Record & Bounce Mono Drums with 3 cheap mics + Portastudio | Tascam 244 tutorial part 1

[@LexTreefrog]

Man obvs the meters are sick but the faders and knobs on that portastudio are also sooooo much sicker than my mkiii that thing is a beaut

[@wehappyfewmusic]

Great to see you doing a drum recording tutorial on the 244, looking forward to hearing the finished track!

[@spookylaundry3326]

Awesome, you're channel is invaluable. Can't wait to have my 244 fully working to record some drums. Just did the belts and idle tires and everything was working good but started getting some issues with the pinch roller. One more online order and it should be working good. Thanks for everything!

[@zakdamonmusic]

Saw a 388 in the corner. Do you have in depth videos how to work on , clean, take apart and put back together the 388??

[@Tetrakan]

Not yet. I bought it ages ago needing work but always saw cassette stuff as lower hanging fruit... I was actually moving it to a part to my home studio where it'll be easy to use and maintain as I saw the notification for this comment, and I do hope to start making that content in the coming months.

[@zakdamonmusic]

@@Tetrakan ​​⁠​⁠that’s cool man! My late father passsd on his 244 and 388 to me and these videos REALLY helped me strip apart, clean, and get the 244 back up and going so thank you! My 388 is still pristine too fortunately. my dad wrote and recorded hundreds of songs through the 80s and 90s using that 244 and I just started sharing some of them on my KZbin channel, come check it out. My dad was like a Beatle straight from Birmingham… Alabama. Lol.

[@Tetrakan]

@@zakdamonmusic that’s awesome, subbed, listening just now and enjoying it very much. Great project, I hope your Dads music reaches a wider audience as a result. And also glad the 244 videos helped

[@andypickeringmusic]

Bounce is where the magic happens!

[@danielwetzel7777]

Damn good set up. Funny limitations get the most out of us alot of times. You sound like a good drummer btw

[@sunshadow8601]

Apologies if you did mention it but do you plug the mic straight into the Tascam or do you use a mic preamp? If I plug in my guitar or bass it’s fine. The sm57 barely moves the VU meters. I got xlr to 1/4” adapters and even bought a xlr > 1/4” mic cable. Same issue. Any ideas what could be wrong? Cheers!

[@Tetrakan]

Hey, I'm using unbalanced male XLR to 1/4" jack cables straight into the 244. With loud signals like drums, I only need to turn the gain up a third of the way. For quieter signals, like vocals, I find I need the gain about three quarters of the way up with dynamic mics. External preamps can be beneficial, but are not strictly necessary in my experience, so perhaps you have a fault, either in the cables, the mic itself, or the audio bypass capacitors between the preamp stages and mixer stages of your 244?

[@sunshadow8601]

Part ii: I got one of those REALLY cheap karaoke mics and it works. I was quite surprised that a $12 mic sounds so bloody good 😂. So… looks like the 244 doesn’t like low-z mics. Or the bloke who had it before me “tweaked” it. I’ll get some of those impedance adapters because the cork sniffer in me would never record with a karaoke mic 🎤

[@sunshadow8601]

@@Tetrakan thanks for replying! I just saw you have patreon. Noice! Do you do zoom call tech support 🤣. Kidding but it’s actually not a bad idea 🤝

[@tragicattic]

Just curious: if doing this on an MT4X or MT8X, would you still pan all three of your drum tracks hard left and have channel 1 at center? Would it not be sort of inverted on the MT8X, such that the channel you're bouncing your three drum tracks to would be hard panned L or R in record mode (to indicate which track receives the signal), while the three drums would be mixed in a stereo field rather than hard panned? Was this just a personal choice to make mono? Thank you, hopefully this makes sense

[@fuzzcityrecords432]

Cool idea!

[@Tetrakan]

Thanks - I’m a fan of your channel and your music, so it’s nice to see you here!

[@nirvonicsino]

Hey Tetrakan! I just got a 244 from offer up knowing it's not working, looked up on KZbin for tutorials and your videos were suggested. Thanks for going so in depth with this machine! I now feel very confident in going forward with this procedure. I wanted to ask if you knew where I could get a hold of buttons and caps for some of the knobs online. My "Door" button is missing and the green caps for the cue knobs are missing as well. Thanks for everything man, I really appreciate your time and work!

[@Tetrakan]

Thanks! There’s tascam ninja in Greece, but his stuffs not cheap. Or save searches in reverb, eBay etc, occasionally people sell parts or decrepit parts donors. Good luck with the refurbishment.

[@gregkay5891]

Great demo! Love to see these guys actually being used. Have you ever tried recording drums really hot to the 234 Syncaset with the dbx turned off? Was wondering the cassette tape compression and the S/N ratio of such a situation would sound any good..

[@Tetrakan]

I haven't tried that (the only 234 I've had has bad transport logic and I'm still trying to fix it...) but the tape widths per track and tape speed is in a similar ballpark to a 388 - I gather the Brothers Nylon record their 388 stuff hot to tape with no DBX and it sounds great, you can hear the hiss but it's not intrusive.

[@bassplayeronly]

Did u use a mic pre on your mic

[@Tetrakan]

No, just the internal ones on the 244

[@bassplayeronly]

Mines wont work so i need some phantom power

[@Tetrakan]

@bassplayeronly behringer make an inexpensive phantom power supply if you're using condenser microphones which require phantom power, though you'd still be relying on the onboard preamp for gain, and condenser mics tend to need more gain than the dynamic microphones im using in this video. For a little more they make preamps with phantom power.

[@PoipleBabby]

is that a tascam 388?

[@Tetrakan]

It is! Purely decorative - the tape drive is faulty and in the year since I bought it I've been too busy with cassette stuff to get to it...one day?