorders. I’ve used an mt8x as my current workhorse with a mt400 being my last one.
Ohhh you have spared no expense on this one using a metal tape, used to lash out and use the cheaper chromium tapes back in the day.
You're actually not supposed to use metal cassettes in these. The formulation combined with the double speed transport is not good for the heads. All manufacturers of multi track cassette recorders recommended cobalt-doped type IIs (TDK SA, Maxwell XLII or similar).
Pretty sure he's using an ordinary ferric, though?