cassette player

strssmmnt · March 19, 2010, 06:14:36 PM

Does anybody have any thoughts on what can be done with old cassette players? Bending, modifying? I really want to try that!

phantompowers · March 19, 2010, 06:33:40 PM

Loads of stuff!!!

You can change the motor speed from fast to slow with a potentiometer to get weird effects. Record a drone on a full side of a cassette then fuck about with the pitch/speed.

You can remove the playback head and add a line in. This will give you a really nasty lo-fi distortion box.

Check out a guy called Tapetronic. He plays about with tape loops and gets all sorts of scratching effects.

Experiment!!!!

strssmmnt · March 19, 2010, 10:04:59 PM

yeah, I love tapetronic! I wonder how those phone dialing things he has are connected?

Circuitbenders · March 19, 2010, 10:58:40 PM

i've found you either need a tape deck with direct drive or a motor with a lot of torque if you want to slow the tape speed down a lot but still keep it running, otherwise it can't cope with turning the drive belt and just grinds to a halt.

Gordonjcp · March 20, 2010, 12:11:39 AM

Aha, no. What you do is, you record the tape with the motor running really *fast*, then slow it down to "normal" speed.

Dylan · March 20, 2010, 10:22:44 AM

This is a stupid question, but what does the "tape head" look like? I want to do the distortion pedal mod to one, but I don't for the life of me know what it looks like. I've searched it out and found nothing helpful. Can someone post pictures?

Anyway, to add on to the answers these kind fella's have offered: yes there are tons of things you can do with tape players. Open it up and poke around, chances are you'll find some insane feedback points.

strssmmnt · March 20, 2010, 09:59:27 PM

great! I just found a cassette player for kids, with a sing along- microphone! Starting with that one! This will be fun!

Gazadaman · May 15, 2010, 04:02:03 PM

Yo, new to the forum here,

Does anyone know what I can do with a tape machine with two heads? Ive fitted an extra one into a Sony unit, but what do I need to consider in terms of actually getting it to do something funky (power, signal, resistors, caps etc)? Does nothing at the minute that I know of lol, although the tape does seem faster now that I had to remove a pulley for it to go in........

Gordonjcp · May 18, 2010, 09:18:32 PM

The pinch roller (which is probably the pulley you removed) traps the tape against the capstan (the rotating metal pin behind the tape) which pulls it through at a constant speed. Under the deck that will be coupled to a big flywheel thus keeping the tape speed constant.

As to what you can do with two heads, try putting the pinch roller back and fitting a second head in place of the erase head. Connect this to the insides of another tape recorder set to record. When you apply some of the playback signal from the original circuitry to the input of the added-on recorder, you'll get a tape echo. You could just make a record amplifier and bias oscillator up to drive it. Some cassette recorder motors have an electronic speed controller that you can adapt to have an external speed pot, for wibbly wobbly King Tubby dub delay madness.

Gazadaman · May 23, 2010, 04:39:18 PM

Quote from: Gordonjcp on May 18, 2010, 09:18:32 PM
The pinch roller (which is probably the pulley you removed) traps the tape against the capstan (the rotating metal pin behind the tape) which pulls it through at a constant speed. Under the deck that will be coupled to a big flywheel thus keeping the tape speed constant.

As to what you can do with two heads, try putting the pinch roller back and fitting a second head in place of the erase head. Connect this to the insides of another tape recorder set to record. When you apply some of the playback signal from the original circuitry to the input of the added-on recorder, you'll get a tape echo. You could just make a record amplifier and bias oscillator up to drive it. Some cassette recorder motors have an electronic speed controller that you can adapt to have an external speed pot, for wibbly wobbly King Tubby dub delay madness.

Nice 1, ill try it out

Do older tapedecks have "better" circuitry than newer ones? Ive got an old 70s radio recorder that im thinkin of doing something with. I probed the tape circuit and that was fine, but the radio side let off a little smoke. Ill probably gut that bit out if its too risky to bend.......

strssmmnt · July 26, 2010, 12:20:58 AM

hey everyone. I'm trying to change the speed of an old walkman using a pot... but I can't find a good value... it's always: nothing, nothing, nothing and then all of a sudden, full stop... with a reeeeeeally small span of speed shift. like the ketchup effect... should I try smaller values or bigger in this case you think? Or is there anything else I could do? I know this might be a real newbie-question, but I've really tried for quite a while now...

arron · July 26, 2010, 10:15:37 PM

Quote from: strssmmnt on March 19, 2010, 06:14:36 PM
Does anybody have any thoughts on what can be done with old cassette players? Bending, modifying? I really want to try that!

You should track down a copy of Craig Andertons book on Guitar projects, it gives full details on how to turn a tape deck into a tape delay.

marmora · July 27, 2010, 02:04:43 PM

not sure if you need to be logged in or not to view the files, but here's a link with info on the tape delay:
http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=5521&hilit=tape+deck#p59600

Dylan · November 02, 2010, 04:20:12 PM

Okay, so I turned my walkman into a distortion pedal (sounds fantastic), if I want to turn this into a stompbox would I need to use a DPDT switch? I was thinking I'd hook the first pole to go straight to the output jack (maybe to a simple amplifier circuit?) so it would be on stand-by and then the second pole would go through the tape deck. Would that work how I'm picturing it?