Putting together a Rack Unit

[Psyre]

I'm in the process of finishing setting up/supplying for recording my bands ep. I'm planning to do a hybrid set up with a stereo skeleton track being recorded into abelton, and a more mixable 4 track cassette recording simultaneously, then blend together and do a few overdubs.

I work much better in the physical realm than on a screen, and rack gear is seemingly extremely cheap right now as everyone is just replacing their gear with plugins/emulations.

The equipment available to me (and what I can afford to pick up in time to get this project started) is a Sunn Rack box, Alesis 3630 Comp/Gate, a digital Tape noise Reduction, MXR 31-band eq, Alesis Reverb (looks like an 80's model) and a Roland 12/6st Channel input mixer. I think I could get it all for about $200 between 2 shops.

Is this enough for a worthwhile post production rack for the 4track? Is there anything in leaving out?

[crochambeau]

Sounds like a nice pile for $200.

Cables would be a consideration, which starts to spiral toward patchbay, but that's a lean enough shopping list to skip that without much headache.

I don't know how solid your 4 track is, but I've noticed in the past that recording a simultaneous take on two different platforms will usually result in the tape machine drifting a little, mostly apparent with room mics or if you have a particular source (like drums) that prints to both the analog and digital. Instant droopy phaser, might be something you enjoy - but if not, certainly something to watch out for.

[rfurtkamp]

Yea, sync is going to be functionally impossible with analog tape (unless you had something with a SMPTE timecode and assuming Ableton supports it.

You'd need to sum them both to something somewhere else downstream, and that wouldn't be editable in a meaningful manner (the 4 track is superfluous at that point).

Tape noise reduction may not function particularly well with a four track either, it'll lack routing to make the most of it - if you're going to use NR, stick with what's in the box generally.

[Psyre]

Could I record main out from the mixer (guitar and bass) to tape stereo ins, and Alt 3/4 (drums) to 3 and 4 inputs. Mix down, send to DAW and do overdubs in the DAW?

[rfurtkamp]

Yea, you can do that easily enough.

You'll just be stuck with the print to the DAW (your 2 track dump station essentially, no different than dumping to a second deck in the old days)

That's assuming the Yamaha has 4 discrete tracks at a time or you're content with whatever its record at a time limit is.