This looks absolutely perfect for those times when you want to listen to the first half of your six favourite albums and then the second half all in a row.
_"I'm not particularly good at repairing things, I'm just some guy who likes to tinker with things. I'll play around with them, hoping to get them working just enough to be able to show them in a video."_ That's one of the most humble understatements I've ever heard.
This is the kind of guy that makes it look so simple it will let you think: "hey why pay someone? i can do that too".. one hour later you fucked everything up beyond comprehension 😂❤
@@DildoFagginsNL And two hours later you've got a better handle on things. DIY repair is all bout learning how to save your next project from yourself by doing it right, and as far as learning processes go, it's really effective.
@@electrictroy2010 At 2:26 he explains that some the controls are not normally worded. In this case Reject for Eject, but you know that already as you have watched the video.
This whole mechanism makes me think of a car company developing a means of having the engine disconnect from its mounts and slide to the other end of the vehicle... so it can drive in reverse.
It'd be more like having 6 engines in a car and each of them with forward and reverse. It's more like a solution to play multiple tapes in queue than a replacement to auto reverse.
I don't know what's best, the ingenuity and creativity of the analogue era or Techmoan's humility in going through so many small and moving pieces, partially restoring some functions in a device almost 50 years old and then only calling himself a "tinkerer".
He has got the patience of a saint to deal with all that fiddly nonsense inside. I'd probably give up and crawl into a ball weeping, LOL. Ultimately it's just so damned rewarding seeing his work pay off and watching this ancient gear spring back into life. I appreciate his love of ancient gadgetry, I find these videos endlessly fascinating.
I find you can clearly see the difference between someone doing this as a hobby and an actualy expert. That said, most people probably wont have the patience do deal with stuff like this from the get go.
I think his jokes that he splices in there while explaining what he's doing are the best. if you don't pay attention you might as well miss them. and I love that.
As a retired mechanical engineer all I can say is that you are very skilled in your ability to both understand and repair this excessively complex mechanism. Well done!!!
@@electrictroy2010 yeah Im a lot like that, if something is easy and cheap fix I'll do it, if its time consuming I rather spend a bit more money and get it done. I really don't have that much free time, so I prefer to use my time chilling or having fun, instead of "working".
"I'm just filling in time with irrelevance", well I learnt something there too man. I actually thought they were one and the same entity. I love this channel.
I... noticed it but never questioned it, and that displeases me, so I just looked some bits up now. 'Fillippos' is in fact attested in Greek as a name, presumably from the assimilation of the 'h' in 'hippos' in dialects that preserved it. That surprised me; it's non-standard but also not incorrect Greek! Apparently the doubled-l form of the name in English is more commonly derived from people adapting 'Philip' to English (or Welsh, apparently) spelling rules though. And my ten minutes of youtube comment web search diligence could not tell you which is applicable to the man who made the screwdriver, if it even is either of those.
I love the idea that some designers sat and were like "you know what's annoying? Flipping tapes, like just flip the suckers in the air" and everyone said yes
@@petercortens6019 hey, if everyone who had an idea said "let's wait a year or two until there are cheap bidirectional motors & heads", we'd be back in the stone age and we'd be etching our youtube comments on a tree
OK. This requires a medal or a prize awarded...🏆🎖 As someone who has been repairing vintage audio for over 40 years, you did very well. You are well above the 'tinkerer' standard and I can officially promote you to semi-professional bodger. The world is a better place with Techmoan.
I think I'd agree with you. I'm slowly learning electronics, and have been able to -bumblefuck- navigate my way around modern iPhones and laptops, and I've been building computers quite literally since I could lift them up. But I don't think you could plop this down on my desk and tell me to go for it without you getting a few bonus screws and bits and pieces in return. But I tend to find the best way to learn is by doing.
@@uzaiyaro Yes, keep it up. To anyone interested in tinkering I would recommend learning the basics of electronics and material sciences as the basics can take you a long way. Ohms law for instance can make 90% of electronics make sense and can be learned in a minute.
