If you need to cut steel wiremold or raceway that's already installed in
a tight space, you do NOT need the following:

- Vise-grip pliers
- Bolt cutters
- Airplane snips
- Bulldog snips
- "Pipe and duct" snips
- Metal seamer
- Dremel rotary tool
- Carbide bit for dremel tool
- Cutoff wheel for dremel tool
- High-tension hacksaw
- Mini "tight space" hacksaw
- Keyhole saw

They won't work. The sheet metal is too thick. So don't bother making
five trips to Home Depot to get them all. You just need your air saw, a
$4 18-tooth-per-inch bimetal blade, and the will to drag your
"portable" air compressor up to the studio. Yes, I know it's heavy and
awkward and two flights down. I don't care. Go get the compressor.
It's the only thing that works.

This has been a public service announcement.

--
Jay Levitt |
Wellesley, MA | Hi!
Faster: jay at jay dot eff-em | Where are we going?
http://www.jay.fm | Why am I in this handbasket?

You could use a Sawzall, a grinder with a cutting wheel, or a hacksaw if you
have the room........
"Jay Levitt" wrote in message
...
If you need to cut steel wiremold or raceway that's already installed in
a tight space, you do NOT need the following:

- Vise-grip pliers
- Bolt cutters
- Airplane snips
- Bulldog snips
- "Pipe and duct" snips
- Metal seamer
- Dremel rotary tool
- Carbide bit for dremel tool
- Cutoff wheel for dremel tool
- High-tension hacksaw
- Mini "tight space" hacksaw
- Keyhole saw

They won't work. The sheet metal is too thick. So don't bother making
five trips to Home Depot to get them all. You just need your air saw, a
$4 18-tooth-per-inch bimetal blade, and the will to drag your
"portable" air compressor up to the studio. Yes, I know it's heavy and
awkward and two flights down. I don't care. Go get the compressor.
It's the only thing that works.

This has been a public service announcement.

--
Jay Levitt |
Wellesley, MA | Hi!
Faster: jay at jay dot eff-em | Where are we going?
http://www.jay.fm | Why am I in this handbasket?

Jay Levitt wrote:

You just need your air saw, a
$4 18-tooth-per-inch bimetal blade

A reciprocating air saw? Did you try a Sawzall first?

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 10:31:20 -0400, Jay Levitt wrote:
If you need to cut steel wiremold or raceway that's already installed in
a tight space, you do NOT need the following:

- Vise-grip pliers
- Bolt cutters
- Airplane snips
- Bulldog snips
- "Pipe and duct" snips
- Metal seamer
- Dremel rotary tool
- Carbide bit for dremel tool
- Cutoff wheel for dremel tool
- High-tension hacksaw
- Mini "tight space" hacksaw
- Keyhole saw

They won't work. The sheet metal is too thick. So don't bother making
five trips to Home Depot to get them all. You just need your air saw, a
$4 18-tooth-per-inch bimetal blade, and the will to drag your
"portable" air compressor up to the studio. Yes, I know it's heavy and
awkward and two flights down. I don't care. Go get the compressor.
It's the only thing that works.


Why not just use a long hose? The strength of compressed air is that
you can run long lines without much loss, assuming your lines are of
reasonable size.

In article writes:

If you need to cut steel wiremold or raceway that's already installed in
a tight space, you do NOT need the following:

Oh. I thought you were going to tell us that we didn't need a tool
that was plugged into the wiremold.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Or use plastic wiremold in the first place...

"Ed K" wrote in message ...
You could use a Sawzall, a grinder with a cutting wheel, or a hacksaw if you
have the room........
"Jay Levitt" wrote in message
...
If you need to cut steel wiremold or raceway that's already installed in
a tight space, you do NOT need the following:

- Vise-grip pliers
- Bolt cutters
- Airplane snips
- Bulldog snips
- "Pipe and duct" snips
- Metal seamer
- Dremel rotary tool
- Carbide bit for dremel tool
- Cutoff wheel for dremel tool
- High-tension hacksaw
- Mini "tight space" hacksaw
- Keyhole saw

They won't work. The sheet metal is too thick. So don't bother making
five trips to Home Depot to get them all. You just need your air saw, a
$4 18-tooth-per-inch bimetal blade, and the will to drag your
"portable" air compressor up to the studio. Yes, I know it's heavy and
awkward and two flights down. I don't care. Go get the compressor.
It's the only thing that works.

