Sonar is my first dabble in the world of Sequencing & DAW's in general.

Prior to that, we were running a piar of Fostex D90 8-tracks, slaved together for 16 tracks.

We paid £1,400 EACH

Wilko,

I guess ...to double track that recorder you have to be ambidexterous and have two of them.....

This is the Sony TC-377 I was using in 1976


I then bought the TEAC 144 Portastudio when that came out. Later upgrading it to the 244 which had built in noise reduction (gasps of amazement).

I then jumped up to 8 tracks with a Fostex Model 80 and a Revox B77 HS half track for mastering. My compositions were based around the output of a BBC Model B computer running the UMI MIDI sequencer connected to a the inevitable Yamaha DX7 and Roland bits.

A few years later I bought my first PC and, after messing with Voyetra Sequencer Plus, eventually discovered Cakewalk products.

Guitarhacker,

I have another recorder in F. I can play both at the same time. Yet it limits the repertoire quite a bit.

Wilko

This may qualify as "serious", but here goes.

I had an old Grundig reel to reel in the late '70s. It was stereo and had sound with sound. It also had the green "eye" tube that acted like a VU meter. I bought it used and used it for five years. Can't remember why, I had to leave it behind when I moved to California in '83. Around '93, I had an opportunity to return for a visit and bring along an ADAT. After 10+ years, the Grundig worked like a charm. I was able to transfer a bunch of old tapes to digital. I've been "remixing" some of the tunes in Sonar.

My first real Tape Recorder was a Teac 2340. It was the little sister to the 3340. It could do everything the 3340 would do except it didn't tun at 15ips.
I ran a Teac 2A mixer.

If you count messing with my Dad's stuff as a kid... Pioneer RT-707 (stereo, but no multitrack).

On my own: Started in 2004 on a PC with EMU-1212m and Adobe Audition 1.5.

Now: PC with EMU 1820m, using Sonar 7PE/Audition 3/Project 5... Frontier TranzPort control surface, Event ALP 5 monitors, Sibelius 5.

Teac A1230 (got it free) , Fostex x1 ($399. piece of crap), Cakewalk guitar tracks with sound blaster card,
Korg D8 ($699 piece of crap) , Sonar 6 HS with Presonus firebox , Sonar 8 PE with M-audio 1814

 
Yamaha MT1X cassette 4-track recorder 29 years ago. I believe the members of my band all pitched in to get it, but it stayed with me most of the time anyway.
 
Then in college I upgraded to a Tascam 424 cassette 4-track, this time I had a box (JL Cooper PPS-1) that wrote/read a form of SMPTE time code so I can sync it with my Ensoniq EPS sampler workstation's sequencer.
 
My first job after college I bought a Windows 95 PC and Cakewalk Professional 3.01 and an Opcode MQX-32M ISA card MIDI interface. Stuck with the Cake ever since!

4 channels:  TASCAM Portastudio - 488 
16 channels:  2 ADAT Blackface with Sonurus StudI/O card (still have the card!)
8 channels:  Presonus FirePod (The original firewire one)
16 channels + 2 stereo channels:  Mackie 1640 Mixer with firewire card
16 channels + 2 stereo channels: Behringer XR18 wireless mixer (current setup)