@@uzaiyaro That kind of reminds me of when I was working fixing laptops & PC's etc, we all used disposable plastic cups to hold all the screws as things got disassembled. If you wanted to be an arsehole, you would sneak up and drop an extra screw in the cup, then amuse yourself as they would try and put it back together, usually several times, trying to figure out where this screw belonged.
@@M3D1C2121 Not sure if he is to be honest, I see many creators just leaving a comment on a popular video as a way to get you to go to their channel. :)
@@VincentGroenewold I totally see what you're saying, but I have a hard time believing that Destin would ever do anything like that for clout. He loooves the little mechanical bits and the intelligent design. While I didn't quite expect him to be here, when you think about it it makes total sense that Destin would enjoy this stuff. :)
I encountered one of these in use as a pub BGM in the late 80s when I was on work experience with a company that installed jukeboxes, fruit machines and the like in pubs. It was playing boring instrumental muzak constantly and the jukebox would somehow override it when a customer paid to put on a song. I think they actually chose boring music for the BGM to try to encourage use of the jukebox
@Sannesthesia Too high a glucose level would likely have the same sophoric effect as the muzak. Of course one should know even the geniuses like Mozart wrote muzak. Stuff to be background to say a garden party and outdoor meal. Not everything is an opera or a symphony experience to be focused on. They had to eat too you know. The workaday stuff the rich patrons needed in return letting you have the time to do 'art'. A symphony can be a great show for the guests and status symbol. The message being I am rich enough to throw money at art and extravagant performances and still maintain my grand estates and business empire. The trade off seems fair. Do boring stuff in return for fun later. Better than the poor people who ground their bodies and souls down in service from dawn till midnight.
It's really a niche BGM machine and not any more complicated than many of the disc changers at the time, being able to load it up once and let it go forever is an attractive feature.
“Now if you’ve ever attempted to repair anything, I’m sure you’ll be more than familiar with this part of the process. Everything seems to be going so well, then for whatever reason, it all seems to stop working completely.” *me having flashbacks*
Me anytime I think I might be able to save money by doing it myself. Usually I end up with new tools that I probably won't ever use again plus a professional repair bill. Oh well; I'll just keep trying for fun.
Despite the mechanism being a hit or miss due to age, this thing is freaking sick. I love old tech like this, and I appreciate you putting together a nice lengthy video for us to enjoy!
My aunt owned one of these, and I’d completely forgotten about this. Yes, it never worked well, and six was the ideal number. Thank you for the trip down memory lane.
I'm a radio amateur and chatted to a chap across the water In Wales the first time a few weeks ago. He was telling me about his time repairing background music systems. Turns out we are both fans of your channel and we chatted about your videos for a good while! He talked about working on this and how he replaced the steing on on sled mechanism with fishing line 🤣 . We both hoped you would make a video about it!
This machine brings back great memories. They were made in Austria and in most ski resorts bars in the seventies they had one, all decked out with german Schlager hit cassettes and popular Eurodisco compilations, as well as Nana Mouskouri, Demis Roussos etc. So, while getting high on schnapps, I would sit and watch the cassettes slide down the ramp.
talk in your own name . i don't remember as a viewer to have been appointed you as a representative of my opinion . you are a pos assuming you represent everybody's opinion . thumbs down.
Dude I've been fixing electronics for 15 years and I've literally never thought of that tack trick to catch a spring. I love it. And on that note, this thing is a nightmare. I would've been the first guy. Got 3 belts in and was like, actually, fuck this. Edit: Also love all the rubber reversion on your hands. The mark of a true "why am I doing this" job.
I don't work on electronics much but I do work on small engines and this trick is going to save me so much annoyance with the tiny springs random things.
I have one of these in a box in my closet that my father tried to repair about 20 years ago and gave up on. It was originally used for background music in a hotel we had in Newquay, Cornwall in the early 1970's. I took a look at it a few years ago but quickly put it back in the box when I saw how complicated it was. Watching this video (almost) makes me want to have another go at repairing it.
