I sometimes find pictures of other peoples’ studios, and I especially like seeing people’s recording setups from the previous decades in films and archive photos. Here’s a highlight of some of my favorite pictures & stills:

Collage of stills taken from BBC 4's "Synth Brittania" program. I wonder what the battery is for. This is a great example of a basic home recording setup from the 1970s.

This is the home recording studio of HomeRecording.com member JedBlue.

See this thread for the source of the above image.

WOW.

Photo from the University of Washington

That looks like an Atari computer. Late 1980s, early 1990s? I can't find the source of this picture.

I think this is the first version of my home studio. 2009?

A very well equipped home studio from the early 1980s. A lot of great music must have been made here.

Follow this link for the image source.

Tascam 48 Amp Cards

Things are coming together slowly, equipment-wise. I wanted to use my 1/2″ 8-track, a Tascam 48-OB, so I hooked it up to the mixer and went at it. Something was really wrong, though. I recorded something onto track 1 of the tape, and on playback, the VU meter on the deck looked OK but I was getting hardly any signal on my mixer. After running through the cabling and checking everything on the mixer, the cause of the problem appeared to be in the tape deck, but I had no idea what it was.

I posted a thread on homerecording.com and a few people suggested that it might be the relays on the amplifier cards. To be specific, there’s two relays on each amplifier card that control signal output. The 48 runs at either +4dB or -10dB, and these relays switch between the two sets of inputs and outputs. When they fail, they’ll often they fail simultanously, breaking on multiple channels. This made sense, as the problem soon spread to 4 of the 8 channels on the deck.

To make sure that its was the relays, I plugged the +4dB balanced outputs into a firewire interface and played a MRL testing/calibration tape several times, going from channel to channel each time. They all worked. This confirmed that it was indeed a problem with bad/dead relays.

After asking several more questions, I found out that the bad relays were the ones labeled “K003″ on the amplifier card. These relays are used when using the deck’s -10dB unbalanced outputs. The stock relay is an NEC component that is no longer manufactured, but a company called Hamlin makes a perfect replacement. It’s the HE721A2400, and it can be found at DigiKey for cheap.

Hamlin HE721A2400 Relays

Replacing the relays isn’t difficult but it requires some basic soldering skills. You will need a solder sucker; most decent electronics or hobby supply shops sell a basic model for $15-$20. Knowing how to use it is also important: I didn’t know how to use one and carelessly assumed that I could figure it out, and ended up damaging one of the cards (I repaired the damage, though). To remove a component from a circuit board, apply the soldering iron tip to the lead of the component on the “top” side of the board, while applying the solder sucker tip to the bottom of the lead on the “bottom” side of the board. When the solder appears to have melted, click the solder sucker and the molten solder gets sucked out of the drilled PCB hole and into the sucker. I wish I had a picture to demonstrate this, but reread the last sentence and ask any questions if it’s unclear.

After removing all of the K003 relays, I soldered IC sockets to the holes where the relays had been. I did this in case the relays need to be replaced in the future… saving myself or someone else some work. The relays snapped into the sockets easily. Here’s a picture of one of the replacement relays, in its socket:

Closeup of New Relay

I put the cards back into the deck, put the MRL tape on again, and everything worked just fine. I was so relieved to have it working again, and I was proud to have fixed it myself… with a lot of help, of course.

Notes:

• The Tascam 42, 44, and 48 share the same amp card design. This repair will work for any of these models.
• A full calibration should be done on the deck after replacing the relays. The relay’s performance seems to degrade over a period of weeks before completely breaking, and it might have been compensated for in different ways as it worsened over time. Bringing the deck to a solid, accurate state is definitely recommended.

It’s a total mess right now, because a lot of stuff is being repaired.

Studio Inventory

Mixers:

• Tascam M-520 20x8x4 mixer
• Tascam M-30 8x4x2 mixer in pieces, awaiting restoration
• Tascam M-216 16x4x2 mixer in pieces, awaiting restoration

Tape Recorders:

• Tascam 34b 1/4″ 4-track (x2) one functioning, one disassembled for complete restoration
• Tascam 48 1/2″ 8-track needs relay replacements on all eight channels, pending op-amp and capacitor replacement/upgrade
• Otari MX5050 MKIII-2 1/4″ 2-track
• TEAC X10-R 1/4″ 4-track (quarter track stereo) the most disassembled of all my tape decks, currently on life support
• Tascam 302MkII cassette deck
• Marantz PMD 430 cassette field recorder

Noise Reduction for Tape Recorders:

• dbx 150x (x6)
• Tascam DX-4D (x2)

Monitors:

• Yamaha HS-50M (x2)

Outboard:

• dbx 166xl two-channel compressor/limiter (x2)
• ART MPA Gold mic/line preamp (x2)
• ART Pro Verb reverb unit

Sound Sources, Miscellaneous Input/Output:

• TEAC AG-790 stereo receiver
• Audio-Technica AT-PL120 turntable
• Toshiba Hi-Fi VHS VCR
• Alesis io26 firewire interface

Microphones:

• Shure SM57 (x2)
• Marshall MXL-604 small diaphragm condenser (x2)
• Rode NT4 small diaphragm condenser, XY stereo pair
• Rode K2 large diaphragm condenser
• Naiant X-S miniature small diaphragm condenser, omnidirectional (x2)
• Homemade piezo contact microphone (x4)

Patchbays:

• Tascam PB-32W
• TEAC PB-64 (x4)
• Coming soon: DIY homemade normaling patchbay for accessory send/receive jacks on my M-520

Photos

TEAC X-10R, Otari MX5050 MkIII-2

Tascam M-520

Tascam 48-OB

Tascam 34b, In Pieces, Awaiting Restoration

Tascam 34b

Tape Shelf

Back of Patchbay

Photo from a show, July 2008

Patchbays

Honey the Cat, an essential element of the studio

Cable Heap

Behind the Tascam M-520

Behind the Console

Behind the Tascam 48-OB