Tutorial: How to Build a Modified Cassette Player 

I took apart a cassette player when I was about ten . Just out of curiosity and had the " What if " mentality . My goal was to make an amp . My older brother showed me the head transferred the signal to the speaker . So I took one end off of dad's old guitar cables and touched the wires to the two on the head and viola . I just built my own portable amp ! The cool part was , if you turned it up you got distortion ! What kid , wouldn't love that ? Maybe , you could just do a video on that !

You make this look easy. I once tried to make a vari speed control on my tape player. Didn't work... but the neighbors living room lights kept dimming!

Thanks! Wishing I had RU-vid as a kid

Okay, new favorite channel. Also, following you on Spotify now. Love your lo-fi music. Inspirational. Thank you!

my favorite mod next to speed control is just adding a switch to the erase head

I got a hold of a Marantz field recorder. My buddy used to use it to learn guitar solos because it has a pretty generous speed control. (hes old) I'm looking to use it for something music related. I've heard drums sound great with natural tape compression, but I'm already using a Tascam 8 track from the 90s. I've also heard that people make them into tape echo/delays but it has to be the stereo version and mine's mono. I'm thinking of taking advantage of the speed knob. Recording non-drum percussion, like pots and pans etc. I think of speed like shrinky dinks, or photcopying and shrinking a drawing, it takes away the imperfections, I guess compresses it literally. And I think slowing almost anything down you could create some interesting synth-like bass tones. Maybe make a tape loop and use it as a super lo-fi drum machine. Could potentially make a handful of drum loops and have them on hand. slap some effects on them. voila.

add a way to manually turn the tape back and forth yourself but it keeps spinning when you are not touching it. this makes a record scratch noise. if you add that it will be the ultimate sound box

I love your videos. Would love to see some longer demos of you operating these thongs though!

found this thru reddit! as a tape lover very happy to see this! thanks :)

Ah yes, I was awaiting this, thanks!

When I was very young, I tried wiring a 1/4W pot in series with the synchronous AC motor on my Revere T-2000. Needless to say, this did not work - as I turned the pot towards lower resistance, it suddenly caught fire and released major smoke. --Gary

You make fantastic cool ass music and grade-A content! Thank you!

Very cool. Subbed and will add this player to my shopping list to try out.

This is great. I was playing around with one of these guys a couple of months ago. And couldn’t figure out how to change the speed. Can’t wait to try it out again with this new info.

How awesome!!! And very nicely explained, I appreciate it! That'd be such a cool project to add to the collection!

This is awesome! I have the same cassette player and am willing to sacrifice it for this experiment lol. Thanks for sharing!

thank you so much for this!!

I made it. Thanks for the idea & detailed video!

Good job man ❤ thanks a lot for sharing

Great tutorial! I’m excited to give it a go. Thank you

Zabardest

thank you so much for this 👌🙏

Excellent video. Thanks !!!!!

awesome work!

Thanks for this video :)

Really nice music!

DUDE! i have this exact one I got a thrift store for $7.... Now i must make one

It's a little off topic, but can you tell me what part of America pronounces solder as sarder? Do you pronounce soldier as sarjer? I hear it a lot and I don't know where it comes from, I've grown up hearing it as 'older' with an 's' in front. Thanks.

Loved this!

Any chance you can hip us to where you got your knobs? Awesome project, thanks for sharing.

Im trying to achief a fire tornado sound effect 😂 on my guitar. How could i achieve this sound? I thought of just stacking effects on effects on effects, and it csn get close but what about somehow running a direct guitar signal through a pre recorded wind and fire wave file/signal.

Awesome

This is insanely cool! I managed to fix my 388 but my 424 is acting like a giant microphone. SO weird. Idk what's going on.

this is insane any future projects to build you own model?

Amazing! Could you add a cv input to modulate things like speed or signal amplitude ?

Does it have to be this exact model? Even more tricky to get it in UK. Are there other brands or is there something specific it needs in order to follow this? Or are they generally the same? (As long as they are.... errr... similar)

It's a GE similar to the one I have. Thanks

Hi Rich, have you used this with cassette loops? I've found that some cassette players with pitch control don't play well ( i.e. refuse to play) cassette loops. Very cool.

/no option to save this video to a playlist?

Great video friend! This is very very very coooool! Are you planning on selling these?

Super cool! What wire gauge did you use?

missing links in description, help!

oh i'd love to do this mod on my portastudio mf-p01 - do you have any experiences on modding those? i'm pretty new to the game and a bit afraif to destroy it :D

You had mentioned it messes with the output jack but it sounded like you where getting a direct sound into your DAW. Am I only going to get sound out of the speaker and not the jack?

so fkn dope!

I'm gonna give this a whirl.

You're not stuck with out of production models. Walmart's web site has plenty new ones, mostly made in China. Walkman style bits under $20, the bigger shoebox style decks under $30. Just search "cassette recorder". Used pieces from ebay are a dice roll if they even function at all.

I made one of these using the parts listed on the web page, but I’m not sure if the tone control works. The button doesn’t depress like the demo. I’ll keep messing with it to see if I can make it do anything

Where do I find the schematic/parts list? I want to try this :) Thanks!

Is the 1m pot the same as a 10k ?

Do you think there would be a way to control the muting using CV?

Would this work for video player versions? I have these videos of my family, from a long while ago, I wanna see them again

Hey, I’m new to this, but I ordered all the stuff and I’m gonna try to throw one of these together, does it matter if I use black or red lead wires for certain pots and connections? Or for example could I just use all red if I wanted too?

What is wire 6 connected too?

Wow😁🇲🇨

It's a shame you don't go into any kind of why or how (unless I missed it?)

Hey man, do you sell these?