Go for it, at least now you have some video reference, not only those drawings in the manual. However if it was used like that, I bet the head is weared back to its soldering pins :) So if it was not changed earlier, I think it has to be done now (if you want to actually hear something played on it)
That's a blast from the past - I worked on one of those back in my days as an audio engineer with Dixserve, the repair section of Dixons. I remember we were having a party at my house and I "borrowed it" to give it a "good soak test" and used it all evening (and it worked!).
Dude I literally just yesterday just showed a friend that video from 5 years ago, and we both really wanted to see this silly machine. And now we can take a look
I remember these with a degree of fondness. Back in 1973 I joined Comet as a trainee audio engineer, a wonderful part of my life and many memories, I've worked on many of these and the later models. Philips back in the day were very innovative with many of their designs, mostly good and some bad, this fell somewhere between the two. You were right when you said they didn't sell very many as they were an oddity, not really high on a HIFI buffs wish list and too expensive/fiddley as a general tape player. The vast majority were sold as background music and mostly to restaurants. Invariably they ended up in the kitchen so diners didn't have to listen to cassette tapes clattering about in the ski lift and it wasn't surprising that because of its location the kitchen staff looked after it. After a while, I could guess which restaurant one of these came from without looking at the job card but the dried food that had found its way into every crevice and usually the reason why it wanted service in the first place. Happy days....PS circa 12:22 fitting the belt under the plastic drive wheel was easy if you had a piece of thin stainless steel rod about 0.5mm thick, the end shaped like the letter u in uF the long tail being the handle. The hooked end went under the wheel while you tensioned the RHS of the belt and then threaded it to the left, easy ;)
Well it is certainly that attitude that fosters innovation. So yes - in many ways your statement is right. Discounting all the man hours that's gone in to dreaming up ways for us to kill each other.
@@electrictroy2010 actually, if you look at integrated circuit internal schematic, it would be more complex than circuits with discrete components. It just that all of the complexities are hidden and not visible to naked eyes.
I used to have this deck. Whenever I as a young adolescent threw a party back in the eighties (whenever my parents were out for a longer period of time - you know how it is, haha), I'd ask those of my friends, who were able to get their hands on the latest music, to make 60 min. mix tapes and bring it to the party. With each tape containing the latest and greatest of then current music - some even remixed together by our resident DJ - the party would not go dead from lack of music. And the deck itself even garned a bit of attraction - especially whenever the tape changed.
Man, when he pulled up the diagram in the service manual on his tablet and I saw just how complex it was and how many bloody parts it had, I just about passed out. LOL, he has way more patience that I think i would have had :) I find this stuff insanely fascinating.
@@main6974 Yes, but if you have 4 you can alternate them ABAB and have it continuously play both sides in order instead of having repeating sides every so often
Having lived thru my childhood with cassette tape players and all that stuff, I gotta admit that's the first time I'm seeing this machine and all I can say is just WOW! This is an incredible design and also I wish I had one of these back in the days.
This reminds me of my days of being a consumer electronics technician. The electronics course I took taught all about circuits and nothing about mechanics. I worked on MANY old car stereos, cassette decks and VCRs sometimes the mechanicals were a nightmare.
I remember seeing one of these being used in a cafe in St. Helier, Jersey in the summer of 1976. Turn it on in the morning, turn it off in the evening with no repeat songs throughout the day.
agreed! plus the amount of times I would have smashed something against the wall would have made my effort to build this channel a moot one. The restraint it takes to do this is awe inspiring, for me that is. A level of self control I will never attain! In my defense, if you were interested in blind rage and destruction, this channel would have been better off with me ;-)
@@jonathansabinvarietyfilms thanks for revealing the Dunning Kruger effect. are yu a psychologist. I am amazed at what type of esoteric knowledge people have stacked in their brains.
