This Distortion Only Cost $3

[@SheldonBird]

Wow, that's pretty cool! I'd love to hear the stereo distortion with a reverb. This would also be a cool in parallel with other things in a recording, too. The Hitachi one has a really cool bite texture, but it would sound crazy layered with other distortions overdubbed! Lol now I want to go play with distortions

[@stephenbeyer]

Do it! 🤘 I love your idea to use them in parallel processing. Totally gonna give this a go, thanks!

[@gibs8412]

NOoooooo,... this is the crap we did in the early 70s when we didnt have gear, buck up and get a 50 dollar boss pedal lol... on the serious side, nice video. I had a Panasonic tape deck then .

[@stephenbeyer]

Haha awesome. Do you feel getting distortion this way this was common knowledge for guitarists back then?

[@gibs8412]

@@stephenbeyer as devices were developed like the echoplex, which was basically a tape deck, but used for guitar, the "preamp/boost" effect of the unit alone was used this way, so yes, but even earlier people were hand building things like treble boosters and such..... the addition of any gain stage in your signal path gives you this capability, often even the input of the recording board itself back then. If you see ep booster on your helix, or seen xotic effects pedal "ep booster", it is based on the effect of the echoplex tape delay input section and compression.

[@mildhighgizz]

The Technics sounds the fullest out of them all, but the Panasonic has an interesting sputtery quality to it, almost Jack White-esque fuzz sound wise. Very cool! Thanks for sharing!

[@stephenbeyer]

I totally agree! The fidelity of the Technics is nicer but the way the Panasonic compresses as its preamp is pushed is sweet. I like them all for their own reasons. Especially because they each have different characteristics on how they color/warp the audio in playback (not just during recording through the preamp like I showed in this video): The Hitachi plays back the audio in a noticeably lower pitch (weak belt perhaps) whereas the Panasonic is the closest to the correct speed. There’s other distinctions in their playback quirks that might prove useful in certain recording scenarios.

[@gamingwithmrgvil3511]

I used to do this back in highschool to get a Metallica sound. My first amp had no distorted channel and the local guitar store didn't sell anything dirtier than the Boss od-1. Things have changed but it's nice to see others thinking out of the box. 👍

[@stephenbeyer]

That’s awesome. Was this a well known thing for guitarists back in the day? I could be wrong, but I feel like it’s not well known of a technique in recent years.

[@ScamLikely9327]

This is fire. Would be sick to emulate this tone.

[@stephenbeyer]

Gotta find yourself a cheap cassette recorder! Check thrift stores and FB marketplace etc.🤘

[@ulysseschaslus2048]

Wild really cool concept though

[@stephenbeyer]

It really has got me wondering how many other ways I may get overdrive tones that I hadn’t considered before! 🤔

[@robguitarwizard]

You never see a cassette deck for $3!!!

[@stephenbeyer]

I was pretty stoked! I’m sure it depends on where you live, but I got all 4 cassette recorders (only one doesn’t play back properly, though I think it’s fixable) for under $10.99. Keep your eyes out! 👀

[@heggy_69]

Man this is making me more excited for the audio mixer i got off ebay lol

[@stephenbeyer]

Aww yeah! I’ve not tried getting distortion through mixers. Let me know what your results are!

[@Dave-Rough-Diamond-Dunn]

This is not news to Gen X guitarists! Our first 'amps' were often Dad's stereo. Hold the little lever up in the top left corner with your finger, and press record on the cassette deck, and you have an amp! 😁 I actually used Dad's reel to reel deck and taped the microphone to my acoustic, insane distortion! I also used a Radiogram, which in the US is called a Console. Deep, heavy bassy distortion from them, nice Black Sabbath type sound, or maybe like Iron Butterfly's Summertime Blues. You should experiment with other old 'stereos', most will work, if you can get the signal into them, not all had mic inputs.

[@stephenbeyer]

That’s awesome! I love how old gear seems to consistently come back into relevancy. What’s old is cool… unless it is just only recently old haha

[@bigbasil1908]

My dad gave me his old sepearates stereo system for christmas one year and I fkd the amplifier by running a guitar through it lol. My grandad who was good at electronics tried to fix it but couldn't get a hold of the right capacitor that had blown.

[@CaptainRon1913]

Like a fuzz pedal

[@stephenbeyer]

Some of the tones definitely got into fuzz territory!

[@mirkomarkovic3438]

Just no, impedance mismatch

[@googaboogaloo]

I turned a cassette recorder with a built in speaker into an amp. It sounds pretty cool and it does power a speaker cab. Not efficiently but it does.

[@stephenbeyer]

It powered a speaker cab, huh? That sounds awesome! I’m wondering if there is anything to worry about doing something like that (like impedance differences in etc).

[@googaboogaloo]

@@stephenbeyer so I ran it out of the headphone jack on the cassette player. What I did was solder a jack onto the pcb where the play head reads so I can also have a tape play too.

[@PedalPlayhouse]

Thats really kool Stephen, the saturation is really great and I enjoyed the way you walked us through with the voice over / visual portions to explain what is creating that effect through the cassette player as well as what got you into effects pedals haha! the excitement of it being just $3 and getting such a unique sound was fun to hear and see. reminds me of the way Gen Loss Mkii sounds in camcorder mode with the saturation on max. The comparisons of the car player and other other ones was really interesting to hear the differences, dude this was all such a fun journey to go with you on thanks for making this.

[@stephenbeyer]

So glad you enjoyed it, Joan. Your kind words are truly appreciated! This video was my attempt at integrating a different style than my other videos and I’m happy with how it turned out. It really is cool the variety that these devices have. It’ll be fun to experiment further with them!

[@masterofreality230]

I could just see a pedal board with a few big ass tape recorders on it lol It does sound good.

[@stephenbeyer]

Haha it’s bound to happen at some point 😂 You know… I didn’t even consider stacking these units together. I’m going to try this now!

[@jacobsaysnotodrugs]

Damn hermano

[@keithlambson]

This is so sick! I need to go find one!

[@stephenbeyer]

Do it, Keith! Try reamping some drums into it!