i still have all of my old cassette tapes, and it turns out my hoarding hasn’t been for nothing. the magnetic tape heads inside cassette players can be removed and connected to an audio cable. they will produce sound if they rub against magnetic tape, but also other magnetic strips that store binary info [those 1s and 0s] in credit cards, train tickets, floppy discs, etc.
i pulled apart an old sony tape recorder [another car boot sale find] because it just wanted to chew my tapes up, and salvaged a few of its parts including its DC motor and tape head. the motor just spins around when connected to a battery [this is what rewound/played the tape in its former incarnation], and between that and the tape head rigged up to my little amp i figured it was time to reinvent the record player.
the handy crocodile clip on the end of an arm is my ‘helping hand’ which clamps things still while i solder them. you can’t really see the motor here as it’s under the disc but it is a bit more visible in the last video.
tape head player 1: blank zip disc
i had to turn the distortion right up on the amp to hear all the lovely high pitches this made. i really want to fill a whole room with these things one day.
tape head player 2: floppy disc
this floppy has some of my uni essays from first/second year [back in the good ol' days when USBs probably didn't even come in 500MB sizes]. i assume that the re-arrangement of the binary code is what gives a tone, as opposed to the disc being blank.
tape head player 3 – magnetic tape
for this piece, i pulled apart an old cassette [sorry dido, you're not my thing, i only bought you because of that eminem song] and glued the tape onto a floppy. i need to source a slower motor to make the sound a bit more detailed, but what came out was lovely.
tape head player 4 – train ticket