This has been a public service announcement.

--
Jay Levitt |
Wellesley, MA | Hi!
Faster: jay at jay dot eff-em | Where are we going?
http://www.jay.fm | Why am I in this handbasket?

In article , says...
Jay Levitt wrote:

You just need your air saw, a
$4 18-tooth-per-inch bimetal blade

A reciprocating air saw? Did you try a Sawzall first?

I actually don't have a Sawzall. I seriously contemplated buying one
for this one task, but since I already *have* the reciprocating air saw,
I feel like I'd be wasting money. OTOH, that compressor is really a
pain to lug around, so maybe I need one. OTTH, I'm not sure even the
"compact" Sawzall would have fit in this space - it's at a weird angle.

--
Jay Levitt |
Wellesley, MA | Hi!
Faster: jay at jay dot eff-em | Where are we going?
http://www.jay.fm | Why am I in this handbasket?

In article znr1097599097k@trad, says...
In article writes:

If you need to cut steel wiremold or raceway that's already installed in
a tight space, you do NOT need the following:

Oh. I thought you were going to tell us that we didn't need a tool
that was plugged into the wiremold.

LOL!

--
Jay Levitt |
Wellesley, MA | Hi!
Faster: jay at jay dot eff-em | Where are we going?
http://www.jay.fm | Why am I in this handbasket?

In article ,
Jay Levitt wrote:

In article znr1097599097k@trad, says...
In article
writes:

If you need to cut steel wiremold or raceway that's already installed in
a tight space, you do NOT need the following:

Oh. I thought you were going to tell us that we didn't need a tool
that was plugged into the wiremold.

LOL!


a rotary cutoff wheel on a drill motor would work
George

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 23:06:44 -0400, Jay Levitt wrote:
In article , says...
Jay Levitt wrote:

You just need your air saw, a
$4 18-tooth-per-inch bimetal blade

A reciprocating air saw? Did you try a Sawzall first?

I actually don't have a Sawzall. I seriously contemplated buying one
for this one task, but since I already *have* the reciprocating air saw,
I feel like I'd be wasting money. OTOH, that compressor is really a
pain to lug around, so maybe I need one. OTTH, I'm not sure even the
"compact" Sawzall would have fit in this space - it's at a weird angle.


Long hose. Leave the compressor downstairs.

The problem with any continuous run air tool is that it takes a LOT of
air. No props for trying to run that sort of tool off a pancake
compressor.

A Milwaulkee Super Sawzall is VERY nice to have if you're renovating.

All the others are okay, but the SS is the one you'll wish you had the
same way you wish you had a *insert your favorite insanely expensive
mic*

For a tight space like that, you might try an angle grinder. I'd rent,
but if you think you'd get enough use out of it, most of the ones $100
are Good Enough.

Remove all the burrs with a file, to keep them from nicking the
insulation....

Rgds:
Eric

"U-CDK_CHARLES\Charles" "Charles wrote in message
news:c0bbd.17$qL1.11@trndny07...
On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 23:06:44 -0400, Jay Levitt wrote:
In article , says...
Jay Levitt wrote:

You just need your air saw, a
$4 18-tooth-per-inch bimetal blade

A reciprocating air saw? Did you try a Sawzall first?

I actually don't have a Sawzall. I seriously contemplated buying one
for this one task, but since I already *have* the reciprocating air saw,
I feel like I'd be wasting money. OTOH, that compressor is really a
pain to lug around, so maybe I need one. OTTH, I'm not sure even the
"compact" Sawzall would have fit in this space - it's at a weird angle.


Long hose. Leave the compressor downstairs.

The problem with any continuous run air tool is that it takes a LOT of
air. No props for trying to run that sort of tool off a pancake
compressor.

A Milwaulkee Super Sawzall is VERY nice to have if you're renovating.

All the others are okay, but the SS is the one you'll wish you had the
same way you wish you had a *insert your favorite insanely expensive
mic*

For a tight space like that, you might try an angle grinder. I'd rent,
but if you think you'd get enough use out of it, most of the ones $100
are Good Enough.

