Mixtape Cassettes.., Rippin on The PlusDeck2

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zorlac

Member (SA)
Finally I found time to rip cassettes with this Plusdeck2 cassette drive. It was purchased about 8 years ago and never used it.
I have this huge box of cassettes from the 80's it's been traveling with me from move to move for 25 years.
The Plusdeck2. Is a lil' old but kinda sweet, it rips cassettes into mp3's. Out of my cassette collection I'm trying to find...

"The Wizard" radio mix shows (wdrq 93.1fm or wgpr 97.9fm Detroit),
"The Latin Rascals", "Chuck Chillout", "Dj Red Alrert" (98 Kissfm NYC MId 80's, or Hank Love on the am dial),
"The original Dj Boom" radio splice mixes from Miami circa 1986, 87,
"Brave New Waves" CBC radio (mid to late 80's), and
"Take No Prisnors" Punk Radio Shows (WFBE Flint, MI)
Hopefully these cassettes are still in playable shape (It will be interesting)
If anyone has any of these old radio mix shows please let me know.
If you have a dope ghettoblaster you've gotta rock an old mixtape with it,

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jaetee

Member (SA)
Hi Steve!

That is a very cool graphic for your avatar....! Did you do that yourself? If so, great idea and great job!

I always wondered how well those PC tape decks work????

I have a boat load of mix tapes. My own and from other DJs going back to the mid 90's. I use a vintage Nakamichi RX-505 plugged into my DJ booth, which has a line-out directly to my PC to rip tapes to digital format. A benefit of having a dedicated home PC to run Serato. (you can see my setup in this thread here: http://www.boomboxery.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4898&hilit=dj+booth)

I delicately set the levels in the PC to maximize dynamics and I use Soundforge software to record the tapes on the PC in real time.

This has worked pretty well for me. And I still use that (and other Nak) tape decks to record mixtapes fairly regularly. Even though I have a CD recorder, I just can't stop using tape. I love the way the good ones sound. :-D

If you're interested, maybe we could trade "ripped mixes" on CD sometime... to somewhat compare the quality of our very different processes???

Just a thought...

Oh, and welcome to the boomboxery club! :-D
 

zorlac

Member (SA)
Ah, the old sl-220 belt drive turntable, that was my first turntable back in 1981, sweet. Well it sounds like your set up works just as well. I have the plusedeck2 hooked into my dj tower, which I use for digital dj'ing and mp3 storage. The way this plusdeck2 works is it has it's own sound card...it comes from the output (analogue) and goes into the tower soundcard inputs. The files end up sounding like a clean tape to tape copy.

Thanks for sharing your method, it's generally the same. I could also hook my Awia tape deck or turntable into my vestax mixer then run that directly into the soundcard inputs on the tower and record through the line-in that way. With these analogue conversions you just need an mp3 cutter and you're good to go. The Plus deck2 is simply convenient without all the other components in the whole process and it fits into your cd rom port.

My avatar? yes it's an old flyer I made a couple years ago, I have tons of dope flyers from my shows this avatar will change often. I guess I was intriqued by coin operated laundry equipment and woofers back then. That's what happens when you become a ghettoblaster junky at a young age I guess. (That's what my laundry room would look like if I had one, hehe!)

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jaetee

Member (SA)
I think you saw Gluecifer's TT setup, here is mine....

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Again, well done on the flyer... here are some of mine from when I was holding down a Friday night weekly in downtown St.Pete... Now that I've got a toddler running around, I'm not playing out as much anymore.

http://www.pbase.com/jaetee/flyers

It's always good to have another DJ on board around here.... :dj-party:
 

zorlac

Member (SA)
There it is the RX-505, what a piece of work. I could never afford the $1,600.00 price tag for that cassette deck. It was sweet to put a tape into it and hit the auto reverse over and over to watch the tape flip back and forth. It was probably the best cassette deck ever made, high end or other.

Nice flyers, "w/your host ...JaeTee"!!! I like the fonts you used, were you a font digger too? I had to dig and dig to get new fonts for different flyers. Great Stuff!!!

Mix Tapes? Man it's been so long since i've been into that box of cassettes, I have to start dubbing and sort out what is there. I'm sure there r some goodies in there...we can swap some mixes fersho'. When I get back to Michigan I will git 2 it.

Are you spinnin' house, downtempo, or just whatever (At the St Pete gigs or wherever???)

I may try soundforge, I don't remember which program came with the cassette drive but it was a very simple tool to cut and store the recorded input. Soundforge may be better with my set up as well. When I get back in town i'll try to take pics and send you a shot of what i'm working with.

Here's something I found online that is my (1999) old configuration... "click it"

and 1998... "Click thumb"

I like the seperate components you have. Nakamichi and it looks like a sansui or nakamichi 2 channel equilizer with spectrum analizer? tuner, 2 channel pwr amp, nkmi cassette deck, another cassette deck (vcr,dvd,cd?) on top of that? preamp, tuner, 2 x 1200's, mixer, sarato, etc. Good set up. Mine changes from year to year and I mean almost completely. Cool stuff and it gives you that freedom i'm sure.

