Experimenting with Deco Tape Saturation & Doubletracker
There is a lesser-known, more experimental side of Deco that is not featured in our Deco demos. For this list, we rounded up our favorite Deco
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As you may have learned from Pete Celi’s recent article in Premier Guitar, many of today’s most common guitar effects (chorus, echo, flanging) were born out of experimentation with double-tracking in the tape recording studios of the ’50s and ’60s. With this in mind, we thought it would be cool to show you what creating a flanging effect with reel-to-reel tape decks actually looks like.
As you’ll see in these videos by Omega Studios and David Goodermuth, a certain portion of a song is double-tracked using a tape machine. Then, an engineer carefully speeds up and slows down the tape machine to slightly vary the speeds between the two recordings. By recording the separate outputs to two different tracks and playing these tracks on top of one another in the final mix, the subtle differences in timing between the two tracks creates a sweeping flange effect.
We’d encourage you all to try this at home, but, nowadays, the tape decks you would need for the double-tracking process are pretty tough to round up!
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Michael
Michael Callas spent some time writing for Strymon in 2014, and is now off making a name for himself in the film industry.
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2 Responses
There’s nothing that warms the heart as much as playing around with old school technology,but I guess it’s not really technology,creativity.I love this stuff,I would be perfectly content,hanging in that studio,24 hours a day…with a little peace and quiet thrown in!
Thank you Strymon! First demo I have seen on this. BTW Sarge at Creation Audio Labs is seeing if there is support for a Nashville Amp Show in 2015. Great fun! Joe Bonamassa stopped by the last one.