Lets hear your taping mishaps

[itzmike]

I have been taping 34 years. had a few things happen. About 3 years ago my deck ate a tape. Not just any tape but one of the five Metal Vertex in my collection. I have never had this happen on a home unit. I also have recorded Side A then rewind and came back and thought i was on side B!!!! And recorded side A over. Accidently left Dolby on. And another time I was fixing to pack up my Aiwa for service because recordings were muffled. Then I cleaned and scrubbed the heads for 5 mins!!!! And the problem was fixed. I always cleaned every time i used it but only for about 5 seconds. Over a period of time the dirt was accumulating from insufficient cleangs. I know mine probably arent as intersting as others. Mike

[MacGyver]

my very first component cassette deck, a PIONEER CT-980W, once ate a tape. also, i once thought something was wrong with my CT-W600R when i played a tape, and it was all muddy sounding!! turned out that it was because the felt fell off the pressure pad! glued it back in place, and all was well. aside from that, i have zero problems in four decks and seven years of taping...

FIRST DECK; CT-980W

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/CT-980W.jpg

SECOND DECK; CT-W603RS

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/CT-W603RS.jpg

THIRD DECK; CT-F2121

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/CT-F21213.jpg

FOURTH DECK; CT-W600R

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/DSCF0671.jpg

(LARGE INSULATORS/FEET WERE ADD-ONS BY ME)

CURRENT DECK; (one of my two dream models) CT-W910R

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/DSCF0906.jpg

SECOND DREAM DECK; CT-91/91a

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll310/shaorin-chan/CT-911.jpg

[Scorpion8]

I've done them all. Set a tape to record an LP once and the LP started skipping. I had left the room, so I didn't know. Taped the entire side of the cassette of the same spot skipping over and over.

[Fast Forward]

Well I usually record from Vinyl to Cassette so I buy 90 min cassettes,, so I can get 2 records on I tape,,I didn,t find out until recently that some CDs are longer than 45 Minutes WTF

[Acoustic]

I've probably made every mistake possible. Taping over a favorite, having the wrong input selected, having the deck on tape instead of source, trusting the promises of a woman (sorry, wrong forum:D)..... oh and coming home late from a bar hearing a cool song to record and putting the tape in backwards. (Though not lately....)*hope*

[Des-Lab]

Yeah add me to the list. I don't think I've ever done anything quite as bad as Scorp. But all the nominal gaffes:

False starts
Premature (cut off) ends
Running out of tape/added up times wrong (math is different. One minute is only a value/increment of 60 and not 99 as in normal arithmetic)
Distorted/overloaded
Too quick of a fadeout
Bad fade in
Left NR off
Mistimed/mismarked splices and edits

I've done it all.

[zenith2134]

Worst I've done in my few months of taking tape seriously...

forgot to set recording level and had it at maximum since i was recording silence to a tape previously in order to erase it.

WELL. I played my tape back and thought I set my tweeters on fire. Talk about THD!!!!! AH!

[1.875_ips]

This year for Christmas I decided to make all my friends vinyl only mix tapes. I started production the second week of december and was very satisfied with myself by having completed 16 of them (all unique mind you) in a little over a week. In the interest of saving money (hey, were in a recession) and the fact that none of my friends really possess the equipment nor discerning ear to call me out on it, I decided to tape over a stack of C60 type Is that I had lying around, most of which were just recordings of records I made over the last two years, listened to once or twice and kept them clean, in the cases, etc, so I really didn't feel bad about it. The first couple tapes went off without a hitch. They sounded pretty good upon play back and after three or four of them I just stopped listening to them after they were recorded. I was hitting a stride. I was a master of mixtapes. The last of the 16 tapes I made was one of those unfortunate "squeezers" where you're sweatin it real bad at the end, the take up reel is FULL and that thin thin thin line on the other side, how many layers of tape is that? It was coming down to seconds and this last track has a very dramatic ending and it's almost here it's almost here! and I watched the leader edge pass over the playhead right in the middle of the final creshendo... okay, okay, it's cool rewind the tape, start the song over, fade in cut 5 seconds from the beginning, fade it in and you'll have plenty of time at the end and Christmas will be saved.

