Guest Low Roller Posted July 29, 2003 Report Share Posted July 29, 2003 A thousand bucks huh? Well that seems a little excessive! What the hell could possible cost a thousand bucks to fix in a unit that sells commercially for around $600? I bet there is some fancy flux capacitor that sends the unit into the future to find a better recording. Sort of a time travel peer-to-peer network... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyRage Posted July 29, 2003 Report Share Posted July 29, 2003 where can you get a DAT for $600 I ask you. The portable DATs retail for 2 grand. The non-portable is cheaper but still pricey as hell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bouche Posted July 29, 2003 Report Share Posted July 29, 2003 Repairs suck-ass. The price is probably mainly built from the tech-spert's labour fees. Have you checked online DAT groups yet? Perhaps there is a way to replace a part yourself. A laptop would be good, but wouldn't you need a killer sound card for that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Low Roller Posted July 29, 2003 Report Share Posted July 29, 2003 I ran a search on price comparisons for bradm's model DAT online for the sake of completion of my post, and found four price points of which $600 is about the median. It may be a total skew from reality, I really wouldn't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ollie Posted July 29, 2003 Report Share Posted July 29, 2003 Have you thought about taking it into an independent repair shop yourself? It's my natural inclination to distrust manufacturers so I'd bet the $1000 figure was a little gouged. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone to recommend. I'd take the suggestion of looking for help online. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snarfmaster C Posted July 29, 2003 Report Share Posted July 29, 2003 i feel your pain, bradm. only a few shows into a summer tour 2 years ago - brand spankin new md - and a colorado evening thunderstorm had the sound guy fling tarps up and knock my deck between planks of the patio somehow getting wedged under heavy equipment... it still worked, sometimes, with prayer and heavy-duty elastic bands, but pretty unreliable. useless now. still haven't managed to get the funds together for a new one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tungsten Gruvsten Posted July 30, 2003 Report Share Posted July 30, 2003 dat's really are horrible-the transports in those tiny ones are all put together with jeweler's screws and can go out of tolerance very quickly and easily. Too much mechanical nonsense to put up with in the field. MD's are much better but crap out if they are hit too much of a shock and the laser burns improperly. The newer HD based stuff sure looks appealing, but there is a huge grey area of 'pro-sumer' gear that is hit and miss... I guess my biggest complaint about all this stuff is none of it is 'field-serviceable'...I mean I can record tons of stuff on a notebook and it'll take up way less room than my computer, but if something goes wrong I have to send the whole thing away...I wish someone would copy the Nagra's they use for film sound, the newer HD based ones are 5-20k USD!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arcane Posted July 30, 2003 Report Share Posted July 30, 2003 That sucks. If it's any consolation, I think I know how you feel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted July 30, 2003 Report Share Posted July 30, 2003 After an initial flurry of taping (peaking in the spring, during March and April), my activities have been somewhat (OK, completely) reduced. The problem was my DAT, a Sony TCD-D8. It was jamming, and would often not properly have the tape load or unload (and in some cases actually broke the tape). I took it to the Sony Store (Bayshore) here in Ottawa, and they sent it to a local repair shop they use, who said they couldn't fix it. I had them send it to Toronto for an estimate. The estimate came in today. Over one thousand dollars! (Needless to say, I'm not going to pay that much to have it fixed, when I could get another equivalent unit for much less.) How angry am I? Let me tell you. If you took every atom in the universe, and inscribed the word ANGRY on it 1000 times, that wouldn't approach one tenth of one percent of the anger I feel right now. Angry. Angry. Angry.* (OK, I feel a bit better now. Not so angry, more just bummed out.) I'll be getting the unit back, but I need to move on. I have a whole bunch of tapes to transfer, so I'll probably get (or at least rent) another DAT, but after that, I'm not sure. I'm thinking an MD recorder (smaller, lighter, easier on batteries, cheaper & more readily available media), or maybe a laptop or PDA. All I have to do is get set up for the fall concerts (e.g., nero w/ Blue Quarter)... Aloha, BRAD (Been Raging About Dat) * This paragraph has been paraphrased from Harlan Ellison's story, "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaggyBalls Posted July 30, 2003 Report Share Posted July 30, 2003 just remember dude...computers can crash...other than that you can get awesome captures on them... MD is cool too...It'd be nice to be able to get matrix recordings...do you wnt to be able to tweek or what? think about it and save up the capital... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted July 30, 2003 Report Share Posted July 30, 2003 The one minor plus to this is that it pretty much requires me to drool over a significant gear purchase. My current fave is the Marantz CDR300. This is a portable recorder that uses CD-Rs or CD-RWs as its recording media. It has XLR mic ins (and line ins), can provide phantom power, has its own level and EQ controls, and can even run off an external battery pack. The Uncle Seth guys rented a rack-mount unit for their recent mini-tour, and it seemed to work well: drop in a blank CD-R, press "record", then finalize when the set is over, and you have a ready-to-play audio CD. The other advantage of it is that CD-Rs are available for pocket change pretty much anywhere (unlike blank DATs and MDs, which are tough to find). Then there's the Marantz PMD670, which uses either compact flash cards, or the new IBM micro-drives...imagine being able to record 10 Gb of music without changing media... Aloha, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arcane Posted July 30, 2003 Report Share Posted July 30, 2003 quote: Originally posted by bradm: Only if you actually end up coming out to shows where I'm taping. Can I bring my own tape? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phred Posted July 30, 2003 Report Share Posted July 30, 2003 How long does it take to finalize the Disk when you are done recording? Do you have to finalize it before you eject it, or can you wait? My concern would be if you were caught having to switch discs, would you run into problems, having to wait until the finalize stage was over to switch... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arcane Posted July 31, 2003 Report Share Posted July 31, 2003 I'm glad you've found the "up" side in this ... I'm sure you'll find something you like. You'll want to make sure that I know how to check the levels on the new unit, hmm? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted July 31, 2003 Report Share Posted July 31, 2003 quote: Originally posted by arcane: You'll want to make sure that I know how to check the levels on the new unit, hmm? Only if you actually end up coming out to shows where I'm taping. Aloha, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted August 11, 2003 Report Share Posted August 11, 2003 quote:Originally posted by Phred: How long does it take to finalize the Disk when you are done recording? Do you have to finalize it before you eject it, or can you wait? My concern would be if you were caught having to switch discs, would you run into problems, having to wait until the finalize stage was over to switch... I e-mailed Marantz about that, and the response I got said that finalizing took about 2m15s, but that you could finalize the disc later, so that the only time it took was the disc swap itself. I've contacted the Canadian distributor to see if I can get my hands on one for renting/testing purposes. Cross you most outer appendages,people... Aloha, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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