OLD school recordings

[diablo175]

I found an old Akai MK 20 M.T.R. 1/2 inch tape cassette that has a song by a band I was in recorded in '88. I would very much like to get an updated format of that song i.e. mp3, wav, etc. Any chance anybody on here has access to the 16 track board that was used to record it? If not, is there anyway to get the song down onto another format- cassette tape? CD? ANYthing but 8 track-

[tomteriffic]

Gonna take a big piece of luck to find that. The tape is for an Akai MG 1212 or MG 1214 recorder, similar to a Tascam Portastudios of the day, only it used those VHS-like tape cassettes. It was a dead-end format, unfortunately and I'd imagine that working machines would be mighty hard to find. Good luck finding one.

Oh, BTW, they were actually 12 audio tracks and two sync tracks, one for absolute time and the other for SMPTE code.

[diablo175]

Gonna take a big piece of luck to find that. The tape is for an Akai MG 1212 or MG 1214 recorder, similar to a Tascam Portastudios of the day, only it used those VHS-like tape cassettes. It was a dead-end format, unfortunately and I'd imagine that working machines would be mighty hard to find. Good luck finding one.

Oh, BTW, they were actually 12 audio tracks and two sync tracks, one for absolute time and the other for SMPTE code.

Right you are! 12 tracks. But the good news is I Googled the MG 1214 and found several studios around the US and in the UK that still have functioning MG 1214 units. I guess I could have them dump each track onto it's own WAV or MP3 track and re-master it myself.

[zenmindbeginner]

Right you are! 12 tracks. But the good news is I Googled the MG 1214 and found several studios around the US and in the UK that still have functioning MG 1214 units. I guess I could have them dump each track onto it's own WAV or MP3 track and re-master it myself.

That is the way to go, I have three 1 inch 16 track Ampex tapes that have 13 songs on them that I need to get off of there and onto a digital formal. I found a place in Winston Salem that will transfer the tracks. All I need to bring with me is an external hard drive and he will load them all on there, I'll have to sync them by hand, but I can do that, I'm old skool. I think he is charging like 1 dollar a minute, that seems to be the going rate. Good luck Diablo.

[David B]

I think the first album I did was on that system.

[blackfbiv]

Same thing for me. I still see my acquaintance with the recorder (he actually did the engineering back in the day) all the time at the local L&M music store.

Just want to get the master tracks off the 1/2 inch and into .wav.

Love to do some re-mixing / re-recording ala Rob Zombie or Trent Reznor. Add some parts... find a different vocalist... (maybe ME!!)

Time, as always, is the enemy... it just slips away so fast.

Short-term I should rent a DAT machine and get the old DAT masters into the iMac as well..

Oy