After almost 50 years, this early '70s reel to reel tape recorder is living a new life as an echo effect for guitar. We go inside this Akai 4000D to see how it works and set it up as a guitar delay. Post-Video Live Stream - ruclips.net/video/BBAPmE5B9JI/видео.html Tape Recorder was purchased thanks to Patreon funding - Gain access to exclusive content at: www.patreon.com/csguitars #tapeecho #reeltoreel #delay More from CSGuitars: Join CSGuitars Discord - discord.gg/d7b6MY8 Buy CSGuitars Merchandise - www.csguitars.co.uk/store Website - www.csguitars.co.uk Contact - colin@csguitars.co.uk ____________________________________________________________________ *Description contains affiliate links. Purchasing using one of these links will generate a small commission for CSGuitars at no additional cost to you.* Affiliate Links: Thomann - www.thomann.de/gb/index.html?offid=1&affid=367 Sweetwater - imp.i114863.net/2mGGg Reverb - reverb.grsm.io/csguitars Crimson Luthiery Tools - www.crimsonguitars.com/?ref=csguitars + Discount Code 'CSGUITARS5' for 5% OFF Gthic Jewelry - gthic.com/?aff=230 + Discount Code 'colin20' for 20% OFF Title graphics and logo by: www.studiosmithdesign.co.uk/ Join the discussion at: Facebook - facebook.com/csguitars Instagram - instagram.com/csguitars/ Twitter -twitter.com/CSG_Scotland Music available at: Amazon: amzn.to/2HUdXgV iTunes: apple.co/2JvpCjp Google Play: bit.ly/2KgSzkl Or stream on Spotify: spoti.fi/2HuYPTP ____________________________________________________________________
I have a long story about my dad lobbing his 50 year old SONY TC630 machine in a skip 7 years ago. I´ll save you all the harrowing details but it was the one with with the echo & amplifier. And it WORKED.
Tape delay is one of the great sounds for guitar, looking forwards to watching your brilliant content Colin with the mix of humour, instruction & technical detail
Have you ever seen the trick with a short piece of tape and a boom mic stand? You set up a triangle, where the tape runs through the machine heads, around both reels, and around the mic stand, so it just recycles over and over like the tape echo effects units you mentioned. I've had an old Akai X1810 for many years, and never gotten around to trying it out. Thanks for making this vid, Colin.
I used to do that in the 80s. You can also get random panning effects if you position the boom in such a way so that the tape runs slightly off center when passing through the tape heads. I made some great loops using this trick.
I wish there were more products being made today that will still be viable in 50 years. Seems like modern society looks down on anything that lasts more than 2 at this point.
Akai 4000 series are tanks. I love mine just to recover old 7" reels that have amazing mixes of music from the 80's. The echo effect is just an added bonus when I want to wire up everything.
We used to make simple echo machines from reel to reels in tge 70s to play through as we couldn't afford effects. Can't quite remember how we did it but we messed round with effects using them. I vaguely recall sometimes using a loop and also tricks with covering heads etc depending on the machine.
I don't know if this video is the best for making a TATA question. If anyone knows better, please tell me. But I want to suggest that you do a video showing us the difference of clipping of distortion pedals, solid state amps and tube amplifiers, tell the "whys" of the difference and showing us visualy from an osciloscope or other device alike the frequencies and harmonics of these three different kinds of distortion. Maybe it's a little too much to ask but I think it would be great!! Thank you in advance, Colin!! Good work by the way!!
I love this video. It honestly touches upon one of my biggest gripes of modern day tech: Planned Obsolescence. Now compared to this type of tech I am young. Born in the 90s. I have a reel to reel and a couple of cassette recorders, one from the 80s. And it's honestly mind boggling how barebones the internals are and their quality. Mostly metal construction, lack of SMD components, etc. It was made to be easily repairable and serviceable. Hell back in the days of tube tech, if can just replace the tubes by going to your local pharmacy and using a tube tester.
ye i have the same philosophy, it's why i use linux on my computers, it just works and it's open-source, it being customizeable is a cherry on top. it's disheartening to sse most companies go out of their way to make repairing devices a living hell (especially apple devices, sure you can replace a part but when you turn the phone on, that part you added in isn't "verified" so now you have a missing feature). it's all because one guy had the brilliant idea of making a product worse to get more sales and then everyone followed along, drowning in money while the customer suffers.
