What you're mistaking for something silly is the generational divide in philosophy. Convenience and polish versus texture and substance. The older generations expect more polish for less work while younger generations prefer more texture.
Man I love distortions, hisses and speed fluctuations. Tape is a really cool medium. I’ve always found it interesting how widely it was used from old pc games, programming, audio and video. You got reel to reel, cassette tapes, vhs, Betamax, 8tracks, that weird video camera kids toy that used cassettes. Then with the same technology you got floppy disks, hard disks and Zip disks. The unreliability really tickles my love for chaos. And a simple magnet could mess everything up.
Now I recently discovered these speech learning machines as well…and some dude using a credit card reader to do scratching. The applications are apparently endless.
The cheapest rim-drive recorders, and a few of the capstan-drive machines as well, used a magnet as the erase head - mechanically flipped away from the tape during playback.
Distortions and hissing are so fucking annoying when listening to music. Analog recording is awesome, but the artifacts it creates do a lot to ruin the advantages of having a continuous wave in the first place.
Even though the audio of the piano is a digital representation of a piano, the reel-to-reel adds an almost life-like quality to it. As if it were a recording of a real person sitting at a piano.
This type of recorder does not operate at constant speed, as it has no capstan. The tape is pulled past the head by the speed of the take up spool which is driven directly from the rim of the take up spool. As the diameter of the tape increases, so does the speed. This means the recorded tape cannot be played on any other recorder. One of the reasons it has so much tape hiss is because it has DC bias and erase. Better recorders use AC bias & erase. Wow & flutter is also very high, because it has no fly wheel. Still, it was very low cost in its day, more or less a toy.
Even your Panasonic cassette recorder has a capstan. That said, some of the 'better' rim-drive reel-recorders could play tapes from other rim-drives if they had a variable-speed adjustment like your North American. Your machine actually doesn't sound too bad playing music - sometimes. For Christmas of '69, I got a 3" rim-drive Aiwa, but soon became disappointed with it's music recording ability. However, for voice or TV-shows it was OK. I learned how to place the cheap crystal mike for best sound quality and the least buzz from a TV speaker. Eventually, I wired up a 4" PM speaker as a mic for even better quality, much less tinny recordings. After a couple years when I was 15, I'd earned enough mowing lawns, to go with my folks to a local GEM department store that had a leftover / floor-model shelf in their electronics dept. For $15, I got another battery 3" open-reel AiWA. But this time with the luxury of two-speed capstan-drive, an aux-input socket, and built-in AC power. That opened up a whole new world of tape-recording for me and I never looked back!
@@sunbeam8866 I had a AiWA reel to real, 5 inch reels, but it also had a radio in the unit too, both mono, but that was a neat idea. I look every now and then and never see one since I had that one back in the 1970, early 1980's. i think the motor died. I also moved to stereo equipment as well.
Analog.. Imperfect.. Organic.. Raw.. This is the character I love in music. You can fake it with plugins, but there is so much more joy working with the real stuff, that sometimes cost even less than the world of plug ins. The crystal clear computer sound lacks a feeling, it always sounds like a lifeless computer digital signal. There can be a lot of debate to be had, and it all comes down to individual preference.
I agree that true analog is a lot more enjoyable than adding in fake analog artifacts, but to be honest, using recording methods that just eliminate the artifacts altogether sounds so much better. Hissing, popping, skipping, crackling, it's all annoying and makes whatever you're listening to sound a lot worse.
I found your videos last night. I used to think that making my own music would be hard without understanding how to play a piano, but the samples you are making sound so unique I really want to give it a try! Thanks for showing your whole process, it's really motivating me
Bless you for making music production fun, all while using equipment from the past... AND sharing these wonderful sounds for FREE! **You, Sir, RULE!** *EDIT:* _The philosophical commentary speaks volumes (heh), as to how much you appreciate life, and enjoy sharing these unique experiences that make one smile :)
Very interesting. Reminds me of the tape recorder that we had back in 1964. A Philips four track. Wasn’t too much hiss on that machine. This is certainly, educational.