Having gotten some good advice from this group before, let me toss this
question out. I'm a singer/writer with basic engineering skills, which seem
to be enough for me to master my own stuff for CD.
That's my basic profile. And I've already got the wall to wall
recording studio that extends across my entire room. But, the sheer mental
WEIGHT of having to set everything up does seem to interfere with the
creative process. As a matter of course, I find that if I do my entire
technical setup the night before I want to work on some music, then all I
have to do is turn on the stuff the next morning and get to work without
doing a lot of pre-production stuff that detracts from letting the muses do
their number. I like to relax while I work, and over the years I have found
that it's harder to do because the technology has gotten so complex. I miss
the old mono tape recorder where I just had to push record, and GO. Stereo
was a step up, but as Chet Atkins once said when Ampex issued the first 3
track, "What the hell are we going to do with the third track?

This past week I was reviewing a bunch of old performances I did on my
little 200 dollar Sony two channel minidisc recorder, and I found the
performances to be more relaxed in general, and therefore, probably more
listener friendly. I had anticipated at the time I did the original
recordings that I might want to use the performances for release at a later
date so I set it up this way:

Left Channel was for voice
Right Channel was for drum machine and basic rhythm guitar.

I transfer the good performances over to the PC, and then re-record my
guitar onto a new channel on the PC (Cakewalk pro 9), , and bring in a real
drummer to play real drums, using my original minidisc right channel as his
reference track for the timing.

I would PREFER to set up a 4 channel minidisc recorder, or SOME kind of
machine with at least the same quality or better than a minidisc recorder,
like this.
channel 1 for vocal
channel 2 for guitar
channel 3 for stripe (Fsk or SMPTE)
channel 4 for drum machine
Then at least I won't have to retrack my guitar, as well as leaving open
other possibilities for later.

I have been researching this for the past week, and I see that TASCAM has a
minidisc 4 track recorder workstation (although it's really 12 channels,
they say- which confuses me. Why call it a 4, if it's a 12?), but the price
is around 1200 dollars. That's too much. I just want to spend 200 to 500
dollars for a basic recorder setup that won't hinder me with too many bells
and whistles. Likewise, I see little pocket sized multitrack workstations
that have a lot of features from Boss, Roland, and others for around 300 to
500 dollars or so, but I'm not sure if they provide digital outs for Wav
files. One of these machines allows the user to send out MP3 files to the
PC, but I don't think the quality would be up to what I can get out of my
simple minidisc recorder. I know Pro engineers don't like the compression on
minidisc recorders, but I find them to be more than suitable for my simple
rock and roll songs, which I usually process the hell out of anyways. (We
ain't talking Opera here fellas.) Personally, I can't tell the difference
between a final mix from my PC over to a CD, which I also mix to minidisc at
the same time. The differences that might exist don't matter to me, since
I'm not scoping this, and as far as I know, it's only Pro engineers and
Hummingbirds that might be able to hear the difference. As a musician, I'm
sure my hearing might not be as critical and detailed as it used to be, but
my audience is going deaf too. I'm more concerned with emotional impact, and
I have a room upstairs that I like to practice and sing in, a place where I
can keep it simple and just try to be creative without worrying about all of
my gear.

To sum up, here's the big question. Are there any simple, basic, inexpensive
machines, minidisc or otherwise, that will allow me to use the 4 channel
setup, as I listed above, and that will permit me to make a digital wav
transfer back to my PC? If so, what are some recommended models? I just need
something that will allow me to keep my digital output from the unit
seperate as it goes back into the PC.
Thanks for your suggestions.
Alan

I have been researching this for the past week, and I see that TASCAM has a
minidisc 4 track recorder workstation (although it's really 12 channels,
they say- which confuses me. Why call it a 4, if it's a 12?),

It has 12 INPUT channel that can be routed to the 4 TRACKS of the recorder.

I used a Yamaha 8 track mini disc recorder for demos and found the sound to be
"fine" for that purpose. In fact, I kinda dug that little unit for being do
simple to use.



---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

In article writes:

Having gotten some good advice from this group before, let me toss this
question out. I'm a singer/writer with basic engineering skills, which seem
to be enough for me to master my own stuff for CD.

You may have the skills and experience to record and mix your music.
Mastering your own material for CD production is never a good idea,
particularly if you don't have an extremely accurate monitor system,
something rarely found in a musician's private studio (unless the
musician happens to be somebody like Whitney Houston or Sting). When
will people learn to say "record my own music" instead of "master my
own CD?"

