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I think the coolest thing about this would be the ghettoness of it. Want more delay? just place the walkmans farther apart from each other. I have happy visions of tape arcing across a room, with one walkman on a chair or something next to me at one end, and the other walkman on top of my amp like 10 feet away.

Eventually, there'd be like, little pieces on tape on the floor, to mark where to put the walkmans for the specific amount of delay you want. And at shows, you bring a tape measure . . .

Someone at work was telling me about Pink Floyd doing something like this (with better tape I'd assume) to do looping.

morange wrote:I think the coolest thing about this would be the ghettoness of it. Want more delay? just place the walkmans farther apart from each other. I have happy visions of tape arcing across a room, with one walkman on a chair or something next to me at one end, and the other walkman on top of my amp like 10 feet away.

I have images of a tangled mess of tape and a booing crowd

They need decent tension and a very straight line, even then they tangle sometimes anyway.

If I was gunna do it, it'd be with a big old reel to reel tape recorder.

Dreams crushed.

morange wrote:Dreams crushed.

Now I feel bad.

I did ponder the idea of doing a VHS Tape based Delay, now that could be feasible, big and heavy but feasible... you'd get a decent delay time too I think.

Scruffie wrote:

morange wrote:Dreams crushed.

Now I feel bad.

I did ponder the idea of doing a VHS Tape based Delay, now that could be feasible, big and heavy but feasible... you'd get a decent delay time too I think.

YES. Plus, then we'd have a use for VHS players and tapes.

theavondon wrote:

Scruffie wrote:

morange wrote:Dreams crushed.

Now I feel bad.

I did ponder the idea of doing a VHS Tape based Delay, now that could be feasible, big and heavy but feasible... you'd get a decent delay time too I think.

YES. Plus, then we'd have a use for VHS players and tapes.

Someone go get me a VCR... A roll of Duct tape... a Hammer and some Beers... it's gunna be a longgg night.

Yeah, the main difficulty that I see here is that there's not a recording head (or heads) in there, and there's not a way to vary the spacing between the heads (which is how traditional tape echoes adjust the time between the original signal and the delayed signal.) Solve-able problems for sure, but a bit tricky.

One fun thing to do though, which isn't nearly as hard is to put a power starve on a pot between the battery and the motor which allows you to alter the tape speed in a walkman for pitch-shifting and stuff. A friend of mine modded his walkman like this and made infinite tape loops (on answering machine cassettes or something) and did sets where he'd play nanoloop sequences on his gameboy and accompany himself with beatmatched loops on his walkman (the battery starve allowed him to do the beatmatching by slowing and speeding the motor.)

kosta wrote:Yeah, the main difficulty that I see here is that there's not a recording head (or heads) in there, and there's not a way to vary the spacing between the heads (which is how traditional tape echoes adjust the time between the original signal and the delayed signal.) Solve-able problems for sure, but a bit tricky.

One fun thing to do though, which isn't nearly as hard is to put a power starve on a pot between the battery and the motor which allows you to alter the tape speed in a walkman for pitch-shifting and stuff. A friend of mine modded his walkman like this and made infinite tape loops (on answering machine cassettes or something) and did sets where he'd play nanoloop sequences on his gameboy and accompany himself with beatmatched loops on his walkman (the battery starve allowed him to do the beatmatching by slowing and speeding the motor.)

any clips of this?

Indeedily there is my friend. Go to this URL http://www.formalplay.com/ and look for the project "Noise: Seen and Unseen. NYC". The last item in the photo gallery is a video of the performance. Cool stuff.

kosta wrote:Indeedily there is my friend. Go to this URL http://www.formalplay.com/ and look for the project "Noise: Seen and Unseen. NYC". The last item in the photo gallery is a video of the performance. Cool stuff.

That was pretty cool:)

Alex is always into something awesome.

Back on Subject... I'm really considering the VCR Idea... Tape is widely available, the Recorders almost all have enough Heads for the Job, are cheap and they are very stable in design.

I'm sure there's some huge hurdle to overcome but for a pipe dream idea, it seems quite nice... personally I don't care about tape delay that much but it would be a cool project.

Scruffie wrote:Back on Subject... I'm really considering the VCR Idea... Tape is widely available, the Recorders almost all have enough Heads for the Job, are cheap and they are very stable in design.

I'm sure there's some huge hurdle to overcome but for a pipe dream idea, it seems quite nice... personally I don't care about tape delay that much but it would be a cool project.

I would like to enjoy this end product some day.

theavondon wrote:

Scruffie wrote:Back on Subject... I'm really considering the VCR Idea... Tape is widely available, the Recorders almost all have enough Heads for the Job, are cheap and they are very stable in design.

I'm sure there's some huge hurdle to overcome but for a pipe dream idea, it seems quite nice... personally I don't care about tape delay that much but it would be a cool project.

I would like to enjoy this end product some day.

What he said.
If the price was right, I'd buy one.
Sounds like it has the potential to be pretty darn awesome.

Plus, entirely too complex. But, then again, I only like rather short delay times, and rarely touch the knobs on my delay. So, only one time would work for me.