Reel to Reel or Casette?

Reel to reel tends to give higher quality in multi-track analog, because the wider tape minimizes bleed from one track to the next. With $200, a multi-track RTR will probaly be out of your budget, though.

Tascam and Fostex make decent analog 4 track cassette recorders in the $200 range (new), so you can probably get what you need on Ebay with enough left for a mic and a few tapes :)

It sounds like you're getting "digital clipping", a type of distortion that sounds very bad. It comes from having the levels too high at some point in your chain. In this case the volume from the amp is too loud, most probably. Built in computer sound cards have notoriously little headroom for this. A mixer between the source and sound card can give you much more control over the levels hitting the sound card.
This is a place where a DI box comes in handy, as well. You might well get better sound going direct from a pedal like a Digitech Bad Monkey, skipping the amp entirely, and using the pedal's cabinet modelling and line out socket. Again, a mixer would help.
I find that, while the warmth and compression of the cassette tape make it easier to get a good sound when the levels are too high, you'll probably get a better sound from a decent digital system once you get the settings right, due to the noise problem with casette tapes. Reel-to-reel systems are another matter, but a whole different financial ballpark.
Of course, I happily used cassette multitrackers off and on for nearly 2 decades.

I'll have to agree with slothrob. Although I love the sound of saturated tape, you can't escape the noisefloor being so high. There's enough noise just coming from your line as it is. $200 us dollars will get you a decent sound card from M-Audio. One that's designed for audio recording. The delta 44 has 4 line level inputs and comes with a limited version of Abeltons LIVE or Logic Audio depending on the box. Both software are more than capable of handling 4 tracks (I think 16 is the limit). As well these programs handle vst plugins such as Magneto (a version of which is free to download [js magneto] ) which simulates tape saturation. Now if you're a luddite, then may God help you. Otherwise I'd talk to the local music store guy to at least check it out and then go out and scan the classified ads to see if any studios are willing to give up their ampeg 4 track r2r.

If you're looking for an analog deck for under $200 it'll have to be cassette tape, unless you try local antique stores, pawn shops or car boots. I have a friend who picked up an old Akai reel to reel for £25, and the sound quality is superb.

As for analog 4-tracks, I can recommend the Tascam 414 II Portastudio. It retails at £150 ish over here, so pretty close to your budget.

I run my signal through a good condenser mic or two, through a homemade tube pre-amp into an old mixer, and can get a good decent sound out of it.

It's light and portable if you need to mic the drums in a bathroom, and about as idiot proof as possible. No stoned/drunk erasing of that lovely acoustic number. Track bouncing's pretty simple too. If you ignore all that "Sgt Pepper's was recorded on a 4-track" crap you'll get a good sound, good enough for a band demo anyhow....

For my money it's easier than digital. I ran Cakewalk Studio for a while, at the time using my 4-track as a mixer, but IMHO it just isn't good enough. It sounded crap, each song took up 400MB+, I couldn't take it round to jam sessions and broke it when drunk.

If you're going to go down the digital route though, I'd second slothrob on getting a good mixer, it's pretty much a pre-requisite if you want any EQ and level control.

If you have any taste though, please ignore his recommendation of 'cabinet modelling' [shudder] :wink:

Gotta admit - I really fancy the Tascam digital portastudio. My local shop's got a sexy looking Boss 6-track which will output to a CD too.

Best,

A :-)

My local shop's got a sexy looking Boss 6-track which will output to a CD too.

Orgasmic