"As someone who spent their childhood longing to be free of the limitations of this technology…" So eloquently put, and so true ! I'm a bit older than you but know exactly what you mean. Absolutely fascinating to watch. Beautifully done as always. Thank you David.
if you remove the head and puot a 1/4" jack in its place, these work really great as guitar distortion pedals. very simple to do, and they sound better than a lot of boutique transistor distortions.
This is one of the greatest videos and channels I've ever seen. Truly fascinating the feeling you seem to put into making these videos. I love the final part, with the piano music and you talking about the trend, very pleasing to watch. Thx for this video.
tbh i really like the extra noise that the recorder adds on, it may be annoying for some people but for certain recording i personally think it adds a ton of character
What a killer find. I rememer finding similar gear like and old school 8 track recorder unit and cartridge tapes to go with it, also an old portable suitcase record player with many audio port functionality! Love these kinds of finds. Thanks for sharing!!! ✌😍👍
Hi David, Thanks again for this great Video! Just one hint: Try to stay away from Contact Cleaner as long as you can. Typically, it contains petroleum, which sticks to the surface and starts collecting all sorts of dirt. Potentiometers are ruined by this after a short time. A better means would be to use q-tips wet with Isopropyl-Alcohol. This also can be used to cleansweep AFTER you had to use Contact cleaner. Thumbs up for work!!!
My grandmother had a similar sized reel to reel machine with a little mic like that - mains operated, with a handle like a small suitcase. She used to record herself talking about her news from Ireland and then post the tape to her cousin in S Africa in the 60s or 70s. I found it knocking around our house when I was barely a teenager and I used to record myself telling jokes into it in the 80s. By the time I was doing music in my late teens it had been thrown out, as my mother used to do regular clear-outs of the house, which was a pity.
these videos feel so good to watch, like they had no right to be so well written with such background music while "on paper" being just review videos. they're my breakfast companion now and I love starting my days with them so yeah thanks
I am thinking of picking up a reel tape recorder next time I see one just as a natural effect… I’ve already got ones on my list for mixing and mastering but ones like this could be super fun 😊
Excellent video. Thank you! My first tape recorder was in the late 60's. It was my grandfather's old reel to reel deck. It worked very well. Then we got a cassette recorder for Christmas--from that same grandfather. I started working in radio when I was 15 and enjoyed using both reel to reel and cassette decks (all very high end decks for broadcast) for many years, and was recently given an Otari MX5050 that is in very good condition. I love it. Thanks for reminding me of my enthusiasm of recording myself when I was a kid... many years ago! By the way, when you hit play on this machine, I was expecting a voice to say "Good Morning, Mr. Phelps. The person you are looking at is..." Now, who here remembers where that was from?
It really is _very_ basic. I was almost surprise that it had a REWIND button at all. (The first portable tape deck I had as a kid didn't have a rewind button. You had to flip the cassette over and fast-forward if you wanted to rewind.)
Man, I had that same model cassette deck, or one very similar. I kept it by my bed so that I could record any musical ideas or sounds that popped into my prepubescent mind. I also had a cassette for recording my favorite songs off the radio. When the daily top 10 came on after school I'd be waiting with the tape deck mic positioned over the radio speaker, my finger on the pause button, ready to send the transport into record. It was pure magic.
There really is just something so beautiful about how tape sounds. It's why an analog Mellotron is my dream instrument, but I'll probably never be able to afford one, sadly.
Yeh I picked up an old 909 realistic reel to reel at a thrift store(St. Vinnies). I also got a Grundig versatile mark VIII hand held. Just got it working the other day.
I enjoyed the exploration of the process to get some unique sound out of an old Reel to Reel tape player. It is fun to goof around with old equipment to see what one can glean from it.
That Panasonic cassette recorder is the exact model I have. I was obsessed with audio as a kid and all I asked for one for two or three years when Christmas or birthdays rolled around, but it didn't happen. So I started making tape recorders out of Legos, and pretending I was recording things around the house, even to the point of asking my parents to take their conversations to the other room as to not disturb my "recording". Christmas morning, 1977, I received that recorder, likely in part to quell the frustration of my parents. I was 9 years old, and the adventure started.
