KeyPlayer - a circuit bent tape player instrument 

Thank you! Well..No I didn’t follow any schematics but... I also can’t really call this 100% my idea as many others have done similar things in the past. I’ve been meaning to do something like this for years but then recently the videos from Rich Barnett/The Sound of Machines inspired me to just get it done.

@@SISKworks 🎉 Yeahhhh....nice.

I think they were 50K but 100K would also probably work.

Haha, Simple. I had five matching pots and only three white knobs on hand when building it.

I really don’t know if that would work or not. Seems like it might as long as the voltage stays positive but I’m really not sure. Next time I work on one I’ll give it a shot. Also, if your player has the speed trimmer located on the main board you might want to first try just replacing it with a larger value pot instead of the whole PWM circuit. Sometimes that works better since it won’t introduce the PWM noise. But sometimes you might not get enough range of control that way.

@@SISKworks Yeah the trimmer on this particular player doesn’t give much range to play with - but with about 1v-5v (the max the motor can handle) from the PWM I can get at least two or three octaves. We’ll see how it goes though. I have a Sony somewhere which I know has better speed range, when I find it I’ll put a pot on that. I’ve also just ordered a bunch of different value photoresistors to work out which is best for a vactrol - I don’t understand electronics well enough to risk zapping my Division6 sequencer by plugging it straight into this project!

It depends. If you follow Rich’s instructions (which I do with my “Cassettone Mini” devices) you should use 5K pots as that will give the best range of control. Using larger pots will just mean they have the same amount of control in a smaller amount of turning and the rest of the turning won’t have any changes. Doing how Rich does it you basically just replace the internal speed trimmer and you get a limited range. HOWEVER that is not what I’m doing on this one. Instead I’m using a PWM (pulse width modulation) board to control the motor speed which give a MUCH wider range of speed control. It goes from super fast “chipmunk” speed all they way down to super crawling slow and even full stop. The PWM board is wired directly to the motor with the internal speed controller completely bypassed. I have another video that explains the PWM mod much better that I will link below.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BdNb8A14s2s.html

Well this is the first one I’ve made so far. But I would definitely sell it...for the right price 😉 If you are serious you can contact me at www.siskworks.com and maybe we can work something out.

@@SISKworks thx bro, have 📧

@@SISKworks awesome thx...can you add just pitch control to my 1985 pioneer metal cassette deck?

@@rustymixer2886 yeah probably.

@@SISKworks awesome lets do that