Tape Machine Sorted
Not much to report just of late hence infrequent posting. However, it’s apt to share with everyone that my Tascam BR-20T reel to reel tape deck has been completely sorted out ready for pro-level mastering. I hear the geeks of you asking “what was wrong with it?” while everyone else goes “Tape? Yawn!”.
Well, for the geeks who were kind enough to ask: two things were not addressed when I used the deck for remastering Vulcanella Self Destruct a while back. The first was the quality of tape I was using which was mere low grade duplicating tape. I’ve since got my hands some reels of Ampex 456 – which for many studios was one of the standard mastering tapes used in the 80s (just check out the sleeve notes for Mike Oldfield’s Crises record). In this day and age there are better reels out there (like ATR mastering tape; and ATR-102 decks are better than my Tascam as well: but that’s another story) – but the Ampex 456 is the best I can use for my deck seeing that Ampex tape tends to shed coating onto the heads and affects them in a way that prevents you from using any other tape. To prevent this dreaded shedding problem, I baked my tapes in the oven for about 12 hours at about 50C. And then, wha-la: perfectly usable tapes. Nothing like a bit of baking to help out the audio engineering!
The second issue was a matter of deck calibration. Calibration involves a series of technical procedures done with the deck to perfect I/O levels and tone. This required quite a bit of patient fiddling with geeky detail I won’t go into here. I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do without help from Simon. Simon is also currently getting deep into the world of tape, not only with 2 track mastering tape, but with 8 track session tape. So thank you Simon! After some fine tuning I got an excellent standard system using a combo of Reaper and the tape deck to do both standard digital mastering as well as using the ‘magical sound’ tape method. To use Simon’s words, tape is an instrument: you play it. Finely riding the input levels just to get that sweet spot nestled between clarity and punch, it’s just so fabulous to finally get that sound I’ve been after for so long.
This means that my mixing and mastering business is officially back up and ready to go! So if you need any mixing or mastering done on your songs, please visit the site, read the FAQ, and get in touch with me. I’ve already got one client’s project on the boil, and a few more lined up. And hopefully some of my big projects will soon see some tape action as well.
Speaking of which, I’ve been cutting back time from my day job during the quiet winter time so I can spent some more time finishing songs at home. I’ve been doing a lot of structured vocal practice and a lot of vocal recording for Paradox songs (trying to crack ‘First Impressions Always Count’ right now) with improving success. It’s very hard though, and I think I’m still a long way off from what’s in my brain as being the ideal sound. Tomorrow’s another day…