Wow, the fact that the thing even works is astonishing enough, but to get it with the original box in that condition is beyond belief. Great find! Also, very eerie sounding piano library, definitely inspiring, thanks for this.
For me, I love tape recorders and just tape in general. I love listening to all of my music through an old Sony cassette player, the quiet whine of the motor and tape distortion just gives the music more depth and makes it more interesting to listen to. But most of all my favorite thing to do is go to thrift stores or garage sales and buy up as many tape albums as I can because each holds not only the music written on it as intended but also a story. Each tape being used over and over again gives the tape a more unique sound, one of wear and love. I love especially when I'm playing a new tape and a song in it is horribly distorted, its quality diminished and the vocals barely recognizable. where most see it as garbage and to throw it away, to me its a story, that at one point in this tapes life, someone loved that song, that tape so much they couldn't help but rewind and play it again and again. To me there is nothing greater then that, it gives each song two voices and characters, one that the artist gave it, its song and feel. but the other is one of love and age. Its something you cant find anywhere else! I still wear my player in my belt loop while I'm out and people stop to ask me why, because to me. Tape is so amazing that I wouldn't have my music any other way. And after I've listened to a tape I've recorded my music onto and its too poor to carry on I store it and eventually, I hope someone finds it in a sale and has the same experience as me and finds as much enjoyment in it as I once had.
Very interesting. I love old tape recorders. My introduction came via Mrs. Johnson, my second grade teacher (I just turned 67 yesterday - so that was some time ago). She told us things about recording that I have always remembered and even explained to my students when I was a teacher. At 15 I had an acoustic guitar, bongos and TWO recorders - my cool new cassette recorder and a reel-to-reel from my dad's office. Hello multi-track world (bouncing at least) and my rendition of Santana's "Evil Ways." I could go on but I'm running out of tape! Thanks.
congratulations on finding this reel to reel...i have been searching for one for so long, but unfotunateley, none of the thrfift stores i have visited seem to have one...once again, congratulations...use it well...peace...rocky
Its actually stunning,the amount of sound quality you was able to wring out of this machine! I owned one of these,in the '60s,and even in my pre-audiophile days,it sounded awful to me.In fact,the poor quality of reproduction was what led me into being a die-hard Audiophile.I have machines today,that are worth a whole roomful of this North American,but still,I credit this little recorder for starting me on the path I am on today,and for being a die-hard reel to reel fan..I DID have a lot of fun with it!
Nostalgia is an interesting thing. It's not like things 'sounded' better or were better in general. It's that feeling you get from it. The memories of feeling, not really an exact moment or thing.
I hope it doesn't self destruct! My first recording (and tape loops) were made on the family R2R back in the mid 70s. Later I even had a cassette deck like you (with auto-level.. aargh!) and used to make acoustic (speaker to microphone) bounces between them. Five years later I had purchased a Fostex X-15 4-track.. wow real multi-tracking! Now I have an Alesis HD-24 and computer rig.. yet recording to tape still does something special to a signal. I recently bought three devices similar to yours, two with corrosion damge - batteries used to be quite hazardous if left in place too long, in the hope of making a tape delay with a 3-speed full size (and valve equipped, no new fangled transistor doo-hickeys) R2R to do the tape motion. Longer delays for looping too.
I love your new video style. You have really stepped up the awesomeness of your content! It's so cool to see these products and the way you are capturing them is just brilliant!
OMG!!! You have the same Panasonic "tri-corder" type tape recorder that I had from childhood to my mid-20s. I loved the way the recordings sounded! Better than any other like it, anyway, when it came to recording music. I spotted it in an episode of Mary Tyler Moore, in Ted Baxter's hands.
