I really like your demo and tutorial. As a teenager I was dabbling too with old tape machines to get an "affordable" delay and echo effect. Your video brings back some old sweet memories.
I've wanted to do this for a long time, but haven't been able to find a 3 head tape recorder at a reasonable price. That delay sounds sooo nice!! Good find/purchase!
Great hack... but can you explain me how the "pitch control mod" works? if i understood correctly, the pitch control doesn´t work on recording mode, only playback, right? Thanks :)
Hi. The circuit board has one trace that needs to be cut with a jumper wire added between two points. Details on this and the entire mod project to be posted soon.
Hello ! This is really nice ! I dont't find so much on the i ternet about tapes to choose, at the end of this session , the tape arrive to an end and you need to return to the beginning or not is infinite in anyway ? And please can you tell me about recording over and over on the same tape ? Need I a lot of tapes to studio + field record and delay work !???? Thankkkkks √√√√^π
+djthomaswhite Hey, sorry to ask, but I'm trying to get this to work sans modular. I'm having trouble seeing your inputs/outputs and where they're leading to. I'm using a Presonus Fire Studio as a mixer, and 'm trying to figure out how make it work. Any words of advice, or possibly clarification on where your cables are going/coming from?
if you haven't worked this out yet, you need to take the right output and feed it back into the input along with the input signal, and then use the right output as your output signal with the delay :^)
did you ever post how to "circuit trace cut that needs to be done and wires that connect the cut trace to a different point", sounds great please get bck to me so i can mod my pmd 221. thank you
Same model tape recorder but his design is a mystery. I used info in DIY forums and my projects for guitarists book by Craig Anderton to figure out my own design. Space case has an active mixer for example and my design is passive which introduces slight phasing/chorusing that I think adds to the tone. In other words, his is professional and mine is kinda circuit bent.
+djthomaswhite Thanks for the response. I wanted to contact him for some info but he seems secret. I get it he makes money. I'll see if anyone is down to open their space case to see what he did. I would've buy one but the price since the last batch is way too high. Still glad to see you are down to share your knowledge. I would love to see other diy people brought on the subject. Wanna open source what you found so far ? :)
+the SPACE CASE tape echo From what I've seen in the video comments (this and the other) djthomaswhite definitely respects your right to your Space Case and is only offering a simple DIY hack of an old product for personal use. He seems like a stand up dude from the modular community and I wouldn't worry about him at all. Your Space Case is phenomenal, and some of the demos that I heard on Muffs blew my mind. However, I'm a hack DIY guy and am just as interested in the process of tinkering/modding, building kits, etc. as the end result, so a few youtube videos and forum posts on how to mod a $50 tape deck are right up my alley. You are not losing a customer because, from piecing together multiple videos, forum posts, schematics, etc. I'm now building one of these: I was never going to spend $850 on a delay unit anyway :)
+the SPACE CASE tape echo: Oh, I get that completely and didn't mean to imply in any way that you were out of line. On the contrary, I thought your comment was perfectly polite, and I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression! I was actually commenting in a (failed) attempt to illustrate that I think this is a completely separate type of thing that won't in any way effect your product, a product that I think is fantastic and will have a strong market, and trust me, I think it's absurd for people to ask a manufacturer for instructions to build a current product that is available to be purchased!
+the SPACE CASE tape echo it's a stupid way of thinking sorry. You must feel insecure. In which way 2 people trying to do the same thing as you did but differently will change the fact that you can sell tons of space case tape echo ? People keep buying diy cuz they value their time differently than the people who diy themself. It's just us that are willing to take time because of our curiosity to invest into the process. I would love if you were open about it but no. It's shitty a.f man. Really a bad case of i don't know how to call it. Feels sad tho you could share stuff and let the one willing to make the diy world go through do so. But no better keep it to yourself and make all the money you can. It's not like the space case is sold out every time.. pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
There is a circuit trace cut that needs to be done and wires that connect the cut trace to a different point. This enables pitch control while recording. I hope to publish details on this and the whole mod project soon. I found the info on a message board so it is out there already.
did you ever post how to "circuit trace cut that needs to be done and wires that connect the cut trace to a different point", sounds great please get bck to me so i can mod my pmd 221. thank you
