This month we start a series which delves into some of the money making ideas for the home recordist.

Sit down with your box of musical instrument receipts and spend half an hour or so adding up how much your home recording hobby has cost you so far. If you're anything like me you'll probably be pretty surprised. 'Who cares?' you may well ask. Certainly it's a great hobby and one in which you can absorb yourself for hours on end. However, wouldn't it be convenient if it didn't actually end up costing anything at all? Impossible? Not really. Whilst we can't persuade shops to hand over copious amounts of equipment gratis, we can make money from what we've already got, covering the investment made on equipment and even show a profit.

In the coming series I'm going to present you with some money-making schemes that in many cases you will be able to put into action straightaway. For a start, have you ever thought of cassette copying?

I'm convinced that you could set up a service of this kind almost anywhere in the country and make money. There's always a local entertainer, band or drama group who need duplicates of their material, and if you play your cards right, you could end up by recording their masters as well as handling their copying, but that's another story. Let's look at the two different types of copying service available.

Real Time and High Speed

In real time copying, both the master and the slave recorders run at normal speed. For cassettes, this is 1⅞ inches per second. So one C60 cassette is going to take a whole hour to copy. On the face of it, this is a ridiculous state of affairs because if your client puts in an order for 40 tapes then you're going to have a whole week's work ahead of you, so how can we minimise copying time? The answer is to daisy chain several cassette recorders together as in Figure 1.

The cassettes don't copy any quicker but you can do more than one at a time. In the interests of quality you may find it better (especially if you're chaining a lot of machines together) to run them from a distribution box as in Figure 2.

Your local branch of Maplin Electronics should be only too pleased to help you construct one of these. (Why not take this article along and show them what it's for?)

This real time system is probably the best approach to begin with because you can easily expand the system as work begins to flow in. From a marketing point of view it's also better to mention 'real time' in your ad because many people still think (often wrongly) that it's an infinitely better system than high speed duplication.

High Speed Copying is your other option. It can yield much better results than real time, but to get these results you'd have to spend a lot of money. My own copier is an Otari DP-4050 C2 which costs around £3,000. It copies two cassettes at a time at eight times the normal speed. Although fast and convenient with results that are second to none, you're going to have to copy one hell of a lot of tapes to recoup that investment.

Your Decision

I suggest that you begin your venture using real time copying with one master cassette deck and two identical slaves. Try to make sure that all three machines are the same make and model. Apart from the fact that a dealer may give you a discount if you buy three, all the recordings should then sound the same. It would be foolish to recommend a specific machine as there are so many on the market which are virtually the same, but you can expect to pay about £120 per unit. Hopefully you may have some already in your studio that you could use. If you're really keen then you won't do any better than the state-of-the-art Nakamichi range of decks, but you'll pay up to £1,000 for one of these. Ridiculous I think.

When you've got your machines sorted out; wire them up, taking care to keep signal leads and mains leads well away from each other to avoid spurious noises. Now you're almost ready for your first excursion!

Accepting Master Tapes

Believe me, clients' master tapes will come in all shapes, sizes, speeds and formats if you let them. So don't. For simplicity's sake I recommend that you only accept high quality cassette masters recorded on metal or chrome tape. It may seem an odd thing to say, especially if your trusty old Revox is sitting there already, but honestly you'll have all sorts of unnecessary hassles and compatibility problems if you start messing around with different formats. Remember, you're doing this to make money. Offer a reel to reel service if you like, but charge extra.

Your most important single item is the cassette itself. If your tapes jam up, shed tons of oxide and so on, then your customers are going to lose confidence in you fast and you're going to have to replace any faulties out of your own pocket to keep them pacified.

I've researched cassettes very carefully. The most common problem appears to be that of shells as opposed to tape. If they haven't been manufactured to the high tolerances required then you're on dodgy ground to start with, and you're going to get problems both with jamming and azimuth. It's worth getting it right first time, even if it costs you a few pence more. Buy shells with five screws holding them together as this is usually a sign a better shells. Before choosing a supplier, ask to be sent some random samples first and put them through the mill before committing yourself to a batch.