So I do that, cue the record 5-10 seconds in, give a fade in and we're all gravy... howeverI soon noticed a very curious audible event that I had never before noticed in the song. Delay. That's weird I thought, I don't remember that in the song... and not only is there a delay it starts phasing and after a little trouble shooting I come to conclusion that the erase head must have gone out...

Oh well, I thought to myself. You did pretty good, look at all these tapes you've made for your friends. Hell, it was only on the last one that you even had a flub and had to go back and rerecord so really, this is the only problem child, you have plenty of time before xmas to find a deck, even it's a five dollar salvation army find....

And then i remembered. The tapes. They had all been previously recorded on!! Those first three or four were fine, but sometime around tape 6 or 7 the erase head must have gone out on me and lo and behold more than half the tapes I had made had a ghostly presence in the right channel of the tapes first recording...

Luckily, my friends are cool as hell and didn't mind waiting a couple more weeks!

[Nakdoc]

I worked in the Oberlin Conservatory as a student, taping all performances. We used Scotch tape exclusively. Recording was rather uneventful. We had to listen to cues from the stage manager, set up a second deck for long concerts, and record the timing of the program. Once during a long concert I suddenly heard one channel drop down and the image steered back and forth! We sat at eye-level with the Ampex heads and I looked over an saw diagonal stripes in the tape backing. I quickly punched in the second deck.
Scotch had let some tape through their QC with longitudinal stripes of missing oxide.

[mrfoxboy]

My oopses:
Skipping LPs
Skipping CDs
Tapes ate
Wrong tape type
Dolby on/off madness
Running out of tape
Hitting the ARM-Pause button (rec mute) too early
Wrong inputs
Busted cable (that one I did last night)
Wrong side
Starting recording too late
and my best one: Forgetting to put the tape IN THE DECK!

[jmiles1960]

Never adjust the brakes on your reel to reel with a tape you really care about.... (I can hear the tape breaking again on my vintage live recording...)

My cry: what the hell was I doing !!!

[Maxell-LN]

Recording an entire vinyl record, realising the tape deck was still on tape-record-pause. Oops!

[thebassman]

Mis-timing a fade out.You think you're just about to run out of tape,so you think 'I'll just start fading out now'.So you do and then you find out that there was more than enough tape,so now you've got a track faded out before it should,plus about 30 seconds of silence at the end,which should have contained the bit that you faded out!

[itzmike]

There is an old tape i dug out of my very used tape box and I gave it a listen. It was a beatles tape that was recorded over something else. Oh that something else. It is part of a rock and orchestra number that is awesome!. I have looked through and samples many of my obscure records and my sisters too. She gave me her collection. She went to CD. I cannot remember the part of the song. It is about 30 seconds long. I have about 1500 records and 200 CDs plus. I think it was actually my sisters tape she gave me. Maybe it was recorded off the radio. I wish I knew. I name it the lost instrumental masterpiece. Mike

[JaeTee]

I cannot remember the part of the song. It is about 30 seconds long. I have about 1500 records and 200 CDs plus. I think it was actually my sisters tape she gave me. Maybe it was recorded off the radio. I wish I knew. I name it the lost instrumental masterpiece. Mike


There is an iPhone app call shazam that should be able to tell you what that music is. If you, or anyone you know have an Iphone, 30 secs. is pleanty for it to identify. Even without vocals.

Getting back to topic.... I've made just about all of these errors at some point.

Adding to that would be the standard issues from a DJ's perspective:

1) setting rec volume too close to the limit at the start of the recording. As I get into it, I seem to get louder and can push a tape to distort and not realize it... sucks real bad when there's digital clipping involved. Analog has more "fudge" factor.

2) mixing records without having the timing nailed down between the two tracks and ending up flopping beats so bad that the bass line sounds like shoes in a dryer... LOL! (happened a lot early on, demo killers that result in start over)

3) running out of record before picking that next "perfect" track and having to settle for a mediocre mix on the recording. (not necessarily a demo killer, but drops it a letter grade, LOL!)

4) During a mixtape recording, forgetting to set the RX-505 to flip automatically can be a real downer.