Here are a few more flyers, Most of them aren't jpged yet, they're at home in Michigan. I have some flyers in online storage, there are tens of tens or more at home. A good portion of them are "80's electronics or ghettoblaster" influenced..

"Click Thumbs"

This first one is from a pic of one of my houses growing up in Flint, Michigan...




 

jaetee

Member (SA)
When I play out it pretty much straight up house music.... covering the more soulful west coast (Greyhound/OM) style to the more progressive UK style(Bedrock/Hooj) and pretty much everything in between. You might even hear the occasional breakbeat or drum n' bass track thrown into a set..... or even an occasional 80's 12" if it will work...

Thanks for the props on the flyers...! Most of the fonts I used were included with my aged Photoshop 7 program. With the exception of the Samstag-Soul flyer (designed by someone else) I took all the photos myself. And I would spend way too much time playing with the fonts and the "bevel/emboss" functions to get them to look "just right.." :lol:

Filnt, Michigan eh??? My brother used to live just across Port Huron in a town named Sarnia and throw lots of parties up there. I played out up there several times. IIRC, he had friends from Flint and Detroit that would come out and sometimes play music with us. I met a some of those cats more than a few times, but that was going on 10 years ago now and I don't remember the names. Too many parties in between! My Bro's name is Nico and he played out under the name DJ Fidjit and IncogNico for the time he was living there, and we both promoted parties under the name "Awakelate Productions" for quite a while as well. Although he is more into hard house, our styles do overlap quite a bit and we had some good times and threw some good parties up there. I regret never making it up for one of his boat parties, though.... That would be funny if you knew each other...., if not, I"m willing to bet you two know some of the same people.... It's amazing how small the hardcore house-head community is in the world. I've found that the old "six degrees of separation" rule is more like "two degrees of separation" when you get into musical subcultures like this.

That's a cool setup you had going on back in the late nineties! I recognized a couple of pieces of gear, most notably the Akai sampler. Looks like you are set up more for production! I'd love to hear some of your stuff!

About the RX-505 and that setup, you have a good eye. Luckily, they don't cost $1600 anymore. I got that one for less than you'd spend for a clean JVC M70 nowadays! FYI: There are similar two-head RX-202's with the same auto reverse feature that routinely sell on ebay for less than $100 in working condition! I have one of those, too... and it sounds MUCH better than it should for such an inexpensive deck (assuming you end up with one that works properly).

And you were right about the EQ. that is a Sansui SE-8X. There is also a Nakamichi 582 (viintage 1979 bad-a$$ deck) in that pic, and the other deck you mention not being sure about is actually a Panasonic hifi VCR. It's in the system because it makes absolutely incredible audio recordings. Quite frankly, that thing makes the best sounding audio recordings of anything else I own!!!! Too bad it's incredibly inconvenient to use, and since I'm just not making the kinds of master demos like I used to.... it mostly just sits there now.

Well, I gotta get back to more productive things that pay the bills.... Drop me a PM if you want to swap a tape or two....

Take care, and again.... welcome to Boomboxery!

JT
 

zorlac

Member (SA)
Thx JT.
OM, good stuff. I have a lot of house vinyl throughout the years and phases, a lot of mid 80's acid house from the warehouse era all the way up to about 7 or 8 years ago. I've spun house gigs only a few times I enjoy it. I also spin drum n bass, dancehall, raga, hip hop, funk electro, techno, electro house, beats with scratchin' whatever the gig I usually adapt. My favorite thing to do is get a group of dj's together and let'm go for an hour or even just a half hour depending on how many show up. It brings out the best in the variety. I had Quintron with his drum buddy in Flint once and I invited dj Psycho (Dezi I grew up with this guy). He showed up with a shoe box full of rare funk 45's and rocked the crowd in between the bands, his selections were rare but on point for that show. It depends on the gig I guess.

That flyer you mentioned is the one I noticed that had some hard to find graff fonts...coincidently. cool flyers tho'.

I don't recall your brother nico aka incognico or the other. Cool name tho' Sarnia is the Canadian side about a 45 minute drive from Flint. I'm sure there are mutual dj friends out there it is a 2 degree rule it's only one tier over, hehe.

I was guessing on most of your equipment but thought some of those components looked familiar. Cool set up. That vcr thing, man we use to rock a VCR back in the day it's like the easiest DAT ready recording. I mean VCR's will step up an anologue signal to a clean digital reproduction and if you had the right tape and vcr recorder you could record live shows for hours on 1 tape.
cool equipment, I don't even know if I have a vcr besides the mono vcr I use for projecting images at shows....that's it. The beta is gone too.

Good chatting i'll hit you up via message with my address, but it may be a couple weeks before I get back home and digging tapes out...i'm looking forward to it. I can at least send you a minidisc and record some vinyls from the library if not something actually mixed live. I'll let you know as soon as I get back.
Cheers!
 
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