using the world's dinkiest 4-track...

[j_howell]

Anybody have any good advice about recording with a Fostex X-12? That is, besides "get something else!!!"...

[mikesmodern]

Practice bouncing tracks to get the most sound you can put in. Check the bounced track(s) to the original(s) to see how they compare loss wise.

[Rigsby]

Mate, i'd just plug a mic in and have a ball. As with all gear, try to get the best signal to noise ratio you can, listen to what you're doing and learn from your mistakes. Four-tracking for me was all about unadulterated fun and experimenting. Are there specific things you'd like to know?

[Auxillary]

I would abuse the shit out of that thing!!! They are so cool. I have heard some very very nice recordings come out of those small tascam and fostex units, I know of a "commercial" artist that has released a major label record with many songs done on the tascam portable unit.

Anyways, Id pick up my instrument of choice and find a nice big bathroom, lockerroom, gym, church. shed, living room, closet, or anything I could fit myself and my instrument in and make some incredible recordings. I remember bringing my laptop to the edge of a fjord-like spot (in florida no less) and singing my lungs out on my acoustic while staring out at the water. That was one of the most relaxing and cathartic experiences of my entire life. Not to mention that, the recordings turned out amazing!! And thus I have only let my wife hear them

Have a blast man, make use of the fact you can go almost anywhere and abuse it to no end!

[bobbydj]

Sooner or later you'll see trashy's sig and all will be revealed.

I bought one a few months ago mostly as a means of doing a long(ish) distance collab thang with veronica sawyer.

I've got issues with them. What's preventing you from springin for a tascam 424III? Are you seriously on a budget?

Ok, the X-12. I don't mind the lack of NR, eq or vari-speed. I can even live the fact that this thing runs at domestic tape speed. But I do have a problem that it seems to record at one ips and play back at another. Like, I will record a bass line (having meticulously tuned the thing) then sit down to record a guitar line (ditto tuning), and it will sound eff to the ucked, tuning wise. What's up with that?!? Seriously. So then I have to retune the guitar by ear to the track. For me that gets old fast. Especially when you're having to contend with the obligatory intonation shit too.

Next problem is that the unit adds a warble to almost any signal above a certain pitch. Nearly any guitar line seems to acquire a tremulous, quivery artifact - like you put some really lousy Zoom chorus on it or something, with the rate and depth controls on eleventeen. This is almost as irritating as problem #1.

To address problem #1 I thought to myself that maybe the X-12 is somehow stretching the tape slightly. I use TDK SA90s. So that any signal that goes to tape ends up flattened slightly. Is my phyiscs right here?? Fuck I dunno. So in a vain attempt to navigate the trauma I switched to 60 minute chromes. Maybe this will work. To be honest I was that appalled by the fucker I have yet to return to it and try. I went back to working on the Tascam. As I said the other day, put an X-12 recording up to your ear and you can hear the roar of the ocean.

The only way I can seem to think that this unit will be working for me over the next few months is for accoustic only stuff. What I plan to do is record some percussion on to it - nice shakers, a tambourine, maybe some little hand drum efforts I have. I'll do a range of tempos and stuff. Next I'll mix these down into my Akai S20 (probably via my Mackie to eq some hiss out), and make a stack of floppies with suitable perc shit for future songs. Next I'll sit down with my tapes of ideas for songs that I think need an accoustic guitar type treatment. Having plucked the best from the bunch I'm going to get a tempo for them, choose the appropriate sample loop of perc and put a mic on the guitar and my voice. That will go into my Mackie, as will the (mono) output of my Akai with the perc playing. All those 3 (guitar, voice, perc) will come out of the Mackie down into channel one of the X-12. Then I'll track the main vocal on 2. Next a thirds b-vox on track 3. Track 4? I dunno. I might try doubling the guitar track with a different mic. However, once again the tuning issue will probably arise. See, while I have vocals on the other tracks this isn't a problem - I don't notice pitching to a slightly different freq than concert. But as for retuning another instrument fuggedaboutit.

So - that's the only way I can see the X-12 working for me at the moment. I dunno. Maybe the 60 min chromes will help everything. Perhaps they'll errdicate the pitch problem and the wow and flutter shit on the higher notes. Maybe.

[bobbydj]

Side note - the X-12 doesn't run on batteries, though the X-15 does (although the X-15 is no longer produced, I think).

[bobbydj]

THE X-12 IS A BAG OF FUCKING SHITE

After seeing this thread I decided to give it another chance. Bear in mind that I bought this new from Studio Spares a matter of months ago.

Here's what happened when I recorded some stuff on it this morning - after loading up with a TDK SA60.

It's pretty simple to relate. I recorded some drums and guitar. It started off really well - for the first minute. Then, half way through the piece the pitch begins to DROP!!! Only slightly at first. I thought my hearing was fucking with me - then 10 seconds later it takes a definite, quite obvious pitch shift. Not a drastically sudden drop, but kind of a drunken - though definite - lurch downwards. Fuck this piece of shit. No fucker can work with that kind of bullshit. Succinctly - avoid like the fucking PLAGUE.

[j_howell]

Thanks for the advice, everybody...a few observations I've made...first, apparently you can't bounce tracks on the X-12 without using a seperate deck to bounce to and from. It self-oscillates uncontrollably if you plug it into itself. Which sucks. I bought the X-12 really cheap in a hurry last year- my daughter was doing a school project about subliminal messages and we needed something cheap, fast and easy to do an example on, as the mic input on our soundcard ceased working. So, I thought, what the hell, I've been playing for 10 years, a 4-track'll be nice to document ideas on, yada yada. Had I known that I wouldn't be able to bounce, I definitely woulda bought a Tascam. At any rate, I had some of the issues bobbydj has talked about, so I sent the fucker back to Fostex, and since I've had it back, I've had none of those issues. I haven't really used it much, but so far it's been pretty steady, pitch/speed wise.
At any rate, you cats are right...I probably should be plugging away at it instead of typing, so...bye! If anybody has any further advice, please don't hesitate...

[VeronicaSawyer]

thing is, aside from obligatory pitch and warble problems, the sounds you can get on the little fucker are awesome.

[bobbydj]

I forgot to add a quite important point to that litany of woe. The power point thingy transformer effort wasn't working either. I switched the unit on and this caused the meter to peak, from then on in BUPKISS. So I tried again and the same thing happened. In the end I fired it up with a uni-power doo-dah from Maplins. I am really pissed off with this whole fucking shebang, but thanks for the idea of contacting Fostex j_howell. I'm going to do just that.

[j_howell]

Fostex was surprisingly helpful, polite and quick about the whole matter for me. They basically had to rebuild the transport of my X-12, and I had it back within two weeks of shipping it. Give 'em a call...

[kristopher612]

that's funny i didn't have a lot of trouble with the X-12 when i had one. maybe its a quality control issue. mine did the pitch drop thing, but it was only after about 15-18 minutes into a tape. it didn't matter what type, or anything, but i found that Maxell Type 2 tapes worked best in it. i hated that i couldn't bounce like i could with my Tascam(had to pawn it a year before i got this...i was desperate). but it is functional if you take decent care of it. i got some pretty good sounds out of it. like i got a crappy tape once and it squealed so much that it printed onto every track o would record. it sounded like slightly out of tune guitar strings that were about 3 octaves higher. that was kinda cool, especially how in the song it was on, the chorus came in as it was fading out. enough...there are better machines, but this one will work if you love it in every way you know how.