Greetings Tape Op boards,
Longtime lurker here, I come before you to humbly request guidance and advice about my latest acquisition...a (what appears to be) perfectly working Tascam 38 unit. It came with the remote, pair of DBX units and about a dozen reels of Ampex 456 tape, as well as a few reels of 3M 232 tape.
Bear in mind guys, I am new to analog recording so the questions may seem inane. I apologize in advance.
Now my first question, which is probably most important is how much of the wealth of documentation you guys collated on the 388 relevant to the 38? I originally intended to purchase a 388 thanks to the love shown for it, but this was the only unit available. As well, the price was too good to ignore. Is it worthy of similar affections?
Are there any popular mods?
How do I bounce tracks?
Is there a consensus on what the "best" new tape is?
Are there any parts I should order that are likely to fail in anticipation of future scarcity? Or just so I get back to the session as quickly as possible.
That's all I can think of for now, thanks guys.
Tascam 38-New Owner
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Jim Williams
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The best mods are opamp replacement and transformer removal. I use LME49720 opamps, very quiet and clear. You may need to add a pair of .1 uf caps from the power rails to ground.
Next, yank out the tape head step-up transformer. Bridge the pads across with a wire. Change the 330 ohm resistor off the - input of the opamp to 91 ohms. Done.
Next, yank out the tape head step-up transformer. Bridge the pads across with a wire. Change the 330 ohm resistor off the - input of the opamp to 91 ohms. Done.
Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades
Audio Upgrades
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markjazzbassist
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the 38 is a better unit than the 388 because it's 8 tracks on 1/2" of tape, whereas the 388 is 8 on 1/4". RMG 911 or 900 would work best for new tape, depends on what you want. 911 is standard level, 900 is higher level meaning less noise but also less saturation.
as far as bouncing tracks,
http://www.phys.tue.nl/people/etimmerma ... ncing.html
the only thing you'll need is a mixer unless you already have one. enjoy the world of analog recording!
as far as bouncing tracks,
http://www.phys.tue.nl/people/etimmerma ... ncing.html
the only thing you'll need is a mixer unless you already have one. enjoy the world of analog recording!
Re: Tascam 38-New Owner
First suggestion...try with DBX on/off and determine what works best for your workflow... If you use DBX you can't push levels so hard. A lot of people are opinionated one way or another, and rather than inflecting you with my opinion...try it for yourselfOrpheus wrote:Greetings Tape Op boards,
Longtime lurker here, I come before you to humbly request guidance and advice about my latest acquisition...a (what appears to be) perfectly working Tascam 38 unit. It came with the remote, pair of DBX units and about a dozen reels of Ampex 456 tape, as well as a few reels of 3M 232 tape.
Bear in mind guys, I am new to analog recording so the questions may seem inane. I apologize in advance.
Now my first question, which is probably most important is how much of the wealth of documentation you guys collated on the 388 relevant to the 38? I originally intended to purchase a 388 thanks to the love shown for it, but this was the only unit available. As well, the price was too good to ignore. Is it worthy of similar affections?
Are there any popular mods?
How do I bounce tracks?
Is there a consensus on what the "best" new tape is?
Are there any parts I should order that are likely to fail in anticipation of future scarcity? Or just so I get back to the session as quickly as possible.
That's all I can think of for now, thanks guys.
. Second... On my 388 I like to boost highs on the way in, and roll it back on mixdown, this helps keep noise level down and detail up. These narrow format machines tend to benefit from this practice at times...
Third...Capstan belt is inexpensive and easy to replace, buy new from Tascam and have one handy. I just had to change mine on my 388.
Fourth....Get yourself a nice head cleaning and rubber cleaning kit and be sure to keep it nice and clean before and after use, especially if you decide to use those old reels you've got.. Pick up a Han-D-Mag while you are at it.
Thanks guys, this is exactly what i was looking for. Yeah, the guy also threw in the tascam degausser as well as a Yamaha pm-430 mixer. I already have an old Sunn mixer with a little spring reverb tank as well, both are 8 tracks so i have sme options there.
I'm going to be recording mostly black and thrash metal in the vein of Darkthrone, Aura Noir and Destroyer 666, so a little bit of noise wont bug me too much.
What exactly happens when you track with dbx on and then turn it off on the mixdown? Some interesting sonic artifacts wont be too unwelcome...
I'm going to be recording mostly black and thrash metal in the vein of Darkthrone, Aura Noir and Destroyer 666, so a little bit of noise wont bug me too much.
What exactly happens when you track with dbx on and then turn it off on the mixdown? Some interesting sonic artifacts wont be too unwelcome...
It is an extremely thin/trebley nasty sound...not the kind of thing that I would consider an interesting sonic artifact... That's why you want to commit to either using it or not...Orpheus wrote:
What exactly happens when you track with dbx on and then turn it off on the mixdown? Some interesting sonic artifacts wont be too unwelcome...
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Judas Jetski
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- Contact:
Some people really like to use the dbx-on-during-recording-but-off-during-playback thing. I'm curious to hear what it would sound like in parallel. Seems like you could set up a loop from your board to one of your dbx units, if they're the type which allows you to toggle both encode and decode.
