Surprisingly couldn't find an old threat about this here. I am trying to get analog clipping effects and have heard of different techniques involving clipping in mixers vs adding tape saturation. Curious if anybody might be willing to share adding distortion using tape saturation and if anybody has recommendations on cassette decks or recorders they have experimented with for this + techniques that could be helpful to know!
with most consumer grade equipment you're more likely to overload the input stage and impart that to the cassette rather than actually drive the cassette into overload on its own...with that said, experiment on anything/everything with an input!
any tape deck obviously, but VCRs, televisions, anything with audio RCA in/out can impart an interesting sound when driven to extremes... some VCRs with digital audio components tend to be behave very interestingly when hit with extreme levels...fair warning: you might end up breaking things...
Also worth noting is that if you are using regular 80's/90's tape deck, some JVC, Technics, whatever, very often there are left/right mic inputs on the front. Those will give you massively different type of saturation than connecting with RCA from back of the deck. A lot of my own recordings are often done by using the front microphone inputs and plenty of gain. When cleaner sound is needed, connection with RCA inputs works well.
Also, besides the decks, it would be good to remember that tape itself has major role in this. If you want to crush the sound, get it melting nicely together, better use cheaper ferric tapes for that. Chrome and metal tape can take a lot more volume before it starts to saturate. Some of the best decks I have, are kind of... worst ones. It would not be good for dubbing tapes or listening, but to get really punchy and juicy sound, they can be good. I don't think there is necessity to recommend any deck in particular. Any deck you see at 2nd hand store or flea market or online auction, going for cheap price, might be best thing for the noise. Most of recent years Grunt was recorded with stereo deck I bought for 10 euro.
Thank you Mikko + Dust. You saved me a lot of heartache I think with your advice!
Just tried recording with the mic inputs on the front of the deck and really liked the results. Things are much more saturated and I definitely know what you mean by sounds melting together. May not be the way to record all of the time but crude enough for when you want to capture raw rehearsal sessions. Thanks for the tips!
buy an old reel 2 reel, most likely mono but you can use it for this and/or make tape loops...