I used an akai in the 80's -- guitar into reverb channel of a fender twin reverb then from input 2 to the tape deck - then tape deck out into normal channel of the fender for the delay signal -- massive ..
You missed a trick here to double your delay time - take advantage of the dual channels of the tape deck to delay the signal _twice_ before returning it to the mixer. Just plug the left output directly into the right input and then feed the right output back to your mixer.
@CSGuitars I remember reel to reels. I was a kid in the 60s and my older brother Mike had one then, and a few more over the years. This use for them is crazy cool and it gives me ideas that my wife probably wont like, hahahaha! that's LOL for the younger folks (lol)
I picked up a TEAC 4 track machine 2 years ago for $600 AUD, and ive never looked back. Only delay i use now, as i got lucky abd bought a machine with a built in Variable Speed Control, meaning i can get very precise delay times in tempo with any song, and the 4 tracks means i can have up to 4 delay times (all of which are varible). If you are looking for a machine, get one with variable speed (varispeed)
A lifelong project for me was trying to make tape decks do more than they were meant to do. Multi track using two Wolensaks? Been there done that. Good vid CS.
@6:44 That's so beautiful to see! It saddens me that corpos don't make stuff repairable anymore. Nothing cooler than fixing your stuff, yourself. With some soldering, a little mechanics, and a little knowledge.
My experience is that a Reel to Reel tape machine that has sound on sound, will echo without playing the tape. Putting the tape machine in the record mode and pausing the machine from playing/recording, one can use a microphone or guitar in the mic jacks and use the whole machine as an effect and/or a pre-amp. Next by adjusting the the sound on sound one can get an echo effect.. It has been a while since I have done what I sort of explained, so I don't really recall how to set the Sound on Sound (maybe just turn it on). Also I would come out of the back of the Reel to Reel, where the RCA jacks are and connect them to my cassette deck component. I would record on my Cassette Deck but with all the sound quality and effects of the Reel to Reel. It is a warm overdriven sound that comes out on the cassette tape but yet it still has lots of clarity for vocals. I hope I wrote this so as, one can understand what I was explaining.
I think you can create a more flexible solution (in terms of speed of the delay) by voltage-starving the electric motors a bit (slowing them down). I'm not an technician/electrician, but that doesn't sound like the hardest of mods. Great project, thanks for sharing!
Hmmmm...maybe another project for me and my dad. We just finished a 'talk box', which was quite fun to make. We'd both love using an old tape machine to create a tape delay!
Oh my god. It looks like the same model I had back in 1982 I also had the akai stereo stacking system in black can't remember what model they were Until some scumbag burgled my flat they even stole my Levi jacket which I bought with my first wages when I left school in 1972
Richie Blackmore had an Akai reel to reel in his Rainbow stage rig - he claied it was just a preamp / boost but I'd guess it was doing this delay as well...
Basically just set the Reel To Reel to record complete with tape ready to record. (but don't record on the Reel to Reel) Instead just set the believeSoundrecordQuarterI
This actually sounds BETTER, that the actual dedicated tape delay effects of the 60s & 70s! It's designed to be hifi so the echoes it produces are of higher quality! NO mud, & only slight degradation!
I am curious as to the connection itself. How do you plug into the tape recorder. I’ll watch it again in case I missed some thing. Very cool video you are a smart lad. Being born in 1970 I think this is cool and I remember having one of these in the family room
I haven't watched the video yet but I hope you go into the sean beavan/nine inch nails trick. Play a guitar part in double time, an octave higher, and then slow the tape to half speed to get super chunky chords.