Also, another gaffe that has reared its ugly head when recording DJ style mix performances onto CD... I have learned that the CD's can fail. And nothing sucks more than hardcore beatmixing and playing your heart out for an hour and a half only to find out your CD didn't burn properly. Ending up with nothing but a memory after you've had a particularly good session and now have absolutely nothing to show for it leaves a pit in your stomach like no other. I have learned to always have two devices recording when I do demos now. Either it's two tapes, or a CD and a tape, or a MD and a tape... :)

[perry]

You should make it an mp3 and post it. Surely someone can identify it! I've been taping for 38 years. I've made nearly every mistake listed here (not Scorps skipping record one though, jeez!), but the most common is wrong eq when taping. I never seem to notice until the tape is done. "Man, that's a bright tape....WTF??....oh....CRAP"

[Nakdoc]

We had a terrible ice storm that broke every tree in sight. The following morning was sunny, and the ice cover made everything sparkle. I grabbed my full-sized JVC cam corder and taped for about 1/2 hour. When I played the tape 3 months later I had great pictures of the ground swinging back and forth. I was pausing while shooting and shooting while pausing.

[Skywavebe]

How about hitting play out of fast wind mode on a Scully?
I did this with an alignment tape once- at least it was an old alignment tape.
Who'd of thought that a tape deck manufacturer would leave out any safety wind to play circuits. Well these guys did.
This is the only tape deck I have ever worked with that did not have this safety feature- for those who have not had this happen to them be warned!

[Kirunavaara]

Back in the early 1990's, taping live shows from tv at night. Turned on the tv, and set up a timer for the tape deck. Said "Dad, please don't turn off the tv when you go to bed, I'm recording." - (tired voice answering) "Yeah, okay."

The results on the tape could be everything between 60 minutes of silence, 5 minutes of music and 55 minutes of silence and even some complete recordings.

I appreciated it as a very wise investment when we finally got a VCR which was capable of recording hi-fi audio :-)

Another one, maybe 2 years ago: Preparing to record a live show on r2r tape. Looking for a tape with suitable length. Side B was still blank. Started winding to side B. 1 minute until the show would start. 30 seconds. Still some metres of tape left to go. Doesn't matter, hit stop, start the recording just in time. Forgot to write something on the tape's storage box. Some months later, wanted to do another recording and picked the very same tape. Thought I remembered that I had recorded something on side B, so I listened to the beginning of that side - blank. Okay, get prepared, press record... what I had completely forgotten was the earlier recording which didn't start where the tape begins. Well, what I lost was a Björk concert which I probably wouldn't have listened to again so often, so it didn't hurt too much. But since then I've become even more pedantic with making recording notes at once...

/Martin

[Anderz]

The only cassete stories I can bring is a broken secondhand TDK MA-XG90. It broke! I do think it had something to do with autoreverse not engaged correctly as the Beocord 6500 still plays great otherwise.

Then there is small adjusments of dolby on right? Or maybe the record levels needs just a tad adjusment?

Wrong speed of the former casseteplayer which recorded the tape back in the late '70s by a deceased family member. 2 songs performed on guitar with vocals. I played it all the way home and I played it to my mom. She replied: I do not know the second singer! It was the very same. The guitar chords were off tunning wise so a little slower and it fitted much better.

General lousy recordings done by former stereo and not knowing anything about music quality, tape types, dolby, quality stereos and the like when it came to making a copy for own use.

Then there is putting a portable Sony TCD-D8 DAT player on recordmode and then on my Marshall Major guitar amp to record the rehearsel. Bad move it fell down and broke the lid off.

[ksvane]

Aside from a billion incidents of miscalculating the minutes (I'm always expecting that there are 2 mins extra on each side - I'm rarely that lucky, but still fail to accept it.) I'm also good at pausing the audio source while recording if I'm leaving the room, resulting in large silent gaps in the middle of songs. Reflexes I guess. Oh and I tend put the tape into the deck upside down, thus wondering why the damn thing won't close.

[Pentium100]

Recording with both dbx and Dolby B on.
Not allowing the tape deck and tape time to warm up.
Setting levels to 0dB at a random part of the record and then finding out that it was the quietest part.

