If you can remember the days before electronic delay dropped into the affordability range of the average teenage guitarist, you may recall that somewhere around the early 1980s, the Melos echo unit was a common secondhand effect purchase among the guitar-totin’ youth.
The Melos was a tape echo device, typically costing £30 to £35 on the used market. It recorded the guitar input sound to a special type of short-length tape cassette, which then repetitively looped the recorded sound back at diminishing volume (and diminishing quality), simulating an echo.
These archaic tape echo devices, with their custom-designed cassettes, are what most older guitarists will think of when there’s mention of audio tape as a guitar effect.
But did you know that conventional blank audio tapes can be used as a crude but seriously cool guitar effect? Not as an echo, but as a tone-shaper…
One of the peculiarities of the electric guitar is that it sounds best when the system of sonic reproduction – in particular the speaker – is inefficient. You won’t find tweeters in a classic guitar amp or cabinet, and the reason for this is that the very high frequencies which tweeters reproduce, tend not to agree with the electric guitar sound.
A guitar speaker generally tops off at about 6,000Hz. That would lose vital treble detail in drums, keyboards or vocals, but for the electric guitar it works perfectly. Especially when the guitar is overdriven into distortion, a full range of high frequencies sounds fizzy and cheap. Removing the frequencies above 6,000Hz takes away the fizz and makes the guitar sound crisp and creamy.
So where does an audio cassette fit into that? Well, not all of them do. Chrome and Metal tapes are renowned for producing high fidelity, with a full range of treble frequencies. That’s not going to help an electric guitar. But basic, normal position ferric tapes tend to have similar sonic limitations to guitar speakers. They can’t reproduce the very high frequencies. They can’t reproduce the frequencies that make guitars sound bad.
Therefore, a basic, normal position ferric tape can be used as a perfect tone-shaper for an electric guitar – especially in a home-recording environment, where it may be impractical to route the guitar through a big, loud amp and speaker cab.
We do have speaker simulators for guitars, and have had since the 1980s. But a lo-fi tape cassette can usually make a nicer job of naturally softening guitar fizz than the average electronic simulator – and is almost certain to do it better than a computerised sim.
So we’re talking about a home studio effect as opposed to a live effect. Which is convenient, because the home studio is precisely where the effect is needed.
The main issue is syncing the audio tape with the rest of the recording, which is likely to be on a digital workstation. In the ’90s, we would sync using a Portastudio, which could record a MIDI timecode to a spare track on the cassette, and then interface with a timecode to MIDI converter which would control the tempo of the entire digital transport.
But most people won’t have such equipment today, so is there another way to do it?
Yes. Modern features on digital audio workstations make it simple to import and timeshift a track. So here’s how I’d do it…
1. Get the right kind of tape. You need a Type I of good stability, but not a very high end formulation that produces too much top. I’ve had good results with ’70s Scotch Dynaranges (which do the job spectacularly well), Sony BHFs or HFs, TDK Ds, and BASF LH Extra Is or Ferro Extra Is. These tapes eliminate fizz, and they grit up the top end, but are reliable and do not sound woolly. But experiment with different Type Is. And remember, once you get one that works for you, you can keep using it, over and over again.
2. Record the backline of your track to your digital workstation as you normally would.
3. Play back your digitally-recorded backline – drums and bass, or whatever – and simultaneously record your guitar part, in sync with the playback, onto your chosen Type I cassette, on a cassette deck.
4. Play back your recorded guitar part on the cassette recorder, and record it into your digital workstation, via direct injection.
5. Line up the guitar part so the start is in sync with the start of your digitally-recorded backline.
You should find that the guitar has a very organic and gritty, yet decidely unfizzy personality. And when you get famous, you have a cool story to relate to your guitar geek fans, about how you produced that extra bit of spice and vibe.
Tape Tardis 