Maybe it's possible to record your signal on one track, record the playback of that to the second track and send that to the amp giving you twice the delay. You could also bodge something together to make the piece of tape travel further in between heads. Maybe there is also a small potentiometer somewhere hidden in the machine to change the pitch and thus speed
Great video, just what I was looking for! As you mentioned the delay time is dependent on the speed chosen via the capstan ring. I am trying to get a delay time between the 2 default times provided. Would / could a custom made capstan with a wider diameter thread eg 50%, (while maintaining the existing thread diameter) provide such a possibility ? Am I wrong in assuming that the diameter of the capstan influences the speed of the delay? If this is not possible is there any other way to vary the delay speed? My reference speed is that from Ritchie Blackmore's "Mistreated" from the On Stage album which I believe is somewhere between the two speeds provided by the Akai featured. Thanks.
Oh for the days when things were built to last. None of that cheap fucking shit we have today, specifically designed to die, so you have to continue to buy new. I was born in the age when the saying was, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Oh for the WEM Copycat echo, where the tape was in a loop.
Colín coludidos this be done better on a machine with 4 channel studio Tascam recorder ! Or will it sound the same ? And what if you diy a plate support to mové the playback had to a farther distance ?? Will you dare to try this special diy plate ??
Hello Colin I need your help. I've just noticed the Bridge humbucker isn't working on my left-handed Donna DST-100 . Amazon are being their usual assholes again. What can I do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
I have two TATa's: what is the tonal difference between covered and uncovered pickups, and what is the tonal difference between active and passive pickups?
These questions are too vague to give any conclusive answers about. There are more factors at play than just the straight comparison you provide. The first question is addressed within this video: ruclips.net/video/5JMsRX6SGlw/видео.html The affect covers have depends largely on the material they are made from and how that interacts with the magnetism and inductance of the pickup. The active vs passive pickup is entirely unanswerable as not all passive pickups sound the same - nor do all active pickups sound the same. So there can't be one answer to this. Active pickups are wound to be weaker with an even frequency response and use a powered preamp to amplify their signal and shape their sound. Passive pickups use the properties of magnetism and inductance alone to produce their signal
My dad had reel to reel and it was vastly superior to records. Lots more work to load and play and dunno how long those reels would have lasted. But the sound was great.
They are mixed in quieter than unity volume, so every time they get fed back they are slightly quieter than before. By increasing the mix louder than unity the delay goes into infinite feedback and the delay gets louder and louder until saturation.
A guy named Ritchie from a colorful band in the 70's and 80's used to use one of those onstage for exactly that purpose. Also, did anyone else notice that old analog dinosaur sounds better than any of today's digital garbage?
After almost 50 years, this early '70s reel to reel tape recorder is living a new life as an echo effect for guitar. We go inside this Akai 4000D to see how it works and set it up as a guitar delay.
Post-Video Live Stream - ruclips.net/video/BBAPmE5B9JI/видео.html
Tape Recorder was purchased thanks to Patreon funding -
Gain access to exclusive content at: www.patreon.com/csguitars
#tapeecho #reeltoreel #delay
More from CSGuitars:
Join CSGuitars Discord - discord.gg/d7b6MY8
Buy CSGuitars Merchandise - www.csguitars.co.uk/store
Website - www.csguitars.co.uk
Contact - colin@csguitars.co.uk
____________________________________________________________________
*Description contains affiliate links. Purchasing using one of these links will generate a small commission for CSGuitars at no additional cost to you.*
Affiliate Links:
Thomann - www.thomann.de/gb/index.html?offid=1&affid=367
Sweetwater - imp.i114863.net/2mGGg
Reverb - reverb.grsm.io/csguitars
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Title graphics and logo by:
www.studiosmithdesign.co.uk/
Join the discussion at:
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iTunes: apple.co/2JvpCjp
Google Play: bit.ly/2KgSzkl
Or stream on Spotify: spoti.fi/2HuYPTP
____________________________________________________________________
Ooh, the Moog being mentioned on that tape :-) Impressive back then, impressive today
I do love hearing a Moog
For many years Ritchie Blackmore used an Akai reel to reel to help push his Marshall, became an integral part of his sound for decades.
^ ^ The guys RP " posh" media accent is absoloutly classic! LOVE tape machines and tape echo!!!!!!!! VVxx
I have a long story about my dad lobbing his 50 year old SONY TC630 machine in a skip 7 years ago.
I´ll save you all the harrowing details but it was the one with with the echo & amplifier. And it WORKED.
