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.
This is a fantasy that's not going to happen. It's not a simple case of bringing back tape. As someone who owns and repairs reel to reel and cassette, behringer wouldn't attempt to revive a niche market especially especially one that's very complex mechanically. Digital is mainstream for a reason. Not because it sounds better, it's for convenience. You might as well ask behringer to start making cars.
@@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!
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.
Hey, Alex Ball, you're a truly top musician masquerading as a gear reviewer, infinitely more so than Jeremy Clarkson regarding car assessments and driving. Always a sheer ethereal joy!
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.
Another interesting video, Alex - your work is always both informative and inspiring. And the sweeping Trident strings on that droney track sounded LUSH!
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 bought a Tascam 464 Portastudio 4-track in 1992 and for many years I used it not only for recording but also sitting on top of a rack as a mixer for solo or duo gigs (one or two acoustic guitars, one or two vocal mikes). 32 years later after countless changes in my life I still have it. You get attached to these things. The drive belt snapped a while ago, but I bought a new one online and there's a video on UA-cam showing how to install it. My two sons who are ten years younger than the Tascam are even keener than me to see and hear it running again.
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.
My high school band recorded a tape on the tascam 4 track, made covers at the open all night print shop (kinkos) and sold them for 4 bucks each. Sold about 40. It wasn't a good album although for 16 doing it ourselves it was decent. 1995 or so. Great times
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.
Oh my, I’m in the UK and have one of these units still in the box and in super clean condition up in the loft as well as a remote controller for it. This certainly brought some memories. ❤
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!
Interesting video Alex. I had one of the first WS-X1 recorders in the UK. I used it for demos and found it great for that, but it was never quite reliable, mostly due to the tape head. Cramming six heads into one standard sized tape head was a really new thing (that was why 1/4" tape was better with larger, wider tape heads). The recorded tracks tended to bleed over into other tracks after a lot of use. I had to have the head realigned a couple of times. To get a tape sound these days I run tracks out of my DAW and through a Revox back into the DAW.
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.
@@WesleyWattley-xy4fg total service, changed loads of parts and cleaned it all up. Good as new except for a break in the corner of the main body. I’d certainly recommend his work.
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
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.
What's so funny is that we really really cared about avoiding distortion with our HiFi equipment in the 80s, but I do agree that cassette tape distortion is one of the coveted sounds nowadays. I always pushed my (usually BASF chrome) tapes to +5 to +7db to get maximum signal over noise floor, on my AKAI GX71. What a lovely machine. Was surprised to listen to an old SUpertramp tape about 22 years later and the compression was great, just blew me away! Wish I could mechanically restore the AKAI.
So inspiring. Wish I'd had these ideas back then. I had a Tascam Porta One and often only saw the limitations. Early 90ies I sold all my equipment in frustration.
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.
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
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!
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.
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 video! using High Bias cassettes makes a big sound difference, at least on tascams. Also it's fun to use cassette loops and do the Alessandra Cortini drone trick.
I had this back in the day, it was constantly in need of repair and I ended up returning it. Shame as it was functionally very good. I also remember it constantly having a much louder hum than the Tascam units I had.
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.
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.
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 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.
I still have my Tascam Portastudio 488 that I bought in 1991. I have hundreds of cassette tapes of my music from back then and the sound is so warm. It's got a magical sound. I see you're using a normal bias tape with Dolby C. You will get an enormous clarity boost if you use my favorite: Maxell XLII 90!
Warmness aside, the kick drum really jumped out to my ears on the cassette playback at 4:06 ..I had not even noticed the kick and then BAM, there it is! (good ol tape bump:^)🙂
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!
Loved recording to tape then bouncing tracks for room or depth. Id love to get back to it. Tascams and technics were the way, the Only wayat one point, unless you were recording a record or wax. :) Damn good stuff. Well played and nice setup. Shred on my friend!
Dude.... this took me back. Your tip about putting two different notes on two individual channels, and fading them in and out... changed my life. So obvious.. i feel stupid for not seeing that. 😅
I have a Sansui 6-Track multitrack cassette recorder that I purchased in I believe it was 1991 or thereabouts...? Mine is a separate rack mounted tape recorder, and I also bought the 12-channel mixer for it (the Sansui design was that you could sync two of the 6-track's together, but I couldn't afford two of them at the time...sadly!). Still works to this day!
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
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.
