Building a Tape Loop Player from Scratch | Prototyping the Cassettone Two

[@chriskaprys]

20-some years ago, that prototype board is exactly what i dreamed of having in my tiny studio, with loops of different sounds hung from pushpins up on a cork board on the wall. Eventually I just used a soldering iron to melt two holes in the top of a radio shack front-load cassette player, and would painstakingly feed a section of tape through the works, then hold play + pause, and i could gently shift the ribbon back and forth manually in order to "scratch" the sound, wax record style. i bet you could also "scratch" with that prototype setup - it's really yummy looking! And i'm excited to see more progress on this v2.

[@joshuaa.c.newman7430]

Been collecting old tape mechanisms for just such an experiment! So excited to see this!

[@RCAvhstape]

Cool video. Watching builds is so satisfying.

[@maikmario71]

❤Wow, a great idea and implementation! I would like to build a REAL analogue delay in a similar way, maybe you would like to design something like that in the future, as real analogue tape delays are rare, but sound very musical and warm, new real tape delays products are unfortunately available very expensive. Building something like that yourself would also be a lot of fun.

[@middlesidetopwise]

3:53 love the Sam Raimi style Zoom in haha, I just watched Army of Darkness

[@RCAvhstape]

I imagine they're called movements because they are similar to clockwork and watch mechanisms, which are also called movements.

[@TheSoundofMachines]

Aha! I had no idea.

[@GameOfThePlanets]

Just a thought. Since you're using a wooden chassis, you may want to try and ground any parts in the tape path. just the surface contact of the tape on plastic can build static voltage over time, and since you don't have a big metal chassis ground plane, that could potentially happen here. Not definitively saying it would be a problem, but just something you might want to be aware of. I know you've built these things before, and maybe it's not an issue, but since this is a new project and new design, you may run into new problems.

[@TheSoundofMachines]

@@GameOfThePlanets great feedback to consider. I appreciate any advice I can get! I’m bringing these comments to my tech person and we will add it to the our list of considerations. Thanks for bringing it up.

[@SISKworks]

Awesome. Can’t wait to see the final product. What are you using to control the motor speed?

[@TheSoundofMachines]

@@SISKworks in this video nothing really-just an ill-advised pot that doesn’t do the job. The final design requires a transistor and cap in the circuit, but I have someone helping me out with that now :)

[@digitalsouthofficial]

verycool!

[@mikegeary8056]

You probably know this but the tape mechanisms that a still available are not very good to put it mildly. If I were gonna make something like this I would use a pair of good Sony Walkman mechanisms which I would find used.

[@TheSoundofMachines]

@@mikegeary8056 in a perfect world they would be available everywhere. I’m trying my best to future-proof the build by finding the most accessible parts. The cool thing with these is that anyone (with a little bit of electrical know how) can swap out parts easy-peesy. At least that’s my goal.