Comments on: Quick cheap cassette adapter

By: Leonardo Nascimento

Leonardo Nascimento — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:22:25 +0000

Finnaly I found it.
Thanks

By: LMR

LMR — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:08:20 +0000

Its worked !!!(with good quality)

i just make this cassette adapter yesterday.
I tried 3 or 4 times with little modifications.At last, I realized as @darkxray said no need resistors.i used a wire nut , old rca cable(or old ear phone) and 31gauge insulated copper wire.
In rca cable it has two separate wire coming out from the aux end.In each wire it contain main insulated wire and uncover copper wire.
I divide my 30gu copper wire into two same size parts. then i wind that one part of the copper wire on one end of the nail.same done to the other part.Leave 2inch from the nail in each winding.Then remove insulation about 1cm from each end of the copper wires(in my case i have 4 ends coming out from the nail – http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/888/dsc00012vlc.jpg)
More winding levels give good output.
Now i have the nail with winded copper wires.Then sold 4 ends of the copper wires to the relevant ends of the rca cable.(i think you got it).
then congratulations !!! You are done

useful pics of my adpater:

img18.imageshack.us/img18/888/dsc00012vlc.jpg

img18.imageshack.us/img18/7144/dsc00014mhx.jpg

img18.imageshack.us/img18/16/dsc00013vcb.jpg

By: darkxray

darkxray — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:03:23 +0000

no resistors needed.just make electromagnet from a nail and a thin wire and connect them to output.easier to make and quality is very good.

By: treefingers2

treefingers2 — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:19:08 +0000

ok here’s what I would do… lower rated resistors would increase the power to the coils. smaller coils would reduce the size of the magnetic field produced, shielding between the coils would reduce crosstalk. Single strands of insulated copper wire would be used to produce the coils rather than the thick stuff.

The reason why i’m showing interest in this hack is that it’s basically a beginners guide to a magnetic pickup. Here’s where I see it going…

Once a stereo cassette adaptor works as a proof of concept someone who wants to could create a full sized guitar pickup with separate coils for each string, the output could be fed to some sort of digital filter (al la vocoder) the frequency of the note played on the guitar would pass though the filter and it’s frequency and gain fed into maxmsp and then converted to midi note and velocity data. This could then become an inexpensive polyphonic guitar midi controller so you could play strings. piano, or even drums on your guitar!

What do you think? :-)

By: treefingers

treefingers — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:17:44 +0000

The reason why i’m showing interest in this hack is that it’s basically a beginners guide to a magnetic pickup. Here’s where I see it going…

What do you think? :-)

By: kyle007

kyle007 — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:09:27 +0000

@ TheKhakinator. nice work! thats what I was talking about.. hence why this featured hack was a little too late, everyone has made thier version.

@ treefingers this hack “featured” would produce a mono signal

By: markps2

markps2 — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:37:30 +0000

I agree with jj jerksalot. A person who sharpened a pencil with a knife is similar in complexity to this “hack”. It is a BAD project for the beginner as it could break expensive audio equipment connected to it.

By: strider_mt2k

strider_mt2k — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:55:54 +0000

just to piss you off, jerksalot

By: jj jerksalot

jj jerksalot — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:43:35 +0000

why is this even posted really why?

By: TheKhakinator

TheKhakinator — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:19:21 +0000

http://khakindustries.com/?p=49
Mine was better!!!1one

You get stereo. It’s farrrrrrrrrrr too difficult to create the tiny spacing required for stereo with hand-wound or even headphone coils.

By: therian

therian — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:36:16 +0000

thick wire with resistors in series, what about independence, most signal will be converted to heat instead of magnetic field. And coil, it should be rotated

By: nubie

nubie — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:50:46 +0000

Awesome, I like the hack.

By: loststeve

loststeve — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:42:14 +0000

I’d be more interested in making one out of a tape-deck head, seeing as I’ve just taken a tape-deck apart :-)

Any advice on how the leads on the head should be connected up to a stereo lead (i.e. the “pinout” for the head)?

By: atrain

atrain — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:23:03 +0000

I tried making one of these. I took the coil out of a dollar store headphone. It did work, but didn’t sound great. I eventually went out and bought a proper one for $5.

By: treefingers

treefingers — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:16:35 +0000

Unless I’m mistaken won’t this design just produce a mono signal? I think this design could be improved by using two smaller layered coils, one per channel and maybe lower rated resistors to sort out impedance issues and cross talk. Insulated copper wire strands would be better as they could be positioned more precisely to the alignment of the tape head. Just some ideas if someone wants to develop this concept further. :-)