Kslight is right: a lot of people have a lot of opinions on the utility of dbx (for instance, I myself have two). But I'm thinking dbx as conventional NR will be your friend in this application. Screw around with it a little and see if you like it. If you hit it just a little too hard your signal will sound companded, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
I'm curious about the tape. I've never heard of Scotch 232.
Kslight is right: a lot of people have a lot of opinions on the utility of dbx (for instance, I myself have two). But I'm thinking dbx as conventional NR will be your friend in this application. Screw around with it a little and see if you like it. If you hit it just a little too hard your signal will sound companded, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
I'm curious about the tape. I've never heard of Scotch 232.
Hi guys. I've been having trouble with the above unit, so here's a crosspost I made on another forum. Hopefully someone will be able to help me. Thanks in advance, I appreciate any and all assistance given....you WILL be thanked in the linernotes I promise you!
I purchased it in working order. The previous owner had it set up in his studio and he showed me the operation and everything. Everything appeared to work as it was supposed to. I promptly stashed it my basement for about 8 months or so. I was renovating my place and there was nowhere I could put it or test it/run it or anything. The time came to try some recording, so I took it to my friends studio and it seemed to run ok for a while. Then it started acting really sluggish. And did not want to play, FF, or Rewind at any thing above a crawl. I did not suspect sticky tape since the owner assured me that these tapes would be good, and I was lead to believe that it is much more obvious. In retrospect that could have been part of the problem or the problem entirely. My suspicion was the filter capacitors.
EDIT: The former owner ended up getting back to me a while later Here's a conversation we had:
Please tell me that you did NOT leave the machine for almost a year in what appears to be a basement room with bare concrete floor, unplugged and never exercised?! AHHHHH! Orpheus, that environment is murder on machines with moving parts like these! Did I not ask you repeatedly to keep it plugged in, running it at least every couple of weeks? I 'm sure I told you to spool a reel of tape from time to time to avoid exactly this problem.
No, from the video, the tape does not appear to be sticking at all. If it does, it will be quite obvious. Looks like what happened was the reel motors and other moving parts became sluggish, mainly the rubber areas. I suggest you leave it turned on, plugged in with it's lights on, for several days. Use a small fan to help dry air flow through the unit. Don't do anything else during this time.
At the same time, PLEASE move it upstairs for a while, unless you have the air conditioning running full blast all day in that room in the video. (Even a significant other can't complain about something making no noise.) A/C removes air moisture as I'm sure you know. Once it has been drying out/warming up for at least three or four days, lay the machine on it's back. If lucky, this may be all it takes. As you show in the video, the motors are trying to move , but are weak right now. I suggest you 'coax' it along, giving a small assist to the turning, time after time. This will eventually free up and exercise the reel motors to the point they will at least spool an entire reel back and forth. At great sppeds, eventually. Hopefully, once that happens, just keep spooling that same reel over and over, back and forth, until it feels so good, you can stop the rewind and start it again with only the controls.
Don't ask it to actually play/record any reel, until this part is working fine. That is capstan work. If this doesn't work, time for the more drastic:
Sacrifice one half a reel. (I don't remember if I gave you any partial reels but I doubt I had any in half inch.) I mean, pick another, older looking reel, (not the Scotch.....they may not perform at their best right away.) You must dump one half of the tape into a garbage can right under the best motor running. Just let it dump, assisting it if need be.
The weight may have to be reduced if all the functions are to be restored. Losing one half of a blank tape is a small price to get the Tascam up and running again.
Still on it's back, with a constant mild air flow around it, it will come back more easily when it only has to move one half the weight
of a regular metal reel plus about 1000 to 1200 feet instead of 2500. If you feel like taking the main cover off the unit, that should really help the recovery process.
My brother has owned several Revox quarter inch I/2 tracks and other 8-track Tascams. I swear to God, buddy, he ruined every single machine merely by ignoring them in old, damp, airless places for years on end. He just failed to understand that they cannot be treated like that. The rubber parts in the units cannot stand up to this neglect. He would never listen and was always blaming the makers of those beautiful pieces of equipment for their failure.
My Reply:
That room I was trying it out in was actually the control room of the studio we're going to record in, not where I was storing it. I stored it in a dry place but I must have spaced on your admonition to run it periodically. Since then I brought it back to my place and actually disassembled it completely, and didnt notice ANY deterioration of any of the rubber components. There was a thread that suggested cleaning out the motor brushes so I did that...there was some crud in there. There was a *bit* of tape residue on the paths, so I suspected that it could be stickyness, but I dont know how much is normal and how much is excessive. What I though was strange was that when I first fired it up at the studio it ran perfectly fine, but only started doing that later. So I suspected either the tape, motor brushes or main capacitors. I'll try what you suggested in the meantime
I then did some research online and found this
http://homerecording.com/bbs/general...8-58-a-336460/
I followed the instructions *exactly* and put it back together, and now for some reason Play works fine, FF is slow as molasses unless I manually lift the arm for the brake on the take-up motor ( it appears to be partially engaged) AND
Rewind works backwards. It only spools tape CCW from the supply reel.