I've already got the wall to wall
recording studio that extends across my entire room. But, the sheer mental
WEIGHT of having to set everything up does seem to interfere with the
creative process.

Why do you have to set it up every time you want to record? That's a
pain in the butt. If you're going to get serious about this, you
should dedicated some space for your gear, leave it set up to record,
and at least give a little attention to the acoustics of the room. And
if you aren't able to dedicate at least that much of your space to
recording, at least for the duration of a project, you aren't serious
enough to make serious CDs. You can make fine demos, however.

I like to relax while I work, and over the years I have found
that it's harder to do because the technology has gotten so complex.

The reason why it used to be easier was that the technology, while not
all that complex, was expensive enough so that few musicians could
afford to own it. You went to a studio where someone else bought,
maintained, and operated the equipment and all you needed to do was
play and sing. Equipment hasn't become more complex, people have
decided that complex technology is what they need in order to make the
recordings they want with the talent they have.

This past week I was reviewing a bunch of old performances I did on my
little 200 dollar Sony two channel minidisc recorder, and I found the
performances to be more relaxed in general, and therefore, probably more
listener friendly.

I don't doubt it. Set up a mic (probably not a very fancy one), push a
button, and start playing. The technical quality isn't what most
musicians today would consider "CD Quality." On the other hand, CDs
have been made from less, and the people who buy those CDs from you at
your gigs won't worry that you didn't record at 192 kHz, or that your
pitch was a little off on a verse, or that you didn't have a full band
playing behind you.

I would PREFER to set up a 4 channel minidisc recorder, or SOME kind of
machine with at least the same quality or better than a minidisc recorder,
like this.
channel 1 for vocal
channel 2 for guitar
channel 3 for stripe (Fsk or SMPTE)
channel 4 for drum machine
Then at least I won't have to retrack my guitar, as well as leaving open
other possibilities for later.

You will likely find that you'll want to re-track your guitar, and
maybe your vocal, too. Stereo drums never hurts, also. 4 tracks was a
luxury in 1958, but the way things are done today, and what's
expected, people pretty much limit 4 track systems to demo recording,
in which case your proposed setup would work just fine. Many of those
integrated recorder/mixer gadgets put out MIDI time code for
synchronizing a sequencer or another recorder without using a track.

I have been researching this for the past week, and I see that TASCAM has a
minidisc 4 track recorder workstation (although it's really 12 channels,
they say- which confuses me. Why call it a 4, if it's a 12?), but the price
is around 1200 dollars. That's too much.

I didn't even know they still made one. I'd suggest that you look at
an 8-track hard disk based recorder. You can get a TASCAM 788 8-track
24-bit hard disk recorder/mixer for around $600 on the street. There's
lots of stuff today that gets you better audio quality than a
Minidisk, more than 4 tracks, and the convenience of everything in one
box for under $1,000.

I just want to spend 200 to 500
dollars for a basic recorder setup that won't hinder me with too many bells
and whistles.

Well, if that's all you're willing to spend, start haunting eBay. The
"pocket" workstations are really cute, but as you suspect, they're not
up to the quality of a CD that you'd want to charge money for, at
least not without a lot of skillful help. The trend today seems to be
to record on flash card memory rather than tape or disk, which means
expensive media if you have several projects "in the works" over a
significant period of time, and few of them record in uncompressed WAV
format if for no other reason than that it would require more memory
than the recorder costs just to record a couple of songs. They're
great as work-notepads though. Fostex has one for about $300 that has
a drum machine built in, as well as a guitar amplifier simulator and
some vocal processing. You don't get a lot of flexibility but you can
get some pretty good ideas of what could happen with the right
equipment. But that's what you get for $200-$500.

To sum up, here's the big question. Are there any simple, basic, inexpensive
machines, minidisc or otherwise, that will allow me to use the 4 channel
setup, as I listed above, and that will permit me to make a digital wav
transfer back to my PC?

