Tape deck for home recording?

[Irematic]

I want to start recording myself to cassette tapes at home, but I'm a little lost on what machine to look at using and was wondering if anyone has any recommendations. This is just a little hobby thing for myself, so I'd like to keep it under $300 if possible but don't necessarily have a hard set budget. I want something moderately competent but I don't necessarily need all the bells and whistles and highest fidelity possible.
I'm not sure if I should look at a new machine or a vintage one? Any specific recs? Thank you.

 

[silky smoove]

I have no insights on this, but I'm curious why you want to go the tape route rather than recording into a DAW. Not trying to poke holes in anything, just generally curious as to the specific approach.

 

[Ursa]

I have four-track and stereo cassette equipment, and respectfully recommend that you instead get a digital recorder, or at least repurpose an old laptop or computer with some easy-to-use audio editing software for recording purposes. The results will be digital-quality, and much more easily exported to other media formats such as CD, FLAC, and mp3.

The Type II cassettes we all knew and loved (TDK SA, Maxell UD-XLII) have long since ended production. If you don't already have a stockpile of known-good Type II media, you'll be rolling the dice with acquiring someone else's vintage media.

New Type I cassette media is pretty much limited to the Maxell UR. Even brand-new UR tapes may have been warehoused in suboptimal conditions for many years before you buy them.

The costs of caseete media are only going to go up. The reliability and performance of the media and the decks is only going to go down. The technician you're counting on to maintain your deck may retire or suddenly change jobs. Save yourself the expense and hassle. Go digital.

 

[Karl Kaminski]

you say 'tape deck'... but do you really mean cassette tapes? ...if so a Bang & Olufsen BEOCORD 5500. (Or if you want "tracking" a Tascam or Fostex 4ch)

But if you want to record/edit/distribute the captured audio... just move to an MP3 recorder or DAW for the modern era. Ive aged thru it all— Reel to Reel, Cassette, DAT, MD, DAW (on subsequent formats; CDR, USB, SD files)

 

[Gopherbassist]

Why do you want to record to tape? You'll probably have a hard time with it and get sub optimal results. Digital recorders are cheap and sound good.

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[Element Zero]

Plugs right into your phone. I’ve gotten surprisingly good results especially for under $20 lol.

 

[BismarckHerring]

If you really want to use cassette tapes and you want to do multitrack recordings, a second hand Tascam or Fostex is probably what you want. But unless you have a very specific reason for wanting to usie cassettes, digital is better in every way, and most likely also cheaper if you own a computer that was made in the past 10 years or even a half decent smartphone (especially an iPhone).

 

[BismarckHerring]

If you want something new and don’t care about multitracking, We Are Rewind make portable cassette players that can also record, and people seem to like them. You’ll need a way to get the signal into it though.

 

[Krisfield]

Absolutely get into experimenting with taper recorders. I recommend the TASCAM Portastudio 424. Make sure you find one thats been serviced and works properly. So you might have to pay extra to find a good one. You'll also need a DI box.

 

[ahbradot]

Cassette tapes are still being manufactured and are experiencing a niche comeback,driven by nostalgia, indie artists, and major label releases. The National Audio Company in Missouri is the world's largest producer, making for artists like Taylor Swift.

 

[FullumMusic]

At the risk of being a TB cliche by suggesting something other than what the OP is asking for, get an inexpensive DAW, not a tape deck. (DAW = Digital Audio Workstation aka. A recording program on your computer)

Recording to tape decks (like 4-tracks on cassette) was obsolete by the year 2000. It's been another quarter century since they went obsolete. You'll have a hard time finding one that works for cheap. There's no guarantee it'll continue working. You won't be able to fix it. Cassettes are hard to come by and a terrible medium for recording. The bass will sound like plucking a rubber band. You'll need a separate piece of hardware to bounce your multirack cassettes down to standard stereo two-sided cassettes. And then nobody has cassette decks anymore to listen to what you record.

A DAW will sound better and bounce directly to WAV or MP3. An inexpensive interface and an inexpensive DAW will probably cost less than a cassette tape multitrack and will be infinitely more useful, better sounding, and versatile.