Damn ! I went to a Hifi Show at Earls Court in early 70’s and one like this was on a stand , I looked in wonder and never thought I would see one again , thanks techmoan 😊👍
This is great! It reminds me of, of all things, a donut machine my stepfather used in a snack bar he created for a Monkey Wards store many years ago. Batter would get squirted into a revolving circular metal "spider" that sat in a tray of hot cooking oil. Halfway around the circle, each (now half-cooked) donut would get flipped over, allowing it to cook on the other side. As a kid I got a kick out of watching them get flipped! Watching the cassettes make their way down the "ski slope" reminded me of that, odd association I know . Thanks for a great video. I have worked on things like this in my day so I know the frustration as well as the rewards when you get something to work.
Imagine the amount of engineering it took to create this. It's not a wonder it was in danger of being outdated when released, especially if competing manufacturers were working on something else during the time of R & D. Brilliant video as always.
There's no way I'd skip the repair section in any of your videos. I'm just fascinated by how the mechanism works, and watching the repair succeed was worth it. Cheers!
Your dedication to your craft is as inspiring as the over-engineering of this cassette deck. Bravo to you, sir, for taking the time to make such a quality video.
Most people do ask me " Why do you love the 70s and 80s so much ????? " Well, take a look at this beautiful piece of technical art......any questions???!!!!!
Basically it's a cheap solution to the problem which is also prone to constant failure. We just like it because it's hilarious that such a stupid idea was executed with that much dedication. Playing both sides could be achieved if the motor was able to reverse at playback speed and the cassette was moved slightly to access the other side. Cycling between cassettes would be a lot more stable when using a rack and a robotic arm to grab and place them. Basically what every tape library had been doing since and to this day (they still exist for backup reasons, we have one at our company, currently 7 TB/tape).
I worked in the Radio/TV/HiFi trade for about 30 years from 1969. These players came along in the early/mid 70's IIRC and were just the job for pubs who wanted continuous background music without the same tracks coming around every hour or so. They were pretty reliable too, although there was a cord-drive that was meant to pull the cassette through the deck and failed occasionally. I owned an N2400 which was a great machine which made really nice recordings.
Videos like this "in depth repairing" are my fav Techmoan videos. And he doesn't even have to be successful in the repair for me to watch it over and over again. Really appeals to the nerd in me.
What an odd, fantastical device. Thank you for all your videos, I really enjoy watching them! I love how you explain each device in depth including their history, as well as showing how you fix them.
I can't imagine how someone actually designed this cassette deck with all that complexity inside. There must have been a crazy amount of prototypes and "back to the drawing board" moments.
These were the same people who had been designing reel to reel recorders and video recorders for years so they would have been used to the mechanical complexities. Someone working on this design in 1969 may have been transferred to the team that designed the N1500 VCR mechanism a year later or so.
You should see some of the other earlier Phillip's offerings.. Thee were many radios, recorders, & even TV's that used fascinating amounts of string, springs & Bowden cables! (Philips Monoknob?) I once had this theory that the was a very old man at Philip's R&D, probably like me with a grey beard. Under his bench there would be boxes of said springs, string & Bowden cables, just waiting to be incorporated into the next design.
@@davidstone921 I love that description. It makes you wonder. And using string inside a box of what was back then, cutting edge technology, was whacky but also a bit of genius!
@@Gadgetonomy It wasn't that uncommon either. Japanese cassette decks often used string and a kind of flywheel as an inertia damper for the cassette well door! And of course radios had been using tuning string for several decades at that point (I think that technique was invented in the late 20s/early 30s).
@@davidstone921 Philips had a reputation for producing great products that were a pain to repair. Europeans loved their engineering, but sometimes they went overboard. Still applies today. I opened my Philips shaver to clean it and couldn't put it back together again.
"I'm just filling in time here with irrelevance while I get it open". Spit out my coffee on that one 🤣🤣 I am so glad we get to see this, I can't believe the other video is 5 years old. I remember that one and actually rewatched it over Christmas on a binge session. Thank you for this Mat!!