It makes me think of when I was in my early twenties and starting to record (solo guitar) and I had a 4 track reel to reel. I loved messing around with that thing. It was the early 90's and I was wishing I could afford a way to record to computer. Now I can record to a computer or iphone or ipad at any time I want and I find setting up for it to be a pain and then once I'm on a project, there are so many options that I often just approach it the way I did with analog; I messed up, undo and re-record the whole thing again and then I'm like; "I'm only human, let the small mistakes go and most people won't even hear them." So the tactile approach with analog was fun and somehow once I went digital, I hardly ever want to be involved with it.
Got a similar Japanese portable years back at a thrift... The 3" reels were commonly used for "audio postcards", and you can still find NOS boxes with 4 reels included - as well as media mailers to stamp and drop in the mail! The USPS actually still has many grandfathered media mailing options for all kinds of formats that cut down on pricing to rural and lower class customers; another reason we need to save to post office from turning into a FedEx/UPS
You might also want to try out the Deconstruct Module in iZotope RX. I've found it reduces noise without making everything sound dead, nor leaving those typical warbly artifacts.
Love this video. Brings back fond memories of my childhood as I had both types of these records and loved recording everything with them. Man, what fun that was.
Nice! I am older and actually owned a similar tape recorder in the 60s. Yours says North American. Mine was Japanese made. Tons of fun sneaking around taping clandestinely taping adults. Mostly they laughed.
I find it FASCINATING that we spend YEARS improving technology to remove noise - hiss and other items only to reinsert them as a plugin effect...
Haha I think that every time a new lofi plugin comes out
It's an old classic - you don't know what you got until it's gone.
And then users of the plug-in bemoan the fact that it isn't as "good" as the real thing.
What you're mistaking for something silly is the generational divide in philosophy. Convenience and polish versus texture and substance. The older generations expect more polish for less work while younger generations prefer more texture.
@@samsanimationcorner3820 Makes sense.
Man I love distortions, hisses and speed fluctuations. Tape is a really cool medium. I’ve always found it interesting how widely it was used from old pc games, programming, audio and video. You got reel to reel, cassette tapes, vhs, Betamax, 8tracks, that weird video camera kids toy that used cassettes. Then with the same technology you got floppy disks, hard disks and Zip disks. The unreliability really tickles my love for chaos. And a simple magnet could mess everything up.
Now I recently discovered these speech learning machines as well…and some dude using a credit card reader to do scratching. The applications are apparently endless.
The cheapest rim-drive recorders, and a few of the capstan-drive machines as well, used a magnet as the erase head - mechanically flipped away from the tape during playback.
Distortions and hissing are so fucking annoying when listening to music. Analog recording is awesome, but the artifacts it creates do a lot to ruin the advantages of having a continuous wave in the first place.
Even though the audio of the piano is a digital representation of a piano, the reel-to-reel adds an almost life-like quality to it. As if it were a recording of a real person sitting at a piano.
This recording will self destruct in 5 seconds... good luck Jim!
This type of recorder does not operate at constant speed, as it has no capstan. The tape is pulled past the head by the speed of the take up spool which is driven directly from the rim of the take up spool. As the diameter of the tape increases, so does the speed. This means the recorded tape cannot be played on any other recorder. One of the reasons it has so much tape hiss is because it has DC bias and erase. Better recorders use AC bias & erase. Wow & flutter is also very high, because it has no fly wheel.
Still, it was very low cost in its day, more or less a toy.
This makes a lot of sense, and definitely tracks with what I've experienced. I noticed the lack of capstan too.
I also have a capstan-less deck. A Concord Sound Camera. It uses 2.5" reels, so the tape runs out extremely fast.
@@japhyriddle Quite right, most start at about 2/3 ips but end up at around 6/8ips. depending on the inner spool diameter.
