"Oh, by the way," said the man from Tascam's UK agents as I slipped away from a rather tedious recording equipment trade fair with a never-seen-before Tascam 225 under my arm, "it's got a 244 head in it."
This is an obscure technical term which often means one of two things. Either the machine doesn't work with its ordinary recording/playback head in it, or it hasn't yet
got a recording/playback head of its own so it has to borrow another. I think in this case we can safely assume the latter, as at the time of writing this was the only 225 in the UK. It was also without the usual amusing diversions of a box, plug or manual. Challenging, some would say. Bloody awkward, comes my retort.
You want background, you got background. Tascam make Portastudios. You know that. This is different. This machine offers sort of a reverse tack to that idea, going back to a simple stereo cassette machine with built-in, hard-wired track bouncing so as to build up overdubbed musical performances with a minimum of fuss. The man from Tascam at the fair told me that they used to make a machine upon which this one is based, called the A108 Sync. I've never actually used one of those, but from what I remember of it you were limited to recording one track on the left, and then one more on the right in sync with it, plus an optional third in the centre of the stereo. In other words, useful, but limited.
Playing around with the 225, it seems you can go further. What you have is, in appearance, a standard cassette recorder, and indeed I suppose you could use it as such if you really want, though the temporary resident 244 head, nicked from a Portastudio and wired up for two-channel operation only, didn't seem too happy with the two or three pre-recorded pieces of schmaltz I offered it.
Processing is limited to a normal/chrome button and a Dolby B in/out switch. Considering the 225 purely as a tape-handling machine, then the now almost standard metal option and Dolby C are conspicuous absentees.
But if the price is right, one could easily consider the 225 as a separate tool for overdubbing to build up demos and song-notebooks, more or less ignoring normal cassette functions. By "right", I'd say under
£200.
The idea is to plug a mic into track one – direct instruments overload the input – and record what you will on to cassette; unplug and re-plug into track two, record a second track while listening to the first (via a return-to-zero function), and so on back and forward.
A pushbutton for each track will engage record as you choose, and a little orange input knob allows you to set the correct level on the left or right VU meter. I had a bit of trouble, manual-less as I was, sorting out which buttons around these selectors did what.
I came to the conclusion that the Sync button on this particular 225 does nothing at all. One would expect a switch thus marked to synchronise one recording with the monitored signal (as in 'Simul-Sync'), but no matter how many combinations I threw it into, the Sync switch made no difference. So I left it on. Or off.
The Input Mix switch is altogether more crucial. Well crucial. This has to be on (or is it 'in') for you to be able to hear the previous recording when you're overdubbing something new, either over loudspeakers or, more likely, over headphones. Also, with Input Mix in (better), I found you could present an input to both mic sockets, one and two, and add the summed input to the new track. Nigel could play guitar whilst Samantha bashed glocks. Great.
What you have to be oh so careful about when using this kind of recorder is
noise and
balance. Noise you can't do much about, though the Dolby B offered here is some help. Keeping the number of passes to the minimum helps too, as the noise is engendered simply by the process of layering up the tracks – each time you add a little music you add a little noise.
Balance is trickier to sort out and define. If you've got at all used to multitrack, then going back to this relatively primitive method would be like a Simmons user reverting to bongos. Not
necessarily a bad thing, but a shock at first.
I could find no way of setting the relative level of the previously recorded track(s) under the new track: I suspected at first that the "Output Pan" knob for each track might be a dual-purpose control, perhaps "Output" in relation to the level just mentioned, and then "Pan" for later positioning. But it didn't work like that, and seems singular in its effect – it is indeed an "Output Pan" knob that at least allows you some leeway in floating your stuff over the stereo gulf.
So to achieve balance you only really have the controlling factor of altering
input levels. And, of course, there's always luck. All in all, this means early decisions, I'm afraid.
The quality of this first 225 was not, therefore, totally impressive – but then the whole point of the machine is to layer things up, and when you do your sounds will gradually and naturally suffer, generation by generation. This is the price you pay. Not that the machine is unacceptable. It's just that we've started to get used to versatile, high-quality multitrack cassettes, and yet this machine, despite its good intentions, represents a rather peculiar step back for Tascam. How about a better, cheaper competitor to Fostex's X-15? The 225 looks like it's been planned for some time. Why the wait? Put more simply, why?
TASCAM 225 cassette deck: £219