DIY cassette-based tape echo

[Strategy]

Something much more accessible than cassette tape delay is cassette tape looping, which I can post details about here if anyone's interested, seems a bit off the mark from pedal DIY. I did cassette based looping all last year for most of my shows, it's noisy, limited, but totally great sounding and puts one into the realm of 'ghetto musique concrete' - I'm actually doing a series of 7" releases based on cassette tape loop music for the UK label Entr'acte. Anyways, there's a pretty healthy cassette DIY scene online, but I have yet to see cassette tape echo devices that don't require staggering amounts of ambition...

- Strategy

[Wasted_Bassist]

If anyone comes up with a decently, simple idea for this, I'll do my best to help get some results. My school has a good few cassette and reel-to-reels that I could take off their hands to open up some space in the storage room/attic.

[Rectangular]

From what i've researched, and i've hacked apart a few cassette decks, is that the sound quality to hassle ratio is way quiet great. the echomatic seems like an interesting project i personally am going to try in the future, but using cassettes for the entire echo would be tough because they only have one entry point for a head. tape echos have the heads positioned apart in order to get the effect, so a digital might not sound amazing, but i think the effort going into amplifying multiple heads along a loose tape system that worked well would be difficult. if anyone is up to the challenge, i'd love to see the result, but if your hardcore about tape echo, it might be worth your sanity to just spend the dough on a space echo or echoplex.

Note: I've been building tape machines and have tried to design one of these without result, but this doesnt mean i've given up on the project either, so i don't want to sound discouraging, but i think being realistic about sound quality is important.

BUT HELL, I totally want to see you try!

heed this advice. I've done a lot of cassette tape hacking, too, and have come to the exact same conclusion: cassette tape may seem like the easier/cheaper alternative, but aside from simple cassette-tape looping, its really hard to build anything as solid as a BBD echo pedal, or echoplex device. remember that consumer reel-to-reels are usually using 1/4" tape, which can take much more of a beating, not to mention its easier to align and get good tension with.

[amptramp]

Has anyone tried to use a disk drive (either hard disk or floppy)?  That would get magnetic media on a rotating platform, which seems to be the most difficult part of the exercise.  Then you simply (yeah, it's simple for me to describe because I'm not the one doing it) mount tape heads where they contact the floppy (which I assume would be easier than breaking into a hard drive).  You can swing the head angle around or change the speed or provide several discrete read heads for discrete amounts of delay.

Floppy drives are available for no cash, just carry, on garbage nights around here.  El cheapo heads can be found in cassette-based boom boxes, sometimes right beside your source of floppy drives, also on garbage night.  Good luck and good hunting!

[frequencycentral]

"O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that."

Shakespeare (King Lear, 1605)

[Top Top]

Has anyone tried to use a disk drive (either hard disk or floppy)?  That would get magnetic media on a rotating platform, which seems to be the most difficult part of the exercise.  Then you simply (yeah, it's simple for me to describe because I'm not the one doing it) mount tape heads where they contact the floppy (which I assume would be easier than breaking into a hard drive).  You can swing the head angle around or change the speed or provide several discrete read heads for discrete amounts of delay.

Floppy drives are available for no cash, just carry, on garbage nights around here.  El cheapo heads can be found in cassette-based boom boxes, sometimes right beside your source of floppy drives, also on garbage night.  Good luck and good hunting!

I have seen this idea discussed before. I don't know of anyone who has done it. It sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe if you could get some sort of adjustable tension arm to be able to adjust the tape heads just right.

Honestly, though I really like the idea, I think I am giving up on this for now and just buying one of those cheap fab echo's to modify instead Maybe two modded fab echos in a box just to keep it complicated 

[Strategy]

When I started getting into DIY I didn't expect to find so many amazing delay projects- no shortage of them, so little need to resort to tape. Most people in my geographic area build fuzz boxes, I was like this when I discovered the magnus modulus, et al: 

[Rectangular]

Has anyone tried to use a disk drive (either hard disk or floppy)?  That would get magnetic media on a rotating platform, which seems to be the most difficult part of the exercise.  Then you simply (yeah, it's simple for me to describe because I'm not the one doing it) mount tape heads where they contact the floppy (which I assume would be easier than breaking into a hard drive).  You can swing the head angle around or change the speed or provide several discrete read heads for discrete amounts of delay.

Floppy drives are available for no cash, just carry, on garbage nights around here.  El cheapo heads can be found in cassette-based boom boxes, sometimes right beside your source of floppy drives, also on garbage night.  Good luck and good hunting!

that idea has been discussed to death on here before, it seems really cool and novel until you try to set it up.  one of the big problems is that floppy disks, hard disks, and related media are meant to store Digital information, not analog. this means that  either there is a signal (ie: a 1) or no signal (ie: a 0). if you're following along with me, you'll soon realize that this doesn't translate into a wide-band frequency response. at best you'll get some mid-range muffled sounds. I've rigged this up in the past, and the signal-to-noise made it just useless.  if you want a noise maker or musique concrete, it has its place, but it ain't no echoplex replacement.

[petemoore]

  I got the idea of using a wheel like the 'oil can echo' [I think it was called].
 Wrap magnetic vynil around a wheel which has heads situated around it.
 rec>Play>Play>Play>Erase or some sutch arrangement..
 That'd get 'everything on the outside where it could be more easily manipulated for position and wiring...and pretty much ditches the 'deck' altogether.
  Start with something like a phonograph, figure out how to put cylinders on that [so you can wrap new vynil on the 'spare' for easy vynil renewal process].
  Then it'd just be a matter of hookin' the cassette or RTR heads/circuitry [I'd probably start by cajoling a working units [cheep these days] tape/record/erase heads out of the deck and to the position-ers around the rotating cylinder.
  The cylinder block could just be some 33-1/3 records glued and stacked on the 'tall pin' of the phono-platter, perhaps some fine tuning [lathe-ing to make it perfectly round] and bondo to make a nice flat sided cylinder.
  Not too sure ho hard it'd be to get adjustable speed feature..
 

[JKowalski]

 I got the idea of using a wheel like the 'oil can echo' [I think it was called].
 Wrap magnetic vynil around a wheel which has heads situated around it.
 rec>Play>Play>Play>Erase or some sutch arrangement..
 That'd get 'everything on the outside where it could be more easily manipulated for position and wiring...and pretty much ditches the 'deck' altogether.
  Start with something like a phonograph, figure out how to put cylinders on that [so you can wrap new vynil on the 'spare' for easy vynil renewal process].
  Then it'd just be a matter of hookin' the cassette or RTR heads/circuitry [I'd probably start by cajoling a working units [cheep these days] tape/record/erase heads out of the deck and to the position-ers around the rotating cylinder.
  The cylinder block could just be some 33-1/3 records glued and stacked on the 'tall pin' of the phono-platter, perhaps some fine tuning [lathe-ing to make it perfectly round] and bondo to make a nice flat sided cylinder.
  Not too sure ho hard it'd be to get adjustable speed feature..
 

Im not exactly sure but that sounds like the Binson Echorec that I posted earlier in this topic.

Magnetic vinyl? What is that?

[petemoore]

Magnetic vinyl? What is that?
  The stuff they use in RTR, cassette and echoes, ..recording tape.
  Because RTR's and other units don't have the heads in the right places [etc.] and it's all tight and bunchy, requires precision tape alignments..and you want a loop instead of a linear tape...
  Ditch the decks and start with a wheelin' cylinder, if the sides are near perfect when spinning [I'm sure there are other ways to get greater precision than phono-salvage, but it might do, even be cool result if it's a little warble or tremolo] the heads could much more easily be precisely placed within pickup proximity of/not touching the spinning tape wheel...maybe remove all the electronics from an RTR or Cassette [excizing the tape machine parts], build a new board/knob chassis with the heads hangin' out, mount that on the platter frame so that a placement platform for the tapehead mounting lets the original wiring reach.
  That or figure out what the preamp is and re-lay-out, start a new build...
  Sounds like a lot of work, but much more plausible to me than reworking an existing machine/chassis,  tape-loop changes would be like changing a phonograph album, if you can get the platter to run slower a new vynil [recording tape] loop might even last a while.

[JKowalski]

Magnetic vinyl? What is that?
  The stuff they use in RTR, cassette and echoes, ..recording tape.

Aha, of course 

The binson echorec still seems exactly like what you are proposing - a large rotating cylinder with magnetic material on the outside and the heads along its circumference.

Then, theres the fender tape echos which used the cylinder idea but instead of permanent magnetic material attached to the large cylinder, a loop of tape traveled around half of it and then went off to another rotating cylinder with tension arms in between.  The heads were poisitoned on the cylinder parts. 

I assume you mean to permanently attach the tape to the cylinder, a la Binson Echorec...? 

[sean k]

http://www.penumbra.co.nz/allthegear.html
about half way down this page theres a whole host of the various machines and so could be a good place to start searching.
A good mechanical drawing of a 4' disc with tape on it would be good to see.

[sean k]

[Nasse]

Some players prefer tape echoes because of flutter

[Lurco]

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/04/24/floppy-drive-reverb-how-to-recording-analog-audio-on-floppy-disks/
http://hackaday.com/2009/04/24/analog-audio-recorded-on-a-floppy/
http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2009/04/24/circuit-girl-turns-floppy-drive-into-reverb/
http://vimeo.com/jeri
http://vimeo.com/3186407

[Taylor]

 

That's really neat.

[Rectangular]

I stand corrected. jeri ellsworth is some kind of goddess.

[petemoore]

  Yea...Binson style...platter on a platform...'out there' where you can work on it.
  Looks much more capable of a plausible DIY invite than any of the ''re-work the deck'' visions.

[deathfaces]

the The Watkins "Custom" Solid-State Copicat (Mark III and Mark IV) is close to what i'd come up with when thinking about this. how awesome!