Even your Panasonic cassette recorder has a capstan. That said, some of the 'better' rim-drive reel-recorders could play tapes from other rim-drives if they had a variable-speed adjustment like your North American. Your machine actually doesn't sound too bad playing music - sometimes. For Christmas of '69, I got a 3" rim-drive Aiwa, but soon became disappointed with it's music recording ability. However, for voice or TV-shows it was OK. I learned how to place the cheap crystal mike for best sound quality and the least buzz from a TV speaker. Eventually, I wired up a 4" PM speaker as a mic for even better quality, much less tinny recordings. After a couple years when I was 15, I'd earned enough mowing lawns, to go with my folks to a local GEM department store that had a leftover / floor-model shelf in their electronics dept. For $15, I got another battery 3" open-reel AiWA. But this time with the luxury of two-speed capstan-drive, an aux-input socket, and built-in AC power. That opened up a whole new world of tape-recording for me and I never looked back!
@@sunbeam8866 I had a AiWA reel to real, 5 inch reels, but it also had a radio in the unit too, both mono, but that was a neat idea. I look every now and then and never see one since I had that one back in the 1970, early 1980's. i think the motor died. I also moved to stereo equipment as well.
The sheer joy on your face when you hear your voice from the recorder is grand!
I spent my childhood with these imperfect devices and do enjoy the idea of using them now from a creative standpoint.
Analog.. Imperfect.. Organic.. Raw.. This is the character I love in music. You can fake it with plugins, but there is so much more joy working with the real stuff, that sometimes cost even less than the world of plug ins. The crystal clear computer sound lacks a feeling, it always sounds like a lifeless computer digital signal. There can be a lot of debate to be had, and it all comes down to individual preference.
Ok boomer
@@retrosb
Cringe millennial.
Well said!
I agree that true analog is a lot more enjoyable than adding in fake analog artifacts, but to be honest, using recording methods that just eliminate the artifacts altogether sounds so much better. Hissing, popping, skipping, crackling, it's all annoying and makes whatever you're listening to sound a lot worse.
The plug-ins are available for free, as Open Source.
I swear the quality of this content is gorgeous. Please continue to experiment with these retro recording utilities. Absolute breathtaking!!!!
I found your videos last night. I used to think that making my own music would be hard without understanding how to play a piano, but the samples you are making sound so unique I really want to give it a try! Thanks for showing your whole process, it's really motivating me
You essentially made a digital mellotron! That’s so cool! I am amazed at the ingenuity and creativity. Fantastic!
I love these videos!
It feels like NPR for music production nerds and I am so here for it!
Yep, love this, great video.
beautiful sounds! Thanks for this. And I think you’re right - having so many choices does make something like a 4-track tape recorder very appealing
Nostalgic for sure. My big brother and I had one of these. By 1970, we wore it out. You are very lucky to find one in working condition...at all.
Bless you for making music production fun, all while using equipment from the past... AND sharing these wonderful sounds for FREE!
**You, Sir, RULE!**
*EDIT:* _The philosophical commentary speaks volumes (heh), as to how much you appreciate life, and enjoy sharing these unique experiences that make one smile :)
Very interesting. Reminds me of the tape recorder that we had back in 1964. A Philips four track. Wasn’t too much hiss on that machine. This is certainly, educational.
"As someone who spent their childhood longing to be free of the limitations of this technology…"
So eloquently put, and so true ! I'm a bit older than you but know exactly what you mean.
Absolutely fascinating to watch. Beautifully done as always. Thank you David.
if you remove the head and puot a 1/4" jack in its place, these work really great as guitar distortion pedals. very simple to do, and they sound better than a lot of boutique transistor distortions.
This is one of the greatest videos and channels I've ever seen. Truly fascinating the feeling you seem to put into making these videos. I love the final part, with the piano music and you talking about the trend, very pleasing to watch. Thx for this video.
You always make exceptional content, but this one has something extra in the script that pulls my own memories out of my head word for word.
tbh i really like the extra noise that the recorder adds on, it may be annoying for some people but for certain recording i personally think it adds a ton of character
When you played this sequence from your piano sampler, a big smile appeared on my face
What a killer find. I rememer finding similar gear like and old school 8 track recorder unit and cartridge tapes to go with it, also an old portable suitcase record player with many audio port functionality! Love these kinds of finds. Thanks for sharing!!! ✌😍👍
Keep up the great work, your work means a lot..