Why not record directly on your PC, and put your money into a
respectable audio interface (sound card)? As long as you're going to
use your PC as a production tool, you might as well record to it as
well. But the more non-audio things you use your PC for, the sooner
you start running into audio recording problems.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Yeah I downgraded from a Digi 002 since i'm not doing much recording
of other bands. Nothing for money anyway. I purchased a new Tascam
424mkIII 4 Track cassette recorder and I really dig it. It's pretty
fun and make you think a little more creatively rather than "dood let
use the neve eq plugin."

cheers

garrett



(EggHd) wrote in message ...
I have been researching this for the past week, and I see that TASCAM has a
minidisc 4 track recorder workstation (although it's really 12 channels,
they say- which confuses me. Why call it a 4, if it's a 12?),

It has 12 INPUT channel that can be routed to the 4 TRACKS of the recorder.

I used a Yamaha 8 track mini disc recorder for demos and found the sound to be
"fine" for that purpose. In fact, I kinda dug that little unit for being do
simple to use.



---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

Mike Rivers wrote
Why not record directly on your PC, and put your money into a
respectable audio interface (sound card)? As long as you're going to
use your PC as a production tool, you might as well record to it as
well. But the more non-audio things you use your PC for, the sooner
you start running into audio recording problems.

Thanks for the input Mike. I DO record directly on to a dedicated PC for studio use thru a
2048 MOTU soundcard. I may not do a perfect job of engineering, but I'm pleased with how the
last project turned out, thanks to some of your own previous advice, as well as from other
contributers in this group. (Listen to a track from the current CD by clicking on this link
http://www.alanleatherwood.com/Alamo/djcopy.htm).

Mike Rivers wrote:

Why do you have to set it up every time you want to record? That's a
pain in the butt. If you're going to get serious about this, you
should dedicated some space for your gear, leave it set up to record,
and at least give a little attention to the acoustics of the room. And
if you aren't able to dedicate at least that much of your space to
recording, at least for the duration of a project, you aren't serious
enough to make serious CDs. You can make fine demos, however.

I'm usually set up for a mixdown process, or I'm set up for someone else's project, which
involves changing a lot of stuff to get back into a "recording" mode for myself. I find that
with the minidisc, I can take it upstairs and just record on the fly, whenever the mood hits
me. I have a small mixing board up there with two mikes plugged in to it. I think of my
studio in the basement as my work "garage", but the room upstairs allows me to relax more. I
just need more than two tracks.

Set up a mic (probably not a very fancy one), push a
button, and start playing. The technical quality isn't what most
musicians today would consider "CD Quality." On the other hand, CDs
have been made from less, and the people who buy those CDs from you at
your gigs won't worry that you didn't record at 192 kHz, or that your
pitch was a little off on a verse, or that you didn't have a full band
playing behind you.

ALL of my performances are built upon just my vocals and guitar, I overdub everything else,
drums, the band, everything. I've worked that way for the last twenty years in most cases.

. You can get a TASCAM 788 8-track
24-bit hard disk recorder/mixer for around $600 on the street. There's
lots of stuff today that gets you better audio quality than a
Minidisk, more than 4 tracks, and the convenience of everything in one
box for under $1,000.

Sounds good. But, my friend bought one a year ago, and still hasn't been able to figure out
to record a song on it. Is it as simple as a minidisc recorder to operate? My friend has
zero experience recording, except with his old Sony reel to reel, so it might be easier for
me to figure out. Maybe I can buy it off of him cheap, since he has no idea what to do with
it.


..... start haunting eBay. The
"pocket" workstations are really cute, but as you suspect, they're not
up to the quality of a CD that you'd want to charge money for, at
least not without a lot of skillful help. The trend today seems to be
to record on flash card memory rather than tape or disk, which means
expensive media if you have several projects "in the works" over a
significant period of time, and few of them record in uncompressed WAV
format if for no other reason than that it would require more memory
than the recorder costs just to record a couple of songs. They're
great as work-notepads though. Fostex has one for about $300 that has
a drum machine built in, as well as a guitar amplifier simulator and
some vocal processing. You don't get a lot of flexibility but you can
get some pretty good ideas of what could happen with the right
equipment. But that's what you get for $200-$500.