Very interesting. It is hard to imagine the assembly line, or assembly system used to construct that all. The exterior and facia, looks relatively ‘cheap’ or simple, by today’s standards, but the inside is to me - astounding. Cassettes gave me many years of discovery and pleasure: so I really enjoyed this whole production.
I was in the military and we had massive libraries of reel to reel "mix tapes" that we would use them at parties and they would play for hours. A lot of work went into recording onto the reels from multiple albums. I could absolutely see these kind of things in those environments for sure.
I'm thinking along these lines. I can see a player like this used in that kind of situation, or a department store. Of course, someone would have to check on it to make sure it doesn't jam
This was exactly what my former collection of reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes was about. We called them the "Swingtapes". Now it's digital on a laptop and it can play continuously for 5 days.
My dad told me how he used to dj student parties back in the 70’s this way. He had a reel to reel and spent hours meticulously recording songs from vinyl records to them to then play back at the event itself. When he did new years eve parties he even timed it exactly so that the tape would fade out at precisely 10 seconds to midnight and then start a new song at midnight.
Live and learn the hard way!Too bad the r&d depts don't go the extra mile and work out ALL the bugs like with tapes getting chewed up and cd's being scratched and skipping annoyingly!
You have an enormous amount of patience. As a person who started in broadcasting in 1965 I have had a ton of tape recorders open.... most developed belt problems. Thanks for your shows. Keep it up. Dennis
It's 1975. As your lady arrives, Neil Diamond is playing. Barry and sparkling wine gets her in the mood. Then it's Englebert to accompany the making of sweet, sweet love.
...But then there is a horrible noise as the tape starts to be consumed by the mechanism halfway through Please Release Me, then the next hour is spent carefully extracting it with a pen lid.
In the 90s, I lived in a town that had a revitalization/beautification program called the 2020 Vision, with a list of things they wanted to get done by 2020. They actually mostly did it, believe it or not.
Wow what a cool machine. This looks so awesome even when its off. This is the holy grail of casette changers. Also I always thought the compact cassette is such a superior design. These things work almost flawlessly when 40 years old!
@@BlueSupreme not really, pretty much everything was made without computers, so it was the norm. Designers were engineers, they knew what would work, knew different methods, loved to build test set ups. It's exactly how it should be done to develop your own engineering abilities. Too many designers today are CAD technicians without the broad experience of experimentation. Computer simulation can assist making moving components work together, it's far cheaper and saves time. But on an individual level, we are losing skills in some areas. The work produced is no less impressive however, even if a product is less mechanical and more computerised, specifying components and programming the logic for your goal is an incredible skill in its self.
@@barrymore87 oh yes, they certainly do. No issues there. Big issue with skill fade though, you only have to look at brand new cars, trains and planes. When unexpected issues are found with a new product in service it takes a long time to fix, sometimes they can't even fix it, they simply find a work around. Years ago, they had the same teething issues, but we're pretty good at fixing these issues swiftly. The recent 737 max saga, Trent 1000 shambles, Hitachi 800 train mess when testing...
I really got excited like a little child when I saw this video pop up in my feed! This bloke really managed to get hold of one of those flippin' (literally) decks! These 40 minutes felt like five, definitely love your videos! Keep up the great content!
This would be a great machine to use to steal your unsuspecting friends' tapes (without the ski slope attachment). They would pop their tape into the machine and after it plays the A side, they can watch their tape disappear into the guts of the machine and you can then say to them, "Oh well, it's gone now." :)
The bravery in taking on that repair deserves a medal Mat! As someone's that's managed to fix some walkmans and struggled I think my head would explode taking that on. Hat's off to you sir! Great to see this working. A tinkerer is putting it very modestly.
I came across this page by accident, and I’m still in disbelief I sat here and watch the whole 40 minute video. His voice is very soothing and he is very detailed with his work.