Hi David, Thanks again for this great Video! Just one hint: Try to stay away from Contact Cleaner as long as you can. Typically, it contains petroleum, which sticks to the surface and starts collecting all sorts of dirt. Potentiometers are ruined by this after a short time. A better means would be to use q-tips wet with Isopropyl-Alcohol. This also can be used to cleansweep AFTER you had to use Contact cleaner. Thumbs up for work!!!
Time to make my own sample library!!!
My grandmother had a similar sized reel to reel machine with a little mic like that - mains operated, with a handle like a small suitcase. She used to record herself talking about her news from Ireland and then post the tape to her cousin in S Africa in the 60s or 70s. I found it knocking around our house when I was barely a teenager and I used to record myself telling jokes into it in the 80s. By the time I was doing music in my late teens it had been thrown out, as my mother used to do regular clear-outs of the house, which was a pity.
The tape machine breeds life into the synthetic rhythm of machines.
Incredible video. Such a pleasure to watch. Awesome to see the recording process. Thanks David!
these videos feel so good to watch, like they had no right to be so well written with such background music while "on paper" being just review videos. they're my breakfast companion now and I love starting my days with them
so yeah thanks
I am thinking of picking up a reel tape recorder next time I see one just as a natural effect…
I’ve already got ones on my list for mixing and mastering but ones like this could be super fun 😊
Excellent video. Thank you! My first tape recorder was in the late 60's. It was my grandfather's old reel to reel deck. It worked very well. Then we got a cassette recorder for Christmas--from that same grandfather. I started working in radio when I was 15 and enjoyed using both reel to reel and cassette decks (all very high end decks for broadcast) for many years, and was recently given an Otari MX5050 that is in very good condition. I love it. Thanks for reminding me of my enthusiasm of recording myself when I was a kid... many years ago!
By the way, when you hit play on this machine, I was expecting a voice to say "Good Morning, Mr. Phelps. The person you are looking at is..." Now, who here remembers where that was from?
I have the same Panasonic wow. Thank you for sharing. It’s my favorite !
That is the most amazingly simple tape deck I have ever seen. And it still works! Incredible! I love your little machine, what a great find.
It really is _very_ basic. I was almost surprise that it had a REWIND button at all. (The first portable tape deck I had as a kid didn't have a rewind button. You had to flip the cassette over and fast-forward if you wanted to rewind.)
this video is so much full of love! your face expression and voice when you have found the device be working is priceless :)
Man, I had that same model cassette deck, or one very similar. I kept it by my bed so that I could record any musical ideas or sounds that popped into my prepubescent mind. I also had a cassette for recording my favorite songs off the radio. When the daily top 10 came on after school I'd be waiting with the tape deck mic positioned over the radio speaker, my finger on the pause button, ready to send the transport into record. It was pure magic.
I really like this sound, I used something like this on my last student movie
I'm so happy i stumbled into your channel, this is beautiful stuff and i'm so grateful that you are giving us these free resources!
Very unique tape
The narrative structuring of this video is genius, very entertaining.
I have a Panasonic like this that was my mom’s. We played with it when we were kids. It was fun to power up and use again.
There really is just something so beautiful about how tape sounds. It's why an analog Mellotron is my dream instrument, but I'll probably never be able to afford one, sadly.
Wow! Very cool. I have 4 reel to reel that I have found at thrift stores, they are so much fun.
Yeh I picked up an old 909 realistic reel to reel at a thrift store(St. Vinnies). I also got a Grundig versatile mark VIII hand held. Just got it working the other day.
Excellent sounding character piano. Haunting sounds.
I enjoyed the exploration of the process to get some unique sound out of an old Reel to Reel tape player. It is fun to goof around with old equipment to see what one can glean from it.
I feel a very warm feelings. Thank you!
Love this instrument so much! Thank you.
Very nice. Thanks for your generosity. That entailed a grade deal of work!