Garage Band is a free DAW if you have a Mac, iPad or iPhone. If you already own an Apple device, don't want to learn a ton of audio engineering, and just want to record some things with you and a few other instruments, Garage Band is hard to beat.

Reaper and Ardour are extremely full featured, so there is a bit of a learning curve. But they're extremely inexpensive and work on any computer type. And there are tons of tutorials online to get you started. Audacity is free too, and it's a great recording and audio processing tool, it's a little clunky for recording and editing music into songs. (It might have improved since i last used it.)

Then all you need is a halfway decent audio interface. There's a million and 4 TalkBass threads on picking one of those, and even more YouTube videos and articles online on picking one in a price point so i'll leave that for you.

 

[MonetBass]

My recording journey started on a 4-track cassette recorder. It was such a pain, and I don't miss those days at all. Digital recording is SO much easier in every way.

 

[grubdumpling]

If you're looking to record but want to avoid computers, something like the zoom H2N that I use is pretty simple. I do transfer the files to my computer for editing, and if I want to have more than stereo I use Audacity, but the little digital guy is pretty dang handy.

 

[groovaholic]

Ive aged thru it all— Reel to Reel, Cassette, DAT, MD, DAW (on subsequent formats; CDR, USB, SD files)

Same!

Started in the mid 80s recording myself on cassette, THEN reel to reel (older technology with better fidelity) then CD-R.
Got an all-in-one digital workstation (Fostex VF-16) in 2001 and never used analog again.
A few years later, I upgraded to a Roland VF-2480 and recorded a couple albums on that.

Then got into DAW (PreSonus StudioOne) and the ability to just move my laptop and mix at my convenience was unbeatable.
Now, I'm the odd dinosaur who doesn't mix on an iPad via WiFi.

Sometimes the limitations inspire creative choices, but IMO there are plenty of creativity-generating-limitations already when you're recording at home.
Get yourself an inexpensive interface and start recording some tracks.

Obsolete technology is a 1-way rabbit hole (I'm running into that on some of my FireWire-connected digital gear).

Oh, and since this is a bass forum, digital has INFINITELY better low-frequency fidelity than cassette tapes.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

At the risk of being a TB cliche by suggesting something other than what the OP is asking for, get an inexpensive DAW, not a tape deck. (DAW = Digital Audio Workstation aka. A recording program on your computer)

Recording to tape decks (like 4-tracks on cassette) was obsolete by the year 2000. It's been another quarter century since they went obsolete. You'll have a hard time finding one that works for cheap. There's no guarantee it'll continue working. You won't be able to fix it. Cassettes are hard to come by and a terrible medium for recording. The bass will sound like plucking a rubber band. You'll need a separate piece of hardware to bounce your multirack cassettes down to standard stereo two-sided cassettes. And then nobody has cassette decks anymore to listen to what you record.

A DAW will sound better and bounce directly to WAV or MP3. An inexpensive interface and an inexpensive DAW will probably cost less than a cassette tape multitrack and will be infinitely more useful, better sounding, and versatile.

Garage Band is a free DAW if you have a Mac, iPad or iPhone. If you already own an Apple device, don't want to learn a ton of audio engineering, and just want to record some things with you and a few other instruments, Garage Band is hard to beat.

Reaper and Ardour are extremely full featured, so there is a bit of a learning curve. But they're extremely inexpensive and work on any computer type. And there are tons of tutorials online to get you started. Audacity is free too, and it's a great recording and audio processing tool, it's a little clunky for recording and editing music into songs. (It might have improved since i last used it.)

Then all you need is a halfway decent audio interface. There's a million and 4 TalkBass threads on picking one of those, and even more YouTube videos and articles online on picking one in a price point so i'll leave that for you.

