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Hello,

I am in a band in the UK possibly looking to record at Electrical Audio within the next 6-12 months. For some songs, we are currently using a 1/4" reel-to-reel to play some pre-recorded instrument/voice sounds we have made - the sounds are deliberately unpleasant and are simply timed to the rest of the band by cutting them in and out as appropriate.

Here is our question, which may be naive as we are all new to recording in analogue: if we were to record the 1/4" reel-to-reel sounds live through an amplifer in the studio as part of our record, would there be any issues with the signal to noise ratio? We plan to get good quality reel-to-reel recordings made by a professional in a decent studio before taking them to Electrical Audio.

We also need to check if there is a 1/4" reel-to-reel available at Electrial Audio, as it would probably not be easy to ship our beloved Revox B77 machine over.

Sorry if anything is unclear - i'm reading about analogue recording as much as possible so I can have a solid understanding of what we might get for our money.. let me know if I need to elaborate further.

Electrical's tape machine inventory is in here, it seems that they'll be able to take care of you. I can't help you with signal to noise since I'm no engineer, but it sounds to me with the tape thing that you're doing something rather similar to what Bob Weston/Martin Swope did in Mission of Burma. I'm sure that there's an infinite number of people who post here who can help you better than I can. In any case, good luck.

Thanks - that Studer A 820 looks up to the job. Of course, any further input is appreciated.

Regards,

you can probably record the 1/4" sounds on a separate channel while you're recording (live?) as long as they are used in the right part of the song.. if i got this right then you wont be having any signal to noise ratio problems because the tape noises will be acting like an instrument and will be mixed as such... please correct me if i'm thinking something different . i'd like to help

If you are worried about impedance matching from the output of a tape machine to an amplifier, then yes, you will need to make a few considerations. If I am understanding you correctly, you want to take the output of a tape machine, and send it through an amp to be recorded back to 24 track, 2". Is this correct?

If so, you shouldn't have any problems, as you can use a re-amp box or an impedance matching transformer to clear up any signal to noise problems that you might have on the electronics side. Provided that your recordings aren't full of hiss or unwanted noise, you should be O.K.

Thanks for this advice, jordanosaur, i'd given no thought to this impedance issue.

Atrocity wrote:Hello, ...
Here is our question, which may be naive as we are all new to recording in analogue: if we were to record the 1/4" reel-to-reel sounds live through an amplifer in the studio as part of our record, would there be any issues with the signal to noise ratio? We plan to get good quality reel-to-reel recordings made by a professional in a decent studio before taking them to Electrical Audio.

If you are just using your tapes as samples played through an amp, who cares how much noise there is. Think of it as another instrument. Just make sure you're happy with the way your setup sounds as you would a guitar/amp combination. We can set you up with a tape deck to operate when you track.
When in doubt, demo out the songs on whatever you have to see what problems you run into.