That Panasonic cassette recorder is the exact model I have. I was obsessed with audio as a kid and all I asked for one for two or three years when Christmas or birthdays rolled around, but it didn't happen. So I started making tape recorders out of Legos, and pretending I was recording things around the house, even to the point of asking my parents to take their conversations to the other room as to not disturb my "recording". Christmas morning, 1977, I received that recorder, likely in part to quell the frustration of my parents. I was 9 years old, and the adventure started.
There's something so charming about the reels spinning, so peaceful
It's beautiful, thank you.
You're welcome.
Wow, the fact that the thing even works is astonishing enough, but to get it with the original box in that condition is beyond belief. Great find! Also, very eerie sounding piano library, definitely inspiring, thanks for this.
For me, I love tape recorders and just tape in general. I love listening to all of my music through an old Sony cassette player, the quiet whine of the motor and tape distortion just gives the music more depth and makes it more interesting to listen to. But most of all my favorite thing to do is go to thrift stores or garage sales and buy up as many tape albums as I can because each holds not only the music written on it as intended but also a story. Each tape being used over and over again gives the tape a more unique sound, one of wear and love. I love especially when I'm playing a new tape and a song in it is horribly distorted, its quality diminished and the vocals barely recognizable. where most see it as garbage and to throw it away, to me its a story, that at one point in this tapes life, someone loved that song, that tape so much they couldn't help but rewind and play it again and again. To me there is nothing greater then that, it gives each song two voices and characters, one that the artist gave it, its song and feel. but the other is one of love and age. Its something you cant find anywhere else! I still wear my player in my belt loop while I'm out and people stop to ask me why, because to me. Tape is so amazing that I wouldn't have my music any other way. And after I've listened to a tape I've recorded my music onto and its too poor to carry on I store it and eventually, I hope someone finds it in a sale and has the same experience as me and finds as much enjoyment in it as I once had.
Very interesting. I love old tape recorders. My introduction came via Mrs. Johnson, my second grade teacher (I just turned 67 yesterday - so that was some time ago). She told us things about recording that I have always remembered and even explained to my students when I was a teacher. At 15 I had an acoustic guitar, bongos and TWO recorders - my cool new cassette recorder and a reel-to-reel from my dad's office. Hello multi-track world (bouncing at least) and my rendition of Santana's "Evil Ways." I could go on but I'm running out of tape! Thanks.
Wow - that piano sound was beautiful.
Tape warmth. Awesome!
Beautiful hiss and warmth
I wish I could be so lucky to find something like this!
Really cool sound. Well done!
What a find, I remember buying a marconiphone reel to reel from a jumble sale for 50p back in the 80s ,it had really good sound quality .
congratulations on finding this reel to reel...i have been searching for one for so long, but unfotunateley, none of the thrfift stores i have visited seem to have one...once again, congratulations...use it well...peace...rocky
Unbelievably fascinating.
7:39 that's the perfect collective noun for the modern menu of choices.
This was inspiring.... Reminiscent of that feeling.... Ahhhhh.... So good. Cheers.
Its actually stunning,the amount of sound quality you was able to wring out of this machine! I owned one of these,in the '60s,and even in my pre-audiophile days,it sounded awful to me.In fact,the poor quality of reproduction was what led me into being a die-hard Audiophile.I have machines today,that are worth a whole roomful of this North American,but still,I credit this little recorder for starting me on the path I am on today,and for being a die-hard reel to reel fan..I DID have a lot of fun with it!
Funny. I downloaded the samples yesterday.
But I discovered this video today
This is my favorite video of yours to date.
Nostalgia is an interesting thing. It's not like things 'sounded' better or were better in general. It's that feeling you get from it. The memories of feeling, not really an exact moment or thing.
I really love these videos of old tech. I don't know but they feel so nostalgic and they calm me down.
I don’t know why but I cracked many times throughout this video. I don’t think I’ve laughed that much from watching a TH-cam video. Thank you!
i had so much grief into this episode. Thanks for your work sample it
I have been collecting reel to reel players. You perfectly justified this new obsession.
Terrific keep it up. Great vitage device .Thank you v much indeed, Sir.
This was fascinating to watch! Thank you for sharing knowledge + doing what you do.