[Laz Baz]

Recording with both dbx and Dolby B on.
Not allowing the tape deck and tape time to warm up.
Setting levels to 0dB at a random part of the record and then finding out that it was the quietest part.

[Quote=Laz Baz]
Pentium100,
These tapes you are recording in dbx, where do you use them ie play them?
I am collecting some 70s equipment and dbx LPs I playback with dbx 224 but I have not seen any dbx pre-recorded cassettes for sale anywhere. Would you know where I could search for these? Bob Seger comes to mind that I saw in the 70s.

regards
William

[Pentium100]

Pentium100,
These tapes you are recording in dbx, where do you use them ie play them?

At home. Also, my Marantz PMD430 has built in dbx NR. Most of the time I record tapes is because I have borrowed some records and want to copy them. I try to record with Dolby B first, and if I do not like the result (the record has wide dynamic range, so there is still too much noise on tape), I use dbx.
I should build a dbx decoder for my car, but that will become possible only if I decide to use an external amplifier (or I would have to modify the tape deck.

Would you know where I could search for these? Bob Seger comes to mind that I saw in the 70s.
I don't know. All of my prerecorded tapes are either without NR (vast majority of them) or with Dolby B.

[SilverFox]

I did a recording from my .wav files onto tape one day this summer with all the settings to my preference. Later on I listen to the tape and the sound was quite strange. The soft sounding spots on the songs sounded fine but I noticed when the music became louder, the volume level quickly became softer to match the soft dynamics. At this point, I'm cussing up a storm because my recording's ruined. I now my deck's fine, so I check the computer. I never have EQ or any crummy efx settings on, they were all off. I check my sound card's settings and realized there is a setting for "loudness equation." WTF??? I disabled the setting and re-recorded. The SQ was much better, but what a pain. I had to redo six other tapes as well because of this problem.

[Nick Sunn]

Taping mishaps:*reelspin**reelspin*
I always taped the King Biscuit Flower Hour back in the seventies and early eighties, unless it was a group that I hated. I was using my Akai r2r to record the radio broadcast, so I could do other stuff and not have to flip cassettes or pause to edit commercials. I would then trnsfr from r2r to cassette to listen in car, etc.
Anyway I had to leave about 15min or more before it was to start, so I tuned the FM station on my Pioneer receiver, with good signal meter and optimum antenna and let the tape roll and record. The problem was I forgot that the Biscuit was now on a different station. I recorded the wrong FM station.

Other tape mishaps: We were recording our group live in a club and we set up the equipment taped the soundcheck and it sounded great. Anyway, our soundman had six TDK Metal 90 tapes on sittin next to the board. Between 7pm and 9:30 when we were to hit the stage, somebody stole them . During our first set, we told the audience that we were planning to record and then said if any of you have a 90min tape in your car that you could give us to record over, we'll give you a free T-shirt (we used to sell our band's T shirts for $5 at shows). Fans came to the rescue.


Regarding dbx on commercial released cassettes: I don't recall ever seeing any for any Rock or Top 40 type releases. Possibly , there were some classical releases with dbx tape encoding. Their, the classical afficianados always had a higher acceptable quality standard as to commercial sound recordings to give a wider dynamic range to capture the necessary detail. Rock has a very limited dynamic range as compared to classical. I don't know as my music collection is mostly Rock, Soul, & Blues. I have owned dbx equipped cassette decks since 1981, and don't ever recall seeing commercial releases with dbx encoded cassettes.
I do recall CBS had LP's with dbx disc encoding available about 28 to 30 years ago. Strangely, I even recall Popular Mechanics or something had a how to article on DIY how to build a dbx decoder box for use with dbx LP's. That had to be 30 years ago.

[Lowtone]

3 yers ago i was recording some of my songs, on cassette, with the guitar on one track and the voice on the other track.
The deck was not mine and was quite old, I don't know exactly what happens but wile listening the voice was not here anymore after the first song *hypnot*
Maybe because of dust on the head, i don't know.
I only have guitar on the right channel.
One year later, I got pain in the fingers and i couldn't play guitare for weeks, so I use this cassette for practicing my singing *Hi5*