Been listening quite a bit to the Iron&Wine collection Around The Well.
It's mostly Sam Beams home recordings on his 4 track. Sounds great!

So of course I gotta try out those ancient machines... and it's as exactly annoying as I remember it from my teens.
Borrowed Raz's old XR-5 Fostex. It doesn't rewind. Nor can you record an electric directly, because it distorts the input insanely (in a good way, but not all the time).

On the plus side, there is bleed through from whatever was on the tape. So now there is The Doors playing backwards on everything I record. Neat!

Hmm... guess a cool retro style doesn't make up for talent.

Just soldered a jack on a 'Cobra' telephone, turning this danish classic model it into a microphone. In fact, I thought the mic in it sounded at little too good, so I connected the jack to the earpiece for that really rusty 'telephone' sound. Why do something halfway crappy, when it could be 200% lo-fi?

On the left is a cheap Aiwa mic which also got a jack while I had the soldering iron out (only burned my fingers once!)