I got the RackMount Unit that goes WITH That! You'd add a Sync-tone to a track on the main unit and on the rackmount that they'ed use to keep in sync ...then you'd have 10 tracks to play with (or more with more rackmounts) ... I LOVE The way it works with the tape , lets you loop between two points , rewinds but then gives slack 2 seconds after , coooL lookin Displays etc.etc.etc.
That machine has great top response still. My 4 tk Fostex 280 was worn out after two years. Head wear and lack of top response. Its a shame AKAI never built one with their Patented Glass heads. Fostex long gone now but its fun to look back on old recordings. All to easy now with daws if your computer plays ball. No pun intended. Awesome video and top music. Thanks very much.
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.
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
Always wanted one of those six tracks back in the day, never saw one stateside so ended up with a 4-track Yamaha MT-100 II with DBX noise reduction. I used that for 12 years until it basically fell apart. I briefly went to a Roland 8-track digital unit and then graduated to DAWs.
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 used to have one of those units! Amazing little (okay, maybe not so little) machine, and the built-in reverb on it was something special. Mine started having problems where moving the faders at all would cause a horrible distorted sound that wouldn't go away. Deck B never worked for me, but I had loads of fun making demos on it in the years I had it using just DeckA. This vid made me kind of bummed that I sold mine, I should have had it serviced or something!!
I started this money pit of a hobby back in the mid 90s with a Tascam Porta-03 mkII cassette multi track recorder. I miss the simplicity of it and the built in limitations. Hopefully they make a comeback with a few well thought out conveniences that don't enable option paralysis.
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.
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.
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.
These machines are Excellent. Though they are massively improved if you use a Type 2 cassette like a proper TDK SA or something. My first multi track was the Sansui MR6 Deck with its MX12 desk, 19" rack Mount, having the extra 2 tracks made such a difference. Running at double speed the quality was really decent. Several tracks I did on it had proper CD releases in the 90s. I still have my MR-6 but always fancied getting the unit you have as you can sync them both together and get 10 tracks.
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!
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’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.
Mono tracks make a difference. I Have have a little Zoom R8 for recording quick ideas, and when you record stuff in mono on single mono tracks and start panning it around then there gets to be another character to the sound. Everything in a daw goes in stereo and you spend so much time looking at a screen. On the R8 I listen to what I played on the previous tracks and have to make sure I can play the next take before recording it (mistakes and all) It is quite good occasionally getting away from daw distractions and feeling ones way int the music. During the late 80's I had a cassette porta and a Rovox a77 and did some of my best stuff on those.
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 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 👍
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.
This is a fantasy that's not going to happen. It's not a simple case of bringing back tape. As someone who owns and repairs reel to reel and cassette, behringer wouldn't attempt to revive a niche market especially especially one that's very complex mechanically. Digital is mainstream for a reason. Not because it sounds better, it's for convenience. You might as well ask behringer to start making cars.
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.
Damn straight!
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
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.
Hey, Alex Ball, you're a truly top musician masquerading as a gear reviewer, infinitely more so than Jeremy Clarkson regarding car assessments and driving. Always a sheer ethereal joy!
Thank you. Would you say that I have.....top gear? 😉
@@AlexBallMusic 😂 Not gonna lie... I tell myself, if I had half of your loadout, I'd make half as good music as you do!
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.
Fostex 424. It really was the best of times.
@@garysuarez9614tascam 144 started it all
@@garysuarez9614 Yamaha MT120. Great times.
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 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.
That pitch change on the 80s faded in track is heavenly
I bought a Tascam 464 Portastudio 4-track in 1992 and for many years I used it not only for recording but also sitting on top of a rack as a mixer for solo or duo gigs (one or two acoustic guitars, one or two vocal mikes). 32 years later after countless changes in my life I still have it. You get attached to these things. The drive belt snapped a while ago, but I bought a new one online and there's a video on UA-cam showing how to install it. My two sons who are ten years younger than the Tascam are even keener than me to see and hear it running again.
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.
Still have those tapes ? I’d love to hear
My high school band recorded a tape on the tascam 4 track, made covers at the open all night print shop (kinkos) and sold them for 4 bucks each. Sold about 40. It wasn't a good album although for 16 doing it ourselves it was decent. 1995 or so. Great times
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.
Oh my, I’m in the UK and have one of these units still in the box and in super clean condition up in the loft as well as a remote controller for it. This certainly brought some memories. ❤
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!