I agree. I don't want to use flash cards. Expensive, and they won't hold a lot of
stuff. When I get an idea and record on the minidisc recorder, I can actually develop it
into a complete finished song and peformance withing 20 minutes or so.
Alan Cassaro

http://www.alanleatherwood.com

The Yamaha minidisc 8 track an interesting looking unit, I downloaded and saved
the specs for it. Definitely worth considering. Offhand, do you know if you can
transfer the individual tracks over to a PC, digitally? Thanks
al

EggHd wrote:

I have been researching this for the past week, and I see that TASCAM has a
minidisc 4 track recorder workstation (although it's really 12 channels,
they say- which confuses me. Why call it a 4, if it's a 12?),

It has 12 INPUT channel that can be routed to the 4 TRACKS of the recorder.

I used a Yamaha 8 track mini disc recorder for demos and found the sound to be
"fine" for that purpose. In fact, I kinda dug that little unit for being do
simple to use.

---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

I researched both of those units you mentioned. I don't want to record on a cassette deck, so I
did a few more hours of research today on about 80 different units from companies. Most of the
units costing less than 600 dollars only allows recording up to two channels at a time. The ones
using memory sticks seem useless to me, considering that I like to work in at least half hour
increments. Might as well spend more money for something with a harddrive, since the extra memory
sticks are going to add up quickly.
I want to record 4 channels at a time, so I can change the tempo of my drum machine on the
fly, rather than having to pre-record it on the units that only allow two track recording.. For
multitracking all at once, it starts getting pretty pricey. However, For $799.00 there's a
harddrived unit, the ZOOM MRS1608, which seems to have a lot of features for the money, plus the
ability to dump it all over to the PC as uncompressed Wave files.
A simple 4 track minidisc recorder would be nice for my needs, but that would make life too
uncomplicated, wouldn't it? So, I guess I may cough up the extra cash for some extra bells and
whistles...
al

Garrett Cox wrote:

Yeah I downgraded from a Digi 002 since i'm not doing much recording
of other bands. Nothing for money anyway. I purchased a new Tascam
424mkIII 4 Track cassette recorder and I really dig it. It's pretty
fun and make you think a little more creatively rather than "dood let
use the neve eq plugin."

cheers

garrett

(EggHd) wrote in message ...
I have been researching this for the past week, and I see that TASCAM has a
minidisc 4 track recorder workstation (although it's really 12 channels,
they say- which confuses me. Why call it a 4, if it's a 12?),

It has 12 INPUT channel that can be routed to the 4 TRACKS of the recorder.

I used a Yamaha 8 track mini disc recorder for demos and found the sound to be
"fine" for that purpose. In fact, I kinda dug that little unit for being do
simple to use.



---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

Alan Cassaro wrote:

I may not do a perfect job of engineering, but I'm pleased with how the
last project turned out, thanks to some of your own previous advice, as well as from other
contributers in this group. (Listen to a track from the current CD by clicking on this link
http://www.alanleatherwood.com/Alamo/djcopy.htm).

Sounds pretty bright to me. What kind of monitoring do you have?

Offhand, do you know if you can
transfer the individual tracks over to a PC, digitally?

No. The MD8 just has 8 analog outs.



---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

In article writes:

I'm usually set up for a mixdown process, or I'm set up for someone else's
project, which
involves changing a lot of stuff to get back into a "recording" mode for
myself.

Sounds like you could do with a patchbay, a couple hundred bucks worth
of cables, and a day's worth of system engineering to make things
easier for you tu switch between tracking and mixing.

I find that
with the minidisc, I can take it upstairs and just record on the fly, whenever
the mood hits

That's a good application for it. But your "main" studio could be just
as easy, unless you really prefer to do your "when the mood hits"
recordings upstairs.

. You can get a TASCAM 788 8-track

Sounds good. But, my friend bought one a year ago, and still hasn't been able
to figure out
to record a song on it.

Well, there's always a learning curve. Frankly, I find that anything
that's highly integrated, even the old 4-track cassette
recorder/mixers, don't have enough knobs and buttons on them to make
operation and understanding of signal flow obvious. But I agree that
user interfaces are extremely important, and few companies do a really
good job with them. They want to use as little hardware as possible
(which means fewest number of knobs and buttons, and the smallest
display they can get away with) to keep the price down. When you get
into the range of the Akai "studio in a box" units for a coupe of
grand, then they start paying more attention to those things.

Maybe I can buy it off of him cheap, since he has no idea
what to do with it.

If your friend isn't doing anything with it, see if he'll lend it to
you so you can check it out. Either you can teach him how to use it,
buy it and use it yourself, or tell him to sell it (to someone else).


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo