u/general_musician

I've been getting more into rackmount gear for several months, with a stellar deal last fall from a college radio station replacing their "old" studio equipment with new gear (including a Yamaha SPX-900 effects rack and a Marantz dual cassette deck). It currently suits my more "experimental" approach to music making a lot better than previous workflows, endlessly toiling over a DAW trying to perfect a sound.

The Hughes unit I picked up today (won at an auction for ~$110USD) intrigued me-not just because I needed a way to add dimensionality to mono tape experiments, but because it works with both mono and stereo sources with what seems to be the most basic of filtering options. I'm old enough to remember playing back my earliest songs on Windows XP and emulating the SRS experience through Media Player. On a pair of headphones, I knew a fully mixed song is not going to sound drastically different. But I knew singling out layers or instruments could potentially change the soundstage. Plus, a mono source can now be pre EQ-ed then post-EQed in stereo if I wanted!

Anyway, coupled with the scarcity, I figured it was worth some experimenting and the nostalgia dive! Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Thanks for reading! I have sadly been idle with expanding my collection of reel-to-reel tapes since getting my Teac last spring and winning a lot of ~30 home recorded reels from the early 80's. It included college radio excerpts from a college on the Minnesota/North Dakota border. Yesterday I bid on a series of four lots from a music store that closed a couple of decades ago in rural South Dakota, and I made the 4-hour round trip to pick it up. There's a huge amount of smaller 5-inch tapes and I haven't seen any tapes susceptible to sticky shed, but there are some gems that I can't wait to dive into. I spent ~$140USD in total and I don't have a final count of reels or a sense of timeframe or programming.

Thanks for reading! After my post a couple of weeks ago, I went to a few more local stores to scout out the one missing US release I had wanted: All In The Mind by The Bucketheads. I was able to find a copy at the Electric Fetus, a well-known shop here in Minneapolis.

But I knew the local shops wouldn't be getting these UK titles in, so I stayed up until Sunday morning and placed an order on iMusic for them! They finally arrived today (no tariffs, $18 international shipping).

The Orb album is a quirky one, but bridges the gap between their spacey 90's output with a more direct, percussion-driven approach starting with their Kompakt releases. The Olive record is a good example of the early electronica genre while searching for a commercial pop sound. I prefer Trickle, but I'm going to enjoy them both!