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Cool Stuff With: The Tascam Porta One

Part 2: "C Batteries and The Pain That Comes With"

Sometime around the 1920's, some people decided to standardise battery sizes. Halfway through the meeting, some idiot burst in with a C battery and demanded it be part of the standardized system.
Of course, there are some minor inaccuracies with the story I told, but it's what I imagine happened when C batteries became a "thing." These little shits have been the bane of my existance when I
use any desktop cassette tape machine. Almost all of the desktop machines I've had require C batteries and it's getting increasingly harder to find them.

How does this relate to the Porta One? The PO uses C batteries. 10 of them. And it chews through them like nothing else. Use it for a total of about 24 hours? All gone. Now when I go to record there's
an annoying flashing light always in my periphiral vision. It's even worse when I have headphones on because there's a very subtle clicking noise. The moment it realises it hasn't got enough power
I hear this little click... click... click... click... and it drives me MAD. It's almost always off tempo and incredibly hard to ignore. I should probably buy some duct tape and put it over
the light to make it a bit easier to play. The worst part is that I can't do anything about it, because the AC adaptor that came with it has a US style plug and I'm in Australia. I get very nervous
when it comes to plugging in American stuff because of the voltage difference. (The US uses 120 volts, where Australia uses 240 volts.) I already fried a VHS camcorder that way.

And uh... Yup. That's my obligatory "Rant-About-A-Thing-I-Don't-Like Article"
Part 3: "Backwards tapes, Secret Messages and Cool Sounds" is comin' soon...


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