Is anyone here -really- serious about recording?

[Yamaha Man]

Nope, I have two Neumanns and a set of Yamaha HS8's on the way...don't need anything else.

Speaking of old relics, anybody wanna buy a hardly used DA-88 ??

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Martin Maniac

Speaking of old relics, anybody wanna buy a hardly used DA-88 ??

Wow! What a blast from the past!!! We went through so many of them back in the '90s. Tascam charged about half the cost of the unit to replace the head drums (you couldn't buy them). The drums only lasted about 2000 hours and you didn't find out they died until you lost data. We had five of them in my main room and a total of about twenty-five throughout the facility. It was a funny little era in recording.

I've got a few little technological tidbits from various eras throughout my career lying aboot including my own little Neve mixer.

Bob

[Yamaha Man]

Garbage. I had so many dropouts with mine I gave up on it. I also got socked $500 from Tascam for a new transport system that fell apart. That's why I'm skeptical when buying gear. And NO I don't want any old Beatle gear.

[Hot Vibrato]

That's very cool. I hope it goes to a good home.

[Hot Vibrato]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrHtmCyZYA0

[gfsark]

The 1" recorder has 52 tubes by itself! Yikes.
A museum is perhaps the proper resting place for such an item. Probably be bought by a collector who has money and space.
Really, I love seeing old technology in museums...like railroads, machine shops, farming,,,smithsonian type of stuff. So why not a recording console?

[Bob Womack]

One reason why some want these to keep running is because they sound different from modern gear. There's a sound to the tube gear, the same as there is a difference between tube and completely solid state guitar amps. Some prefer the sound of tubes in the recording chain.

It is basically just like what you hear when someone posts pics of a classic guitar in a museum: Many people say that guitars weren't designed to be stuffed and mounted and displayed behind glass - they were meant to make music.

Right down the road from me there is a unique museum in which there are approximately sixty aircraft from WWII. Big deal. But these planes are restored to original condition and FLY. You can't experience a WWII fighter completely by seeing it stuffed and mounted. You need the visceral experience of hearing and feeling the throb of a Merlin or Wright or Allison or Daimler-Benz or Pratt & Whitney engines as they churn your guts. You need to see how they maneuver, how they become alive as they approach takeoff speed.

It is the same with instruments and recording gear. The good stuff must be experienced in action to be understood. In the years when I worked on the Neve consoles, for instance, once I set the basic recording level, I rarely had to think about distortion because the console had so much headroom. When it entered distortion it did so very gently, unlike so many other designs. I'd go to another studio and immediately find myself having to actively manage my headroom because most other console had far less.

That's the kind of thing you discover with this sort of equipment. The REDD consoles were way, way top-end, bespoke equipment, the Masserati of the genre and period.

Bob

[Woodstock School Of Music]

Originally Posted by Martin Maniac

Speaking of old relics, anybody wanna buy a hardly used DA-88 ??

I'd be embarrassed to say how much I paid for 3 Adat's and a BRC controller back in the day. I ended up throwing one away, gave one to a friend and kept one just in case I needed to archive something

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

One reason why some want these to keep running is because they sound different from modern gear. There's a sound to the tube gear, the same as there is a difference between tube and completely solid state guitar amps. Some prefer the sound of tubes in the recording chain.

It is basically just like what you hear when someone posts pics of a classic guitar in a museum: Many people say that guitars weren't designed to be stuffed and mounted and displayed behind glass - they were meant to make music.

Right down the road from me there is a unique museum in which there are approximately sixty aircraft from WWII. Big deal. But these planes are restored to original condition and FLY. You can't experience a WWII fighter completely by seeing it stuffed and mounted. You need the visceral experience of hearing and feeling the throb of a Merlin or Wright or Allison or Daimler-Benz or Pratt & Whitney engines as they churn your guts. You need to see how they maneuver, how they become alive as they approach takeoff speed.

It is the same with instruments and recording gear. The good stuff must be experienced in action to be understood. In the years when I worked on the Neve consoles, for instance, once I set the basic recording level, I rarely had to think about distortion because the console had so much headroom. When it entered distortion it did so very gently, unlike so many other designs. I'd go to another studio and immediately find myself having to actively manage my headroom because most other console had far less.

That's the kind of thing you discover with this sort of equipment. The REDD consoles were way, way top-end, bespoke equipment, the Masserati of the genre and period.

Bob

Yep I happen to think also, that tools have be used to be fully appreciated