carlsaff wrote:When Neutrino recorded with Steve, we had a section of one track that we wanted to sound this way. We bussed the entire mix to a cassette deck with the input gain cranked. Most professional decks are designed to *not* distort, but it's pretty easy to get a cassette deck (even a pro one) to distort in the way that you describe.
So try it out: crank the gain on a cassette deck, route the mix to that deck's inputs, then route the outputs of the cassette deck to your mastering deck, and record.
I'm a big fan of the overloaded cassette deck.
Silkworm did that trick a few times, if we were used to hearing schmutz on the demo or from singing through shitty monitors or whatever.
Mostly w/individual tracks, as opposed to complete mixes.
I have an old Fostex X-15 4tk that sounds terrific overloaded. The mic-level inputs, turned all the way up, have this super hairy distortion that avoids being irritating somehow.
The 'better' cassette 4tk I have--Tascam Portastudio--can't do this nearly as well.
Generally, the crappier the cassette player, the better it's going to crack up. Cheapo boomboxes can sound kind of amazing in their way when they are blowing up like that.
The other thing I would note: if you are hearing the schmutz as you are playing, you will play differently than you would w/o it. Adding it as an effect later on is a different thing.
I would suggest trying to make it part of your sound, by putting the schmutz directly to tape. Another nice thing about this is that you get preamp stage overload + tape saturation, as opposed to just the preamp overload (if used as an outboard effect).
You have to commit to it in advance, of course, and there would be no going back from the schmutz at that point.
