tascam 424mkII repair for common problems.

This is my favorite machine by far. There are machines with more tracks but the preamps and headphone amps make a good match on this one. And the pitch knob is really useful. You can get the 424s cheap and sometimes broken condition. Common fixable problems are A) that it wont turn on or B) wont play the tape.

A)If it wont turn on, if you have to find another machine that can turn on but has some other strange problems. the power section is very easily removed from both units ( even without soldering if i remember correctly). Swap the power supplies like I did in the pictures, WARNING some of these parts obviously store serious charges so give it a day unplugged before you go poking around in there.

B)Then my favorite fix is when the unit wont play the tape. Its so stupidly easy to fix. Open it up and there is literally a rubber band that will fall out of place from time to time. So easy and so common, this alone can put the unit in "as is" condition, saving you half the price.

Then finally if you must test the mix board without breaking out any instruments, you can use a patch cable from effect send one, and connect it to the 4 inputs on the mixer, turn the effect one send knob and watch the lights go up and down to your satisfaction.

Sometimes it will fail to record or playback form the tape, this is a problem of cheap tape, really cheap tape like the 120minutes low bias type. You need to use at most 60minutes or high bias type.

Another common problem is that these mixer lights stop working one by one, mine has no level indicator for track two.

Currently Im still kindof looking for a power section cause I broke it again by leaving the unit on all night while I fell asleep recording.

mutron biphasor, finally got to play one of these things.

They've got one at my favorite local momnpop music shop. I didn't even bother to inquire the price, they go for $1000+ sometimes. It is amazing, there is about a dozen different ways to route with those few knobs. series, parallel, asyncronized, syncronized inverse, there is big difference in all the settings. my favorite part is the squarewave generator can get really slow and its not really square its more of a mutated sinewave with really long peaks and dips. this thing is great im sure its kind of annoying for audiences though.

Effector 13 Truly Beautiful Disaster review

So I think the TBD is one of the first big designs Devi Ever put into production. Now she has about thirty to fourty different designs. The TBD is kind of rival to the Zvex fuzz factory. It is an octave down fuzz with a blend control, a feedback loop with a photo eye and effect loop which you can insert other pedals.

Positives: It sounds crazy. There are a bunch of settings for arpeggio. Play one note and then you can change settings so it is fast or slow or glitchy, octaves sometimes fifths. Everything kind of depends on the instrument you use. The gate switch is really helpful if you want to kill the "motorboating" sounds. I tried a bunch of stuff in the effect loop but I only have other distortion pedals, so nothing real whacky happened but it did change the pedal. The photo resistor is cool.

Negatives: It sounds crazy. I was really disapointed about how there aren't any settings that sound good with chords. That was the main sound I look for and I never found it in this pedal. It's a good pedal, I just can't afford to keep it.

more about enhancers and maximizers

BBE sonic maximizer pedal is getting fairly popular, theres always a bunch on craigslist. I suggest getting one of the black and blue rack versions(362, 422, 462, etc.). They regularly go for less than $50 on ebay and they're stereo so you get two different maximizers for your chain. The the red ones seem to be more expensive.

also theres the alesis micro enhancer which is really cheap and small but probably not as good as a BBE....

and then theres the elusive boss eh-50. no real info on it, it has 5 presets and a mix knob. If you have this for sale I will buy it.

hail DiscoFreq!

you probably already know about discofreq, but if not click the afro hair style.

more Fuzz Factory stuff

So there's not really any news in this post. I just want to be the billionth person to praise zvex fuzz factory. I've played a few different fuzz factory clones in the past and they sounded awful. Then I played a ZVex Vexter series fuzz factory the other day and it was pretty amazing.

MXR Distortion plus appreciation

normally if one runs a quiet signal into a pedal with higher gain, it will sound the same as running a loud signal into the same pedal with lower gain. This is somehow not true for the mxr distortion plus. I don't know why. Classical record with mildew sounds.

visit this site for much more info on the mxr distortion plus than you wanted worth noting: in 1981 the MXR company updated their pedals to have LEDs, these LED versions sell for much less than other vintage models because they look like the less desirable dunlop versions.


and then this pedal is the same schematic as distortion plus with an added tone knob.