As someone who's worked on a few VHS decks, it was fun to see the huge mode wheel in this deck. I love the Rube Goldberg-esque engineering in these old devices.
You can directly tell how much time and sanity a man has spent fiddling with a piece of mechanical nightmare by how proficient he is in operating it without its cover on.
All the coolest mechanisms come from the 70s!!! This was JUST before we started having microcontrollers and servos in everything, so this was humanity's PEAK time for inspired electromechanical wonders
@@CaptTerrific I love all kind of things from the 1970's, that decade fascinates me probably the most in the 20th century. Miniaturization was already in full progress! Commercial transistors were around since the 1950äü-ǘä-ü 's, that made such novelties as car radios possible that hit the market in 1955. Minicomputers were availab le already in the late 1960's, the PDP-8 in 1968 only weighted about 250 pounds/110kg (that's only a cabinet, not a whole room anymore). MOSFETs from the early 1960's led the way to the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, in 1971. Men were walking on the moon at that time!!! And among all this futuristic wonders was this little electromagnetic miracle, that made it so easy and affordable to carry - and share - music around, that was still waiting for it's major impact a decade later... Amazing! OK, today everybody carries around a whole entertainment center and movie studio in his pocket and we can fly helicopers remotly on mars (since a few weeks ago), but still the 1970's are just amazing - and the fact that we survived all the bad things of that time too!
This was really pretty spectacular to watch. I miss the days when things were mechanical like this and you could literally see it move and work - but I absolutely do not miss the times when they break and you need to replace those sticky belts! Haha. Thank you so much for doing so much work to get the ski slope working, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the whole journey, brought back some nostalgia from back in the 90s (the 80s came to my country in the 90s!).
I always look forward to watching Matt's new video every Saturday morning. I guess it's sort of like the 30 something's equivalent of the Saturday morning cartoons we grew up with (at least in the U.S.) These types, where he has to repair the device as well are definitely my favorite!
From the age of storing lots of music on thumbnail-sized circuits via ones and zeros, it's fascinating to see the complicated mechanics they had to invent half a century ago just to listen to a long set of music without getting up changing the tape or side. Very entertaining to see it in action! Thanks for your efforts to bring this machine to us! :)
I've only just come across your channel. You are genius in working on these old machines and studying how they work. As a youngster in the 60's I was forever wanting to take machines apart and see how they worked. But you have loads more patience than I will ever have. Most enjoyable and entertaining. Thank you. I particularly liked the episodes for reel to reel recorders. I had an Akai (inoperable) that sat in a cupboard for 20 years until I eventually took it to the recycling. Now I wish I had held onto it.
I like that you have ventured into the repair side in these presentations; it makes them more interesting. So what if you're not a repair guru, it's encouraging to see folks take matters into their own hands.
I always enjoy how you acknowledge you're not an "expert" but you still try to fix things and have fun doing it, your humbleness is seriously one of your best qualities Matt.
My dad was an electronics & TV repairman from 1960's-1980's. He still repairs all the obscure items I find as like him I have a thing for vintage electronics and lighting.
Some even specialised. I was an apprentice at a repair shop in 1988 and they had three people in the shop: One mostly repaired TVs and radios, the other VCRs, and the third tape recorders and record players.
We use to have a reel to reel that would stop at the end and the head would pop out turn around and then it played the opposite direction. I think we got about sixteen hours out of one tape.
That would have been me. No need to buy the ski slope. I want to hear the whole album before the next. So I'd use the default loader and the thing would only play 3 albums instead of 6. Except I totally would have used a different machine to copy the tapes rather than buying doubles. Not sure if that was a thing yet in the 70s.
Or make up some empty shells with the hubs glued solid as dummy cassettes that would get rejected so the machine would in effect play both sides of one tape consecutively
I agree, time is something we all have less tomorrow than we had today👍 Reminded me of a Bible verse ...."that you may make sure of the more important things" Philippians 1:10
