JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Recording Studio and Gear Forum Your Oldest Gear

OK, what is the oldest piece of gear you regularly use in the studio?

I have an old Korg M1, which may be the oldest. The DX7 and fretless bass patches are still useful.

I still have a Sony DAT recorder purchased in the early 90's that I use several times a month for transfers.

I don't count my 25-year old Guild D35 as a "piece of gear", though.



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Larry
www.audibleresponse.com

Buddy, as I'm three years younger!

John Daubert

Well, I play a 1971 Yamaha fg150. Older than that is my Ventura Bruno 12 string. I also have, and use, a Shure mic mixer and a Shure feed back suppressor, circa '60s. The feedback suppressor is basically an EQ box that you manually cut frequencies. I also have a Shure SR105B power amp that is pretty darned old, but not as old as the mixer & suppressor, and a pair of ElectroVoice 631 mics.

All good stuff that I still use, now and again.

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DakLander

My Otari MX5050-8 8-track, half-inch tape machine, built in 1978, still gets a lot of use recording drum and rhythm instrument tracks which I then lay over to the computer for adding more stuff. It sounds great and has never needed repair except for occasional replacement of the pinch roller, and having the heads relapped a couple of years ago.
I have a 1983-model Studer A810 that I mix down to. It's not half-inch, only quarter-inch. But it IS 30 ips! I'm just tickled to death to have a 30ips machine.

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Later,

Pat

We're using a Crown D150 power amp and Yamaha NS-5's from the mid '70's. Our Roland JX-3P is from 1983. EV Sentry 100 monitors from 1983. I'm playing a 1979 Rickenbacker 4001 bass. We also have a mid '70's Ovation Legend. The oldest is probably a Dynaco PAS-2 preamp from the 1950's which Sid (our keyboard/guitar player) rewired to use as a vacuum tube microphone preamp.

Crown DC-300 power amp, circa 1974.

Teac PB-64 patch bay, which I bought used in '79.

Although I have Cakewalk Sonar, I still prefer my old, OLD version of Cakewalk. It is so simple to use for sequencing, I know it like an old friend, and it does the job. However, when I call Cakewalk with a question about it, they snicker and tell me to get a life.

Not counting guitars or mics.

I have a Roland D550 - the rackmount version of the D-50, with all those Miami Vice sounds.

A Roland DEP-5 multi effects unit.

A Sony DTC700 DAT machine - the output amps are shot so I just use the fiber optic cable to feed it into another machine.

A Tascam 22-2 1/4" 15IPS half Track

The pride and joy of my old stuff is an Atari 1040ST using SMPTE Tracks software.

I still use this stuff all the time, but I have a lot of newer gear too.

Incredible! I learned sequencing on Hybrid Arts SMPTE Track on the Atari 1040STe!!! I finally dumped my Atari in the trash about 5-6 years ago (no one wanted to buy it). It was definitely one of the tightest-sounding midi sequencer units available since it had midi built into the operating system and hardware (I also had the midi expander box which was just as tight-sounding).

I remember SMPTE-Track being very cool in that you could have both linear AND loop-based sequences in the same song.

Then I switched to Cubase 3.0 for the Atari - geesh, that must have been the late 80's or early 90's....a real trip down memory lane for me!




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Larry
www.audibleresponse.com

I guess there is still an Atari "underground" out there, but I think most of it is for games. There are actually
still websites that sell the equipment.

Aside from the fact that I know the software well, The Hybrid Arts SMPTE interface is one reason I keep it. When I got my Adats and BRC, I just run a guitar cable from the BRC to the interface and I'm synced.

I mean, I have 2 other newer computers in the house and a lot of other newer equipment in the studio, I just never got around to phasing out the Atari. I call it the HAL 9000

One question that may be able to be answered here since other people may have gone through it. When I do get a new studio computer, would I be able to convert some of my old sequences simply by letting them play via the Atari and then feeding the midi out(s) of the instruments into the new computer?

Mike

I got started on the Hybrid Arts program on an Atari 128 about a hundred years ago. Imagine working on a computer with 128k of RAM and NO hard drive! But at the time, it was like owning a magic wand.

[This message has been edited by TrumanCoyote (edited 06-13-2003).]

I have a '51 american ribbon vocal mic i still use alot along with my u87

I also use a '59 aphex reel to reel for master bounces it has great tube mic pre ins

one of my consoles is a amek/neve 28 ch that was built in the early 70's

that is the oldest stuff i use

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Chris Musgrave
www.brokenmic.com
www.fullblownrecords.com
1-941-371-6021

I haven't tried it that way myself, although it may work. It would take longer because you could only record a maximum of 6 midi tracks at a time on most sequencers. Therre would also be inevitable slop between recording passes.

What I did is save all my sequences as standard midi files (SMF) onto a formatted Atari floppy disk. If I recall, SMFs ignore any looped sections you've set up in SMPTE Track, so copy and paste the loops across the entire track and make them a regular linear track before converting to SMF.

The Atari uses an MSDOS formatted floppy disk, so it can be read by Macs and PCs. Try it first, though. I remember that sometimes my Mac wouldn't read the Atari disk and sometimes it would (same with the PC). It may be that formatting it in the PC or Mac first and then reading/writing to it on the Atari was the better way - or vice versa. I don't remember for sure.

Hope that helps, Mike!



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Larry
www.audibleresponse.com

I can imagine. The first computer I ever used was an old CP/M computer (64K RAM) running Wordstar and spreadsheet program called Multiplan.


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Larry
www.audibleresponse.com

[This message has been edited by Lwilliam (edited 06-14-2003).]

Korg Poly 800... 4 note polyphony.. and you can put a guitar strap on it and wear it so you can look cool like Cameo or Howard Jones.

Brian

Sold my old Atari 1040ST - with the upgrade mind you, a few years ago (around 5). I had that thing sitting in a closet for probably 4 years. Once I went Mac I never looked back.

Boy did I dig that Atari. Wrote my first midi things with it. Wrote my first book on guitar playing with it. Wow.

I'd think if you had a program that did MTC on the Atari it would be better to midi cable to your new computer and do it that way. Only if you can't get the new computer to read the old Atari Floppy.

Jody

The Moog Rogue (1981, which I bought new) or the Radio Shack Concertmate MG-1 (I bought it for $25 at a garage sale about a year ago)

I have some old stomp box effects and other odds and ends, but I don't use them.

I still use the moogs though,.



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The Tic Tok Men