I had a small reel-to-reel recorder, as many kids did back in the 60s. But, by 1972, it was cassette all the way.
THANK YOU for keeping all of this free
Just stumbled upon your video!! Seeing the analog merged with digital effects is amazing!!
I hope it doesn't self destruct!
My first recording (and tape loops) were made on the family R2R back in the mid 70s.
Later I even had a cassette deck like you (with auto-level.. aargh!) and used to make acoustic (speaker to microphone) bounces between them.
Five years later I had purchased a Fostex X-15 4-track.. wow real multi-tracking!
Now I have an Alesis HD-24 and computer rig.. yet recording to tape still does something special to a signal.
I recently bought three devices similar to yours, two with corrosion damge - batteries used to be quite hazardous if left in place too long, in the hope of making a tape delay with a 3-speed full size (and valve equipped, no new fangled transistor doo-hickeys) R2R to do the tape motion.
Longer delays for looping too.
Thank you for the walk through of your process and for the piano!
I love your new video style. You have really stepped up the awesomeness of your content! It's so cool to see these products and the way you are capturing them is just brilliant!
I bought a very similar one but a little bigger at an antiques store for 14$ works great and came with 3 reels
OMG!!! You have the same Panasonic "tri-corder" type tape recorder that I had from childhood to my mid-20s. I loved the way the recordings sounded! Better than any other like it, anyway, when it came to recording music. I spotted it in an episode of Mary Tyler Moore, in Ted Baxter's hands.
What a beautiful piano loop 😭
as a child of the 60s, this is a blast from the past
This plugin is amazing! Truly love it
It makes me think of when I was in my early twenties and starting to record (solo guitar) and I had a 4 track reel to reel. I loved messing around with that thing. It was the early 90's and I was wishing I could afford a way to record to computer. Now I can record to a computer or iphone or ipad at any time I want and I find setting up for it to be a pain and then once I'm on a project, there are so many options that I often just approach it the way I did with analog; I messed up, undo and re-record the whole thing again and then I'm like; "I'm only human, let the small mistakes go and most people won't even hear them." So the tactile approach with analog was fun and somehow once I went digital, I hardly ever want to be involved with it.
Too many options can make a person freeze. Maybe buy a reel to reel again and do it the way you used to
Your channel is absolutely mesmerizing. I'm happy to have found it
That is awesome, gonna grab that download.
Thank you. That was lovely.
beautiful stuff. I always loved tape as a child
Amazing stuff David. Thanks for this - now in my Decent Sampler library 🎹👍🏻🍻
Commenting for the algorithm, this sounds... so mellow and pleasant. thank you!
Got a similar Japanese portable years back at a thrift... The 3" reels were commonly used for "audio postcards", and you can still find NOS boxes with 4 reels included - as well as media mailers to stamp and drop in the mail!
The USPS actually still has many grandfathered media mailing options for all kinds of formats that cut down on pricing to rural and lower class customers; another reason we need to save to post office from turning into a FedEx/UPS
I enjoyed this from beginning to end, for all the same reasons you described. Thanks for these videos, and for Decent Sampler!
You might also want to try out the Deconstruct Module in iZotope RX. I've found it reduces noise without making everything sound dead, nor leaving those typical warbly artifacts.
Would be interesting to hear it cleaned up using that new plugin from Waves: Clarity vx. I’m soon to try the demo.
Try Denoise by Brian Davies. Cheap and very effective.
Hahahaha 'vinyl archeologist'. Can you be any c*ntier?
Love this video. Brings back fond memories of my childhood as I had both types of these records and loved recording everything with them. Man, what fun that was.
Incredible. Every video is educational and amazing!
I made a song with this over the weekend, love the sounds you made !
"I think it's only now with this embarrassment of choices, that I can really appreciate the beauty of those imperfect tape sounds."
Nice! I am older and actually owned a similar tape recorder in the 60s. Yours says North American. Mine was Japanese made. Tons of fun sneaking around taping clandestinely taping adults. Mostly they laughed.