Nail Soup

My parents had no musical ability or knowledge to pass on. They had records, but were not enthusiasts. However, they were very encouraging of my music (or any other interest for that matter) They bought me my original gear (Kay bass) but I never learned how to play it.... I just was not in the right place then. Later I bought my own bass and taught myself the basics. From then on they have been really supportive..... knowing all my early band-mates by name (when your band was more like your gang) , helping with lifts to gigs, mum listening to my Crass-inspired lyrics(!), coming to gigs to hear the band.... and even in more recent years coming to the odd open mic I did or covers gig my current band has. My brother was getting into making music at the same time, so we exchanged notes, and eventually co-owned a fostex fourtrack. In our late -twenties me and my brother formed an originals band togther. Lasted a couple of years and we have our demo tape as a kind of family heirloom! Finally in the last year I have managed to teach my mum 3 chords on the ukulele (C,F,G of course)!

I think most folk have posted their comments now. So @scalpy what is your your verdict/thoughts?

Inspired by a couple of posts in the "Notable Deaths" thread, and following on from the "Did music lessons at school help with your musical life?" thread. In the notable deaths thread one poster had great support and musical knowledge from their (sadly departed) father. A responder said that they (sadly) got no support whatsoever for music or indeed anything else from their father☹️. What's your story?

It’s how the early left-handers were made !

I think I didn’t use any noise reduction though. It was a long time ago though.

Culture - Lion Rock

I'm going to 'press pause' while i figure out what to do next... thanks to you guys I have some options to consider including: - Repair the tape transport (I may not have the skills for doing that myself, but I'll try) so might need to pay - Buy a 4-track off e.g. e-bay and sell it after. - Get Fostex repaired professionally (the transport and the original audio output problem), and then sell it afterwards to re-coop the repair fees (Fostex is part-owned with my brother, so I'll split the proceeds with him. He lives abroad now and has probably assumed it has been disposed of by now!) - Kind offer to utilize a Basschatter's 4-track (but my DAW is tied to a desktop PC) - Have the tapes transferred professionally (Maybe sell the broken Fostex for spares to fund it?) Most of the option mean i'd need to upgrade my audio interface to 4 channels at least temporarily.

Oops being a bit silly there- thanks for the warning. I’ll find an old tape !!!

The Zoom model I have can only take 2 inputs at a time, otherwise that would have worked pretty well!

Step 4 - power up / tape transport Good news :Powered up ok👍 ! Bad news: tape mechanism not working well. 😟. I put the tape in and tried to rewind....... it rewound pretty slow, got slower and stopped. The sprocket (?) goes round ok without the tape there. When I rewind the tape with a pencil it seems loose enough. Cannot play... the heads go to the tape, but there is just a horrible eerrrrrrrrrrr noise. any ideas?

(Dog walked, back to cassette activity!) Step 3 - choose a cassette This looks like a good one, bringing back memories!

Step 2 - power supply More digging around in the loft, and I have the Fostex power supply. Its pretty heavy, the power supply alone weighs a lot more than the Zoom 4 track device which superseded the Fostex!

Step 1 - leads dug around and managed to find four channels worth of phono to jack lead. No purchase required, so good so far.

Wow thats a really kind offer!!!.... Im going to see if I can get the buss signals out of the (partly broken) original Fostex first...... but if that fails.........??

Ok, really geting started on this now. Just for fun, and in case anyone is interested, and in case anyone can help along the way with tips, I'll do a kind of diary in here. Lets see how it goes !!

Looks a bit Prince?

BBC 6 music are celbrating 50 years of the "Paranoid" Album today.

Thanks for the continued tips. I will try at the weekend to get some signal out of the Buss sockets to my existing audio interface DAW which has only two channels. I'll record two tracks to DAW as a kind of proof of concept. But based on your advice, I won't do it in multiple takes. If it works, I'll obtain a (budget) four-channel audio interface and use that to do all four tracks at once. It's been a long time since I used the recorder, the adiochain is broken somewhere (hopefully before the Buss outs) and I have never used the buss channels - so wish me luck!

except they look great! I presume there gonna sound pretty good too though?

Thanks for all the replies!! I just went to where it is stashed in the loft. It's a Fostek 460 - it's got a 8 track mixer and four track recorder. Sorry the pic is upside down. It is not working, but I think the tape mechanism is OK, and I think the issue lies quite near the end of the audio chain. So the individual 4 tracks are probably OK if I can access them. I'm not very technical but I'm hoping the four Buss outputs will relate to the four tracks on the tape. I should be able to try it at the weekend. Would that be a suitable output to run to the audio interface (I have a presonus) where I plug my guitars into? And then use the DAW to record the 4 tracks to seperate tracks in the daw? Well.......I only have two tracks on the interface so I'd have some syncing up to do. Or maybe buy a second hand four input interface and sell it afterwards?

(inspired by the 1/4 inch tape thread) I have a drawer full of 4 track cassettes from way back when that was the main way to do home recording. The 4 track machine doesn't work any more. I may or may not be able to fix it. Any tips/comments/experince on getting them transferred to WAV files (Including how to sync them up in DAW.)? With and without a 4-track machine? They are recorded (as most are I think) at double speed.

You can add the reggae knee bend to that list.

Interesting and nice pedalboard! Just out of interest - why did you go for the 'totally wireless' solution? ... to keep the area tidy of cables?... or is there some other advantage?

And they were free!

I'm pretty keen on not having cables on the floor - thats why I use rechargable power supply for my pedals (no mains lead). Wireless from pedalboard to amp would help with that.... but like OP I'm worried about the dual latency. However, I more often go from pedalboard straight to PA nowadays..... so I think there may not be much to gain by losing the cable to the PA.