If 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 ;)
@@adamstan84 Yes, it's how they did it and this section Alex's demo also has that vibe : - D
Interesting video Alex. I had one of the first WS-X1 recorders in the UK. I used it for demos and found it great for that, but it was never quite reliable, mostly due to the tape head. Cramming six heads into one standard sized tape head was a really new thing (that was why 1/4" tape was better with larger, wider tape heads). The recorded tracks tended to bleed over into other tracks after a lot of use. I had to have the head realigned a couple of times. To get a tape sound these days I run tracks out of my DAW and through a Revox back into the DAW.
This thing is gorgeous ,thank you for this masterful demonstration ❤
Mmm the 'use it as an instrument' track was gorgeous.. the subtle speed changes were 👌
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. 😍
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.
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.
Tetrakan fixed your 4 track recorder😮 👍? If so I'm gonna contact !
@@WesleyWattley-xy4fg total service, changed loads of parts and cleaned it all up. Good as new except for a break in the corner of the main body. I’d certainly recommend his work.
The 244 has a fantastic parametric eq. I still have mine
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..
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.
What's so funny is that we really really cared about avoiding distortion with our HiFi equipment in the 80s, but I do agree that cassette tape distortion is one of the coveted sounds nowadays. I always pushed my (usually BASF chrome) tapes to +5 to +7db to get maximum signal over noise floor, on my AKAI GX71. What a lovely machine.
Was surprised to listen to an old SUpertramp tape about 22 years later and the compression was great, just blew me away! Wish I could mechanically restore the AKAI.
So inspiring. Wish I'd had these ideas back then. I had a Tascam Porta One and often only saw the limitations. Early 90ies I sold all my equipment in frustration.
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.
The fader jam was 👌
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.
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!
Very inspiring video! 👏😀love the add11-chords 7:10 😊
Alex is one of the best 80s composers of our time. 😆
He's literally an 80's kid too, like me.
It definitely has a vibe! 🙌
Gracias Alex, es bueno escuchar el manejo de la electrónica hecho por un músico. Suerte y buena vida .
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 loved watching this. What a setup you have!
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 :)
Drift by soundghost is a beautiful sounding tape emulator vst. Also this is my favourite channel on UA-cam. Good day.
Watching your videos is like traveling in a Time Machine. Bravo.
great video! using High Bias cassettes makes a big sound difference, at least on tascams. Also it's fun to use cassette loops and do the Alessandra Cortini drone trick.
I had this back in the day, it was constantly in need of repair and I ended up returning it. Shame as it was functionally very good. I also remember it constantly having a much louder hum than the Tascam units I had.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
I still have my Tascam Portastudio 488 that I bought in 1991. I have hundreds of cassette tapes of my music from back then and the sound is so warm. It's got a magical sound. I see you're using a normal bias tape with Dolby C. You will get an enormous clarity boost if you use my favorite: Maxell XLII 90!
Oh wow this is so much bigger than I realized from your previous instagram posts. I love it. It is *BEAUTIFUL* ugh....
Warmness aside, the kick drum really jumped out to my ears on the cassette playback at 4:06 ..I had not even noticed the kick and then BAM, there it is! (good ol tape bump:^)🙂
Yep! Works great for drums and wonky pads. Less so far bass sounds and guitars I found.
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!
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. 😂
Loved recording to tape then bouncing tracks for room or depth.
Id love to get back to it.
Tascams and technics were the way, the Only wayat one point, unless you were recording a record or wax. :)
Damn good stuff. Well played and nice setup.
Shred on my friend!
Dude.... this took me back. Your tip about putting two different notes on two individual channels, and fading them in and out... changed my life. So obvious.. i feel stupid for not seeing that. 😅
I have that all the time! Someone shows me something about something I've owned for years and I can't understand how I didn't think of it. 😂
That unit sounds awesome, man.
The right kind of wrong.
I really liked the tune played on the segment "played as an instrument". Really, really nice!
They have always sounded like that! I've used that exact unit back in the early/mid 90's! ❤ I Love this so damn much! ❤
Everyone! 2 hands together for Alex Ball creating amazing content without hipster lighting or plants in the mix! Hip Hip Horray!
I have a Sansui 6-Track multitrack cassette recorder that I purchased in I believe it was 1991 or thereabouts...? Mine is a separate rack mounted tape recorder, and I also bought the 12-channel mixer for it (the Sansui design was that you could sync two of the 6-track's together, but I couldn't afford two of them at the time...sadly!). Still works to this day!
Wow, the track at 9:50 is really gorgeous
Awesome stereo splitting and panning on the synth.