If you just want to replace the functionality of a cassette based four or eight track, Audacity would be fine with an interface and ASIO drivers or ASIO4All

 

[BuhoNevado5]

To the original poster, there are several questions I have that might help get you the answer you’re looking for.
1) are you planning on recording only bass on the cassettes? Songs? Scratch ideas?
2) are you looking for a multitrack recorder? If so, how many tracks? There are mono, stereo, 4 track and 8 track (yes, tascam made their most ambitious 688 recorder in the ‘90’s and I still see some out in the wild)
3) how many inputs and what kind of inputs do you need to get the sound into the recorder?
4) will you need a microphone? If so, and it is a condenser mic, do you need phantom power?
5) what are your intentions after you record? Will you be transferring the audio to a computer for processing and mixing?
6) do you need this to be portable?
7) when you say “vintage” do you have an era in mind? While the tech isn’t obsolete, as one poster claimed, and there are loads of people that still know how to maintain these decks, it is harder to find quality working ones, especially ones that might interface with other gear.

I imagine that most of the responses here have the best intention of trying to steer you to digital…I also understand, having grown up using a lot of “evolving” technologies, that not every new gadget or tech is right for each person or their creative processes.

I still own several cassette decks that I record to regularly (yes, they have their limitations, but that is also part of their charm and it doesn’t have to do solely with being lo-if or whatever hip words are still be tossed around related to their sonic qualities). For some people, the allure of the physical medium, over digital, is that they can have hands on the technology, whether it be a fader or tape speed switch, etc. things that have been emulated by software, but still don’t capture the experience one gets from the technology.

There are still manufacturers of portable stereo cassette decks, notably the We Are Rewind portable player/recorders…they are a great company, however, if you live in the states, I would recommend buying through one of their American dealers, as they are based in France and with tariffs…the bonus of this recorder, is that it has Bluetooth capabilities and the battery is rechargeable, which beats the Sony walkmans of the day.

If you were interested in a multitrack recorder, Tascam and Fostex were two of the biggest names in the industry. It is no secret that Bruce Springsteen recorded “Nebraska” on one of the early Tascam Porta series cassette recorders and couldn’t match the energy of those recordings in the studio, so he released it in the demo format. To my ears, it is one of his best records, because it doesn’t have all the gloss of his others.

I know there is a lot of nostalgia about 4 track recordings and folks talk about the Beatles making almost all of their records on 4 tracks…but they were not cassette decks…in fact they were recording on 1 or 2” tapes at 2 or 3 times the speed of a cassette deck. However, the limitations posed by using a 4 track cassette machine, are not dissimilar to what they were working with…you still can bounce tracks and it forces you to think through your process and how to follow through, which is very unlike using a DAW or even a digital multitrack machine, where you can have endless tracks and might never get anywhere, even if the possibility for better sound and manipulation exists.

So, OP, let us know what exactly you are trying to accomplish by using one and maybe we can get you where you need to be.

 

[trevcda]

Tape saturation is not always a beautiful thing! Especially when it comes to low end instruments. And with lower track counts, track bouncing quickly becomes detrimental to fidelity as you try to add more tracks to your mix. Back then it was all we had. There are much better and less expensive options today.

 

[BuhoNevado5]

Agreed! But that isn’t what the OP is asking for…they might not have the same goals…they may also not have an interest in fidelity. Are the new technologies “better”? Depends on what you mean by that…someone here mentioned that you can’t fix these machines…well, I have repaired a few myself…changing belts isn’t that difficult, and that is usually what goes first…I would argue that you can’t fix any of the new tech because they are using microscopic circuit boards and most of the broken stuff, like our cellphones, etc, end up in landfills polluting water supplies, etc, so if someone has a desire to resuscitate old tech for their creative interests, I say let them have it and make something cool with it. No need to rain on their parade because it doesn’t match other people’s needs or interests.

 

[bassicmike]

You can find a Tascam 8 track digital recorder for under $200. They work great. And you don't have to chase obsolete hardware (cassettes) to make it work.

 

[Admiral Akbar]

I happen to love the sound of cassette. Also love the convenience and immediacy of digital, but cassette with its limitations, actually spurs creativity. There’s something to be said when musicans are forced to focus on listening and optimizing performance when options are limited.

I agree with others who have suggested Tascam 424.

I would also submit that Yamaha made great 4 tracks, even having the ability to play back individual tracks through separate outs — which you could then send to your DAW for post-recording processing, yet still have the analog warmth and artifact of tape. The Yamahas can be found usually cheaper than the Tascams.