Hitachi Boombox

[Catoogie]

I read the Buddy Miller interview in Tape Op and really liked what he said about using the built-in mic of his Hitachi boombox to record drums etc. Anyone know what model; he's talkin' about, I located the warehouse in El Paso where he got his but they have a variety of different models.

Any other suggestions fo boomboxes would help too, it doesn't have to be a Hitachi.

Thanks

[geardood]

I'm not familiar with the Hitachi ones, but I've used the mic in a mini-cassette recorder and ran the headphone out on it to a channel for a drum room mic. It lended a real trashy 60's garage rock sound to things, which I kinda dig. I think any boombox or mini-cassette would give similar results, so go for it.

[Catoogie]

I'm not really going for a garage band sound with the boombox, there's something about the built in compressor...limiter whatever you call it. Like Buddy said, it just does wonders for your vocal and drums. I always loved the way my practice tapes sounded recorded on the boombox.

[moogplayer]

probably some older model. I remember having an older early 80s Panasonic that had a built-in mic, manual recording level, and even a VU meter! They made 'em pretty cool back in the day...

[bobbydj]

I started a thread almost exactly like this on not the board before this but the one before that. It died and went to #183 with a bullet. My Q was basically like yours - although I had the boom-box already sorted (a Sharp QT27 - which is small thing with no boom whatsoever, but a great slaughterer of drums).

I wanted to know how to route the input signal out of the thing and into my board. Just take a head-phone out, right? Well no - because when in record the phones do not 'monitor' signals. In other words it was impossible to use the boom-box as a mic. I came to my own conclusion that I'd have to screw with the circuitry inside the thing, and absoutely no idea how to do that.

The only other possible solution would have involved using the recorder separately, with its own cassette in and then somehow ghetto-syncing this to a separarte track on my 1/4" multi-tracker later. Then mixing to taste with the conventionally mic'd drum tracks. Needless to say I gave up the whole kaboodle before even trying it.

Brian Beattie did say something related to this whole thing at a later date though - and said that it'd be possible to sample the cassette version of the drum track (which used the crappy on-baord heavy limiter mic, of course), then sync this sample with the main, normal drum track. This is probably the best way to go at it. However, I'm scared of digital and don't have the practical or technological means to accomplish it.

One of my misgivings with this digital solution related to the issue of tape-speed incompatibilities. In other words, supposing the boom-box recorded slightly slower or faster than real time (which doesn't seem too unlikely). Once the cassette track was sampled and synced with the conventionally recorded drum sounds there's a possibility that the two signals could begin to drift very slightly - which cause phase crap, or just sound crappy, or both. So that was one caveat I had with that approach. But in practice I doubt whether that would actually ever arise as much of a real poblem. And anyway, presumably the sample could be tuned via a few cents to ensure that it is tightened up with the conventional track. In fact, maybe this tuning thing could be used to induce some kind of slap-back thing. I'd love to get into this, I really would. But it scares me, scares me. Oooohhhh.

*shivers*

Plus I don't have a good enough sampler. Not that stuff like the Akai S2000 aren't going dirt cheap these days, mind you. Gawd almighty - I'm glad I never bought one of those babies new back in the day. Yeeouch!

[Catoogie]

Bobbydj,

The boombox Buddy refers to actually has RCA outs on it. Since yours doesn't you're probably right that you'd have to futz with the circuitry, which unless you know your way around that kinda stuff is gonna be cost prohibitive. Either that or oyu'll have to do that sample the cassette thing you mentioned. I suggest looking around for a boombox with outs.

Good luck

[cornsound]

alls I can say is that there were a few boomboxes from back then, say early to mid-'80s (they were usually silver colored, and had these little stereo mics built in) and if you put them in just the right spot in the corner of the room, they recorded band practices/jams *perfectly*...abeit on cassette but this was before CDs became recordable and all. I think a couple that I used were a Toshiba or Panasonic something-or-other...one was sort of more compact and the other was the typical ghetto-blaster style. man I'm gonna go check eBay now...

[cornsound]

check out some of these...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=15053 -- looks nice, has rca outs and rec level control and all that but kinda exxxxpensive.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... egory=4784 -- another one, less features, not much cheaper.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=15053 -- is this the Hitachi?

[bobbydj]

Cheers Catoogie.

[bobbydj]

Oh, catoogie - I forgot to ask. By RCA do you mean what I'd call 'phono' outs? Well anyway, that's may be by the by anyway 'cos there's a more fundamental question I have. And this is to do with circuitry. I'm a bit of a boom-box veteran really, and have survived on them as my main (and usually only) way to listen to music for easily the biggest part of my life. In fact I only got proper separates last year. But one thing I found was that when in record mode none of the boxes I ever had 'monitored' the input signal when in record mode. Hence I still don't get how you could use the Hitachi to output that weirdly amazing limited and bizarrely compressed in-built mic signal.

I really would love to get right to the bottom of this because I too have accidently made some interesting (I hesitate to the use the word 'great' but I think you know what I mean) recordings on these radio-cassette devices. Is the Hitachi a bit of a one-off in that when in record it monitors itself through its own speakers or its head-phone out? Or would all boxes do this if they have these RCA outs?

Can someone chime in with the precise model of Hitachi that the original TapeOp article mentioned too? Thanks.

Ok - I have too many questions here but I really would like to suss this out once and for all. My eBay watching page awaits!

[Abe]

This is a great thread! I loved the drum sound on boombox tapes from band rehearsals but could never figure out how to get it into my 4track.
I don’t know if this will work but when I was a kid we used to plug mics into tape-records without cassette and press play/record while holding down the little tab to make the machine think there was a tape in it. You could talk in the mic and it would be amped out the speaker.
I’m going to run home and try it. If it doesn’t work, I’m hittin' the thrift stores for a boombox w/ lineout!
thanks for the info guys.

[wing]

check out some of these...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=15053 -- looks nice, has rca outs and rec level control and all that but kinda exxxxpensive.

man, that's quite the classy ghettoblaster!

[wing]

yea my brother and i got this ghettoblaster back in the day when i was real little and had nothing else to record on. so we recorded lots of things to it. i think i remember hating it then, because it was so noisy and crunchy and you couldn't clearly hear everything. now i totally miss it... from what i recall the drums and guitars sounded totally cool in it! i gotta get back up on one of those...

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Another great way to get this sound is to track down an old Radio Shack electret stereo mic. I started using one in high school to record practices. Fifteen years later I still use it. It's my secret wepon for drums.