The 'use it as an instrument' jam is brilliant
The 6 track realy warmed up the sound, it was quite good
I probably wrote 1000 completed songs back in cassette days, ....also band demos, etc..
The days where we all committed, finished, and moved on.
Yeah, something beautifully simple about it.
Who would’ve known it was that big?!?!! Those are beautiful! Seem to need service sometimes. Love it. Good luck and have fun 🌊✨🌊
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
Reversed my itch to sell of my Porta-One 4 track. Thanks for the inspiration....Just replaced the belts too.
Great one! Can't wait for the next episodes with tapes 🙂
4:00 I really miss this. My old Tascam died unfortunately 😐
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.
Wow! This awesome!
That was a really nice performance. I love it
I got the RackMount Unit that goes WITH That!
You'd add a Sync-tone to a track on the main unit and on the rackmount that they'ed use to keep in sync ...then you'd have 10 tracks to play with
(or more with more rackmounts)
...
I LOVE The way it works with the tape , lets you loop between two points , rewinds but then gives slack 2 seconds after , coooL lookin Displays etc.etc.etc.
Ahhh the memberberries are high with this one mate! Great vid.
That machine has great top response still. My 4 tk Fostex 280 was worn out after two years. Head wear and lack of top response. Its a shame AKAI never built one with their Patented Glass heads. Fostex long gone now but its fun to look back on old recordings. All to easy now with daws if your computer plays ball. No pun intended.
Awesome video and top music. Thanks very much.
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!
Limited gear and more imagination - that's a good way to put it. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.
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.
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
Amazing tracks. Thanks for sharing Alex!!!
that thing bigger than my 8 track tascam.... sheesh!
Yep! Small in the 80s meant large.
Bigger size - Bigger sound (or hiss)!
Very inspiring! Love the pitch-down lofi idea! Now I want to turn my Synthwave jams into Vapor tracks! 🙂
Always wanted one of those six tracks back in the day, never saw one stateside so ended up with a 4-track Yamaha MT-100 II with DBX noise reduction. I used that for 12 years until it basically fell apart. I briefly went to a Roland 8-track digital unit and then graduated to DAWs.
Nice to see Cubase as the DAW. About to bid on a WSX1 - wish me luck.
Cubase for life.
WS-X1 - good luck!
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.
brilliant vid alex, thanks a bunch for all your music and inspiration
Hey Woody! Straight back at you. 🫵😎
I used to have one of those units! Amazing little (okay, maybe not so little) machine, and the built-in reverb on it was something special. Mine started having problems where moving the faders at all would cause a horrible distorted sound that wouldn't go away. Deck B never worked for me, but I had loads of fun making demos on it in the years I had it using just DeckA. This vid made me kind of bummed that I sold mine, I should have had it serviced or something!!
I started this money pit of a hobby back in the mid 90s with a Tascam Porta-03 mkII cassette multi track recorder. I miss the simplicity of it and the built in limitations.
Hopefully they make a comeback with a few well thought out conveniences that don't enable option paralysis.
Blumin hell.. you write some seriously cool music... I love th funky guitar work.
Radioland feel on that live dialed Trident track! Love it
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.
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.
@@AlexBallMusic 🙌🏻
I love everything about this video! Especially the music!🍻
Thanks Don!
Wow Alex that jam at 4:22 is so good. I need that to dj out.
Very jamal moss...
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!
That drone example is how they did the choir on 'I'm not in Love' by 10cc and OMD's 'Souviner'
Thanks the one!
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.
Just add tape hiss
These machines are Excellent. Though they are massively improved if you use a Type 2 cassette like a proper TDK SA or something. My first multi track was the Sansui MR6 Deck with its MX12 desk, 19" rack Mount, having the extra 2 tracks made such a difference. Running at double speed the quality was really decent. Several tracks I did on it had proper CD releases in the 90s. I still have my MR-6 but always fancied getting the unit you have as you can sync them both together and get 10 tracks.
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.
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’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.
Mono tracks make a difference. I Have have a little Zoom R8 for recording quick ideas, and when you record stuff in mono on single mono tracks and start panning it around then there gets to be another character to the sound. Everything in a daw goes in stereo and you spend so much time looking at a screen. On the R8 I listen to what I played on the previous tracks and have to make sure I can play the next take before recording it (mistakes and all) It is quite good occasionally getting away from daw distractions and feeling ones way int the music. During the late 80's I had a cassette porta and a Rovox a77 and did some of my best stuff on those.
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!