Many people will have thrown out their good tape machines not realising just how much they would be worth a couple decades down the line
Tape delay is one of the great sounds for guitar, looking forwards to watching your brilliant content Colin with the mix of humour, instruction & technical detail
Have you ever seen the trick with a short piece of tape and a boom mic stand? You set up a triangle, where the tape runs through the machine heads, around both reels, and around the mic stand, so it just recycles over and over like the tape echo effects units you mentioned. I've had an old Akai X1810 for many years, and never gotten around to trying it out. Thanks for making this vid, Colin.
I used to do that in the 80s. You can also get random panning effects if you position the boom in such a way so that the tape runs slightly off center when passing through the tape heads. I made some great loops using this trick.
Yo, that clean tone was HEAVENLY
great video as always, Mat! I really enjoy all your Techmoan vid... wait a minute......
I wish there were more products being made today that will still be viable in 50 years. Seems like modern society looks down on anything that lasts more than 2 at this point.
Akai 4000 series are tanks. I love mine just to recover old 7" reels that have amazing mixes of music from the 80's. The echo effect is just an added bonus when I want to wire up everything.
Lovely video ! Moving parts is really funny
I so want to add something like this to my rig... the looks I'd get when setting up would be worth it
Those magnetic tapes gave me a flashback to the time I pull them out of a cassette when I was a tiny boi.
The panic when the cassette started spitting its guts into the moving spindles of the player... I still sense that fear.
We used to make simple echo machines from reel to reels in tge 70s to play through as we couldn't afford effects. Can't quite remember how we did it but we messed round with effects using them. I vaguely recall sometimes using a loop and also tricks with covering heads etc depending on the machine.
I don't know if this video is the best for making a TATA question. If anyone knows better, please tell me. But I want to suggest that you do a video showing us the difference of clipping of distortion pedals, solid state amps and tube amplifiers, tell the "whys" of the difference and showing us visualy from an osciloscope or other device alike the frequencies and harmonics of these three different kinds of distortion.
Maybe it's a little too much to ask but I think it would be great!! Thank you in advance, Colin!!
Good work by the way!!
I love this video. It honestly touches upon one of my biggest gripes of modern day tech: Planned Obsolescence. Now compared to this type of tech I am young. Born in the 90s. I have a reel to reel and a couple of cassette recorders, one from the 80s. And it's honestly mind boggling how barebones the internals are and their quality. Mostly metal construction, lack of SMD components, etc. It was made to be easily repairable and serviceable.
Hell back in the days of tube tech, if can just replace the tubes by going to your local pharmacy and using a tube tester.
ye i have the same philosophy, it's why i use linux on my computers, it just works and it's open-source, it being customizeable is a cherry on top. it's disheartening to sse most companies go out of their way to make repairing devices a living hell (especially apple devices, sure you can replace a part but when you turn the phone on, that part you added in isn't "verified" so now you have a missing feature). it's all because one guy had the brilliant idea of making a product worse to get more sales and then everyone followed along, drowning in money while the customer suffers.
Tape delay is cool as Hell
I used an akai in the 80's -- guitar into reverb channel of a fender twin reverb then from input 2 to the tape deck - then tape deck out into normal channel of the fender for the delay signal -- massive ..
hell yes! I am currently Restoring an AKAI 1722L, looks very close internally
If the drive motor is dc you could easily add a pwm speed control for adjustable delay time on the fly. Very cool project.
You missed a trick here to double your delay time - take advantage of the dual channels of the tape deck to delay the signal _twice_ before returning it to the mixer. Just plug the left output directly into the right input and then feed the right output back to your mixer.
Very sweet delay. Nicely done, sir
00:50 That announcer sounds like Rowan Atkinson! The way he pronounced Moog with an emphasised M brought me back to the Roll Call Sketch Rowan does.
@CSGuitars I remember reel to reels. I was a kid in the 60s and my older brother Mike had one then, and a few more over the years. This use for them is crazy cool and it gives me ideas that my wife probably wont like, hahahaha! that's LOL for the younger folks (lol)
Colin, just going to start calling you Mr. Wizard... Enjoyed this very much, thank you again!