I double checked all of my solder connections, and now I am at a complete loss. The manual explains quite a bit, but my experience is more in tube amplifiers not electromechanical control circuits. It also doesnt say which wire on the motor does what or exactly how the directions get reversed.
Here is the manual
http://elektrotanya.com/teac_tascam_.../download.html
I have a short video I can email to anybody who wants to help me out. I wont be able to post it until tomorrow morning publicly
I purchased it in working order. The previous owner had it set up in his studio and he showed me the operation and everything. Everything appeared to work as it was supposed to. I promptly stashed it my basement for about 8 months or so. I was renovating my place and there was nowhere I could put it or test it/run it or anything. The time came to try some recording, so I took it to my friends studio and it seemed to run ok for a while. Then it started acting really sluggish. And did not want to play, FF, or Rewind at any thing above a crawl. I did not suspect sticky tape since the owner assured me that these tapes would be good, and I was lead to believe that it is much more obvious. In retrospect that could have been part of the problem or the problem entirely. My suspicion was the filter capacitors.
EDIT: The former owner ended up getting back to me a while later Here's a conversation we had:
Please tell me that you did NOT leave the machine for almost a year in what appears to be a basement room with bare concrete floor, unplugged and never exercised?! AHHHHH! Orpheus, that environment is murder on machines with moving parts like these! Did I not ask you repeatedly to keep it plugged in, running it at least every couple of weeks? I 'm sure I told you to spool a reel of tape from time to time to avoid exactly this problem.
No, from the video, the tape does not appear to be sticking at all. If it does, it will be quite obvious. Looks like what happened was the reel motors and other moving parts became sluggish, mainly the rubber areas. I suggest you leave it turned on, plugged in with it's lights on, for several days. Use a small fan to help dry air flow through the unit. Don't do anything else during this time.
At the same time, PLEASE move it upstairs for a while, unless you have the air conditioning running full blast all day in that room in the video. (Even a significant other can't complain about something making no noise.) A/C removes air moisture as I'm sure you know. Once it has been drying out/warming up for at least three or four days, lay the machine on it's back. If lucky, this may be all it takes. As you show in the video, the motors are trying to move , but are weak right now. I suggest you 'coax' it along, giving a small assist to the turning, time after time. This will eventually free up and exercise the reel motors to the point they will at least spool an entire reel back and forth. At great sppeds, eventually. Hopefully, once that happens, just keep spooling that same reel over and over, back and forth, until it feels so good, you can stop the rewind and start it again with only the controls.
Don't ask it to actually play/record any reel, until this part is working fine. That is capstan work. If this doesn't work, time for the more drastic:
Sacrifice one half a reel. (I don't remember if I gave you any partial reels but I doubt I had any in half inch.) I mean, pick another, older looking reel, (not the Scotch.....they may not perform at their best right away.) You must dump one half of the tape into a garbage can right under the best motor running. Just let it dump, assisting it if need be.
The weight may have to be reduced if all the functions are to be restored. Losing one half of a blank tape is a small price to get the Tascam up and running again.
Still on it's back, with a constant mild air flow around it, it will come back more easily when it only has to move one half the weight
of a regular metal reel plus about 1000 to 1200 feet instead of 2500. If you feel like taking the main cover off the unit, that should really help the recovery process.
My brother has owned several Revox quarter inch I/2 tracks and other 8-track Tascams. I swear to God, buddy, he ruined every single machine merely by ignoring them in old, damp, airless places for years on end. He just failed to understand that they cannot be treated like that. The rubber parts in the units cannot stand up to this neglect. He would never listen and was always blaming the makers of those beautiful pieces of equipment for their failure.
My Reply:
That room I was trying it out in was actually the control room of the studio we're going to record in, not where I was storing it. I stored it in a dry place but I must have spaced on your admonition to run it periodically. Since then I brought it back to my place and actually disassembled it completely, and didnt notice ANY deterioration of any of the rubber components. There was a thread that suggested cleaning out the motor brushes so I did that...there was some crud in there. There was a *bit* of tape residue on the paths, so I suspected that it could be stickyness, but I dont know how much is normal and how much is excessive. What I though was strange was that when I first fired it up at the studio it ran perfectly fine, but only started doing that later. So I suspected either the tape, motor brushes or main capacitors. I'll try what you suggested in the meantime
I then did some research online and found this
http://homerecording.com/bbs/general...8-58-a-336460/
I followed the instructions *exactly* and put it back together, and now for some reason Play works fine, FF is slow as molasses unless I manually lift the arm for the brake on the take-up motor ( it appears to be partially engaged) AND
Rewind works backwards. It only spools tape CCW from the supply reel.
I double checked all of my solder connections, and now I am at a complete loss. The manual explains quite a bit, but my experience is more in tube amplifiers not electromechanical control circuits. It also doesnt say which wire on the motor does what or exactly how the directions get reversed.
Here is the manual
http://elektrotanya.com/teac_tascam_.../download.html
I have a short video I can email to anybody who wants to help me out. I wont be able to post it until tomorrow morning publicly
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