Malik

my name is malik . . .
i live in salford . . .

i aquired a Cadey 16 track recorder in 2001and after some recent research i have many good reasons to believe it is the same machine that you had at Cargo.
im about to start recording on it with my band . . . im a great believer in analogue technology . . . especially if it glows in the dark!

please get in touch so we can swap stories!

by the way – iv managed to get it fully functional except for track 16!!!!

John Replies:

Hi malik,

Thanks for the info. It could be the same machine as there weren’t too many made. I sold mine to a guy in Milton Keynes in 1985 and then lost track of it.
Steve Foley at Smile studios in Chorlton, which was around the same time as Cargo, also had a Cadey. We bought them cos they were cheap and as it turned out also produced an amazing sound cos of the valve record side. This meant you could hammer the tape and get a really powerful sound without distortion as you would with IC’s or digital. It also added some certain very pleasing harmonics. On the down side it was a sod to line –up with only having two heads, and also had a lethal fast forward/rewind, and at the end of a session the control panel was red hot with some serious voltages hanging around in side, but it served us well for the 6 years the studio was open. I don’t know how old you are but you may remember a single called “Black is Black” a million seller by a group called Los Bravos, that song was written by Steve Wadey who made the Cadey machines. Some useless trivia there. Part of the problem, these days is the cost of tape as I think there is only one manufacturer left. The machines didn’t have serial Nos so I’ve been trying to think of anything that would identify it but as yet I haven’t thought of anything I’ll let you know if I do.

I wish you all the best with your recordings, and with your band, keep in touch.