I love quad as an audio format. I've been recording in quad a lot recently on my tape multitracker. It uses regular cassette tape, and the regular track widths, but uses all four at once instead of two each way. Trouble is, it only has stereo mixdown, and it records at twice speed, so I would need to modify any potential quad tape deck that I build to play at twice normal speed.
I've figured out a way to use a 4-part RCA signal, if ran to two stereo amps, to get quad sound to my speakers. Therefore, I would need to modify my homebrew quad tape deck to have 4-part RCA out. I'm still a little fuzzy on the particulars of that.
In order to read all four tracks, I'm considering just taking two stereo heads and putting them next to each other, but due to width constraints, that would probably mean being unable to sync their output, let alone record anything. I suppose I could yank the quad head out of a junk Tascam, but good luck finding a junk Tascam! Any ideas on solving this issue? Perhaps work in an output lag somehow on the forward head's output so that they are synced again?
One idea that I have, if I can get the outputs synced, is to just pull the head out of one tape deck and make the wires long enough that I can install it in the other deck, still attached to its own electronics, though. Then there would be four RCA jacks out (two from eah machine) and it would require the minimum amount of hacking things up. Then I'd connect the two cases in to uber case (duct tape, porbably), and go on my merry four-channel way.
Anyway, is anybody else a fan of this format, and have you thought about making a quad tape deck? If someone has ever ripped up analog tape decks (or knows the nitty-girtty of how they work), please don't hesitate to give some input to this project!