Great job Colin! Fantastic information. I’m glad there is a use for old technology.
Absolutely fascinating! Fantastic Video as always!
I have 2 R2R tape machines! An Akai 2 track, & a TEAC 4 track machine! GOOD for their day!
Totally love the OARNJ - amp..!
Just brilliant... xD
I picked up a TEAC 4 track machine 2 years ago for $600 AUD, and ive never looked back. Only delay i use now, as i got lucky abd bought a machine with a built in Variable Speed Control, meaning i can get very precise delay times in tempo with any song, and the 4 tracks means i can have up to 4 delay times (all of which are varible). If you are looking for a machine, get one with variable speed (varispeed)
I just got a tubed 60’s Knight 7” with 1/4 inputs! Thanks!
great stuff as always, thanks
A lifelong project for me was trying to make tape decks do more than they were meant to do. Multi track using two Wolensaks? Been there done that. Good vid CS.
Most cool - thank you...!
Love the mic... very Terry Wogan!
awesome video thx. great depth of info
@6:44 That's so beautiful to see! It saddens me that corpos don't make stuff repairable anymore. Nothing cooler than fixing your stuff, yourself. With some soldering, a little mechanics, and a little knowledge.
Brilliant!
I bet u can do flange/chorusing effect on that thing
My experience is that a Reel to Reel tape machine that has sound on sound, will echo without playing the tape. Putting the tape machine in the record mode and pausing the machine from playing/recording, one can use a microphone or guitar in the mic jacks and use the whole machine as an effect and/or a pre-amp. Next by adjusting the the sound on sound one can get an echo effect.. It has been a while since I have done what I sort of explained, so I don't really recall how to set the Sound on Sound (maybe just turn it on). Also I would come out of the back of the Reel to Reel, where the RCA jacks are and connect them to my cassette deck component. I would record on my Cassette Deck but with all the sound quality and effects of the Reel to Reel. It is a warm overdriven sound that comes out on the cassette tape but yet it still has lots of clarity for vocals. I hope I wrote this so as, one can understand what I was explaining.
Can’t you make different diameter spindles to give you a range of delay times?
I think you can create a more flexible solution (in terms of speed of the delay) by voltage-starving the electric motors a bit (slowing them down). I'm not an technician/electrician, but that doesn't sound like the hardest of mods.
Great project, thanks for sharing!
Hmmmm...maybe another project for me and my dad. We just finished a 'talk box', which was quite fun to make. We'd both love using an old tape machine to create a tape delay!
Oh my god. It looks like the same model I had back in 1982 I also had the akai stereo stacking system in black can't remember what model they were Until some scumbag burgled my flat they even stole my Levi jacket which I bought with my first wages when I left school in 1972
wonderful!
Excellent ☮️
Richie Blackmore had an Akai reel to reel in his Rainbow stage rig - he claied it was just a preamp / boost but I'd guess it was doing this delay as well...
Basically just set the Reel To Reel to record complete with tape ready to record. (but don't record on the Reel to Reel) Instead just set the believeSoundrecordQuarterI
Amazing video!
This actually sounds BETTER, that the actual dedicated tape delay effects of the 60s & 70s! It's designed to be hifi so the echoes it produces are of higher quality! NO mud, & only slight degradation!
I am curious as to the connection itself. How do you plug into the tape recorder. I’ll watch it again in case I missed some thing. Very cool video you are a smart lad. Being born in 1970 I think this is cool and I remember having one of these in the family room
That goldish guitar looks beautiful and sounds good where can I get a similar one?
great video
I haven't watched the video yet but I hope you go into the sean beavan/nine inch nails trick. Play a guitar part in double time, an octave higher, and then slow the tape to half speed to get super chunky chords.
would love to see you experiment with through zero flanging with that tape machine! You may need 2 machines though. It's my favourite effect!
Maybe it's possible to record your signal on one track, record the playback of that to the second track and send that to the amp giving you twice the delay. You could also bodge something together to make the piece of tape travel further in between heads. Maybe there is also a small potentiometer somewhere hidden in the machine to change the pitch and thus speed
10:15. If I had closed my eyes, I would have sworn that was Bill Nelson playing.
Great video, just what I was looking for! As you mentioned the delay time is dependent on the speed chosen via the capstan ring. I am trying to get a delay time between the 2 default times provided. Would / could a custom made capstan with a wider diameter thread eg 50%, (while maintaining the existing thread diameter) provide such a possibility ? Am I wrong in assuming that the diameter of the capstan influences the speed of the delay? If this is not possible is there any other way to vary the delay speed? My reference speed is that from Ritchie Blackmore's "Mistreated" from the On Stage album which I believe is somewhere between the two speeds provided by the Akai featured. Thanks.
Oh for the days when things were built to last.
None of that cheap fucking shit we have today, specifically designed to die, so you have to continue to buy new.
I was born in the age when the saying was, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Oh for the WEM Copycat echo, where the tape was in a loop.
Awesome video! I'll give that a try with my TEAC A-2340SX! Used to own a RE201....... unfortunately "used to". Tape does sound best!!! :)
If you compare the tape echo to the spring echo and hall echo sound more natural and organic the tape echo
Wonder if a potentiometer on the motor feed could give full timing adjustment?
Mod that thing to control the motor speed, and you've got quite a rig there.
Colín coludidos this be done better on a machine with 4 channel studio Tascam recorder !
Or will it sound the same ?
And what if you diy a plate support to mové the playback had to a farther distance ??
Will you dare to try this special diy plate ??
Hello Colin I need your help. I've just noticed the Bridge humbucker isn't working on my left-handed Donna DST-100 . Amazon are being their usual assholes again. What can I do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Tape can also sound absolutely gorgeous at half-speed. I guess that's not really a *rock* effect, though.
..could the speed be changed with a variac, or maybe toy train transformer, or a ...dimmer switch?
Any tips for using it as some kind of "saturated colouration" effect?
Sounds like Grand Moff Tarkin giving the BBC broadcast… 🤣
Old English people brought up in that era and working for the BBC all had that voice.
I have two TATa's: what is the tonal difference between covered and uncovered pickups, and what is the tonal difference between active and passive pickups?
These questions are too vague to give any conclusive answers about. There are more factors at play than just the straight comparison you provide.
The first question is addressed within this video: ruclips.net/video/5JMsRX6SGlw/видео.html
The affect covers have depends largely on the material they are made from and how that interacts with the magnetism and inductance of the pickup.
The active vs passive pickup is entirely unanswerable as not all passive pickups sound the same - nor do all active pickups sound the same. So there can't be one answer to this.
Active pickups are wound to be weaker with an even frequency response and use a powered preamp to amplify their signal and shape their sound.
Passive pickups use the properties of magnetism and inductance alone to produce their signal
@@ScienceofLoud cool thanks
If the device is too old and delicate to repair, could you clone it?
Modify a clone?
How does the drive spool know what speed to record, and change as more of the tape goes onto it?
Very good Open University course ;-)
My dad had reel to reel and it was vastly superior to records. Lots more work to load and play and dunno how long those reels would have lasted. But the sound was great.
I'm sure I'm really thick but why do the repeats lose volume if they're being fed back at full fidelity through the mixer?
They are mixed in quieter than unity volume, so every time they get fed back they are slightly quieter than before.
By increasing the mix louder than unity the delay goes into infinite feedback and the delay gets louder and louder until saturation.
I have 4-channel Sony TC-366 that I rescued from my deceased grandmother's estate sale. It doesn't power on, ugh I need to get it repaired.. :(
Ach aye!
4:53
That's what she said....
SOLID STATE
I moved the head to get more delay back in the stone age.
I waited for the flanger
Two tape machines are required for a flanger.
Anyone ever see the T-Rex deluxe tape delay? It uses real tape
brrring bing bing ding ding ding
A guy named Ritchie from a colorful band in the 70's and 80's used to use one of those onstage for exactly that purpose. Also, did anyone else notice that old analog dinosaur sounds better than any of today's digital garbage?
If the heads rotated at 18,000RPM and the tape advanced slowly then maybe you would have better quality and longer recording time.
Filthier than Rufus T Firefly’s toilets… love it.
Or you can buy a Strymon decco
You could if you were boring and allergic to having fun