Now on to the tape itself. I personally only ever use three different types of tape. Agfa Magnetite 12 is a high quality ferric tape which has quite outstanding high frequency recording level. You should expect to pay in region of 60p for a C60. Professional sources inform me that 'print through' has been experienced with this tape but I can't say that I've ever noticed it... yet. BASF LHD is good reliable IEC1 bias tape with very low drop-out. Expect to pay about 50p per C60. Finally, Zonal Max 3 is my personal favourite. It tends to give a somewhat brighter recording and as such compensates for any slight treble loss engendered by the copying process. I'd advise you to obtain samples of each tape and draw your own conclusions. Don't forget you'll also have to budget for a library case (about 7p) and for printing.

Printing

If you do decide to offer a printing service, then you're going to be looking at two different products: the inlay card and the side label. My advice to you is to go half way initially and offer just the side labels, because that way you can at least make sure that your name and phone number appears securely stuck on the cassette. So you'll be getting free advertising and (if your work is good) you can be assured of repeat orders from this alone. All the client has to do is look at the cassette in the machine and phone you up. Sneaky really, but it works.

Normally your cassette supplier will be able to handle all of the printing from his end. You simply send him double sized camera-ready (finished) artwork. He will stick the labels onto the cassettes for you before sending them. I should allow about £50 per 2000 labels initially, although subsequent print runs will be cheaper because there'll be no origination costs (like platemaking). Take a look at Figure 3 for an example of label artwork.

A tip about inlay cards. If you're going to offer the service, either do your own, or get an arty friend to draw the artwork aided by Letraset lettering. Duplicate this and four inlay cards on a sheet of A4. Present this to your friendly local printer and be prepared to cut up the finished cards yourself. You might expect to pay £5 per 100 sheets of A4; that's 400 inlay cards. One other tip; don't get involved in printing two or more colours. It's not worth it. Using one colour of ink on a coloured card can look just as good.

Your Prices

Well, to an extent this is up to you. I suggest that the larger the order then the cheaper the price per cassette. I don't think it's good practice to hold any cassettes in stock. It's far better to open an account with a good supplier, then you can simply pick up the phone and get your order sent down within a day on Red Star or a similar service. Account terms are normally 30 days so you won't need to spend any of your own money, because by then your client will have paid you. Working this way avoids the need for capital to be tied up in stock, and enables you to ensure that you use only the correct tape lengths. Here's a suggested brief price schedule.

I suggest that you don't handle any orders larger than 100 in the early days. Quite honestly at a local level you probably won't get any anyway. These prices are only given as guidance, but are realistic for BASF LHD without any printing or library cases. Try and find out what other copying facilities in your area charge, and try to compete.

Your Advertising

Initially my advice is 'stay local'. You'll have less competition and usually no postage charges. It's also unlikely that you'll be required to handle any long runs that you'd struggle on. After a few months then try venturing into the outside world a bit more and try national advertising, but remember to allow for postage and packing on your prices. How about placing an advert in H&SR classifieds for a start?

Start your advertising in a local rag. I've found that Thursdays and Fridays are the best days for getting a response. Place your advert in the classifieds' musical section and expect to pay about £12 for the two nights. Experience has shown that you need to keep the advert in the publication week in, week out to get good results, so build advertising into your budget.

As far as the advert itself goes there are certain key words that have instant psychological appeal. Such as: Free, Special, New, How to, You can and Now. Work as many of them as possible into your advert for maximum response. For example.

NEW CASSETTE COPYING SUITE
SPECIAL RATES AND FREE QUOTATIONS
PHONE: 123456 NOW

Get that advert sent in and you'll soon be able to buy some more of that lovely home recording equipment without spending another penny!

Useful addresses for cassettes:
Keith Gould, KG Engineering Ltd, (Contact Details).
Downsoft, (Contact Details).
Pangbourne Musical Distributors, (Contact Details).