Can someone please tell me the best analog tape recording equpment would be. Under say $1000.00. I just would like to put some tunes from my acoustic on and mix the rest. Nothing fancy, peace!

heatenfromAZ said:

There are a lot of great 8-track digital recorders for under $500 nowadays, since the 16-track digital recorder seems to be the recorder du-jour.

BEST analog tape recorder? Tascam's portastudio is supposed to be "legendary". Fostex pretty much wrote the book on affordable cassette 4-track recorders. I'm telling you, you can buy a cassette 4-track for under $200 easy nowadays.

Just curious - why are you avoiding digital? If you're looking to spend $1000, you could get a 8-track digital recorder, 2 rock-solid recording mics, (condenser and large-diaphragm) and a nice mic pre-amp.

Zoom MRS-1044: $300-400 used, $450-500 new, if you can find one new.
Shure SM-57 or 58: $80 new.
Maxon MX319 large-diaphragm mic: $100 new
mic pre-amp: $100 new
2 mic cables: $50.

The MRS-1044 has a pre-amp mic/effects galore/amp modeller built in, as well as a drum machine. I can't shut up about the thing. Ask anyone here. I'm always pimping it.

That comes to $700-750 tops. The digital recorder can only record 2 inputs simultaneously, but if you're looking to do acoustic recording, that would probably be all you'd need.

If you want to hear something recorded on it, go hear any of my songs: http://www.soundclick.com...dmusic.htm

But if you're sure you want the sweet sound of analog, and you want to spend $500 on a machine, you might look into something high-end like a reel-to-reel tascam, which would guarantee a much better recording than a cassette.

Edit
I just added an acoustic song I recorded with all of the above toys - "Sometimes I Cry" - yeah, sappy song about a girlfriend who died. But enough about that. Listen to the guitars - detuned to C to get them a lot boomier (um, and to be able to sing in the range, uh, barely). Both guitars were recorded with the large-diaphragm mic.
[This message was edited Wed Feb 11 11:17:47 PST 2004 by otan]

Okay one last thing.

If you're hell bent on analog 4-track, look into the Tascam 488. I have a 688 (8-track) and the 488 is the 4-track version. This thing is SUPER powerful for the price - 8 track mixer, effect send and return on each individual track, 4 band EQ with a parametric sweep on the middle channel (that may be over your head, but, it'll be useful on down the road) AND it can synch to midi.


Here's on that's on ebay right now:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eB...gory=41480

edit: oh. that one (on ebay) is the MKII version - 8 tracks instead of 4. Holy cow. 8-track for $150.
[This message was edited Wed Feb 11 11:21:33 PST 2004 by otan]