[Erich] rethought the use of a megaphone and ended up with this Mega-Tape-O-Phone. His first move was to ditch the megaphone’s amplifying circuitry in order to add his own based on an LM386 chip. From there a radio receiver joined the party followed by the guts of a tape player. He relocated the head of the tape deck to the end of a flexible cable and coated the outside of the megaphone bell with magnetic tape. Now he’s surfing the airwaves and scratching away happily.
The use of the tape head has been seen here before, but it was never in a mobile package like this is. Join us after the break for some video of this in action.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlaqpdOY4Xc]
Neato.
I got nothing…
this is pretty cool actually!
gotta try it myself, my freshman year of college public safety threw out about 14 megaphones because they claimed they where broken.
snatched them up outta the trash, found out that the only thing wrong with them was battery corrosion that made them work intermittently. busted out some contact cleaner and sand paper. those things worked like new.
hehe, that semester I did not have to pay for books
apparently there is a market for megaphones on college campuses.
For some reason I read the title and thought I’d see a picture of a Talkboy. Man I miss my childhood.
Not going to be for everybody is it? :) Add noise to a radio broadcast not everyone around you may not want to listen to. As long as Erich had fun building it and playing it in private, I’m good with it.
Seems like you should be able to make some kind of cheap analog dj skratching toy out of this. The magnetic tape needs to be more precise, and you would need to record specific sounds onto the tape to play with. You could even record the sounds at different speeds so that you could move your hand more or less (dfferent length of strokes) to play a single sound in an optimal distance… Reminds me of a magnetic tape wand someone made a long long time ago.. While trying to find said link, I found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BItoCS3Evo
What about including the write head and making it a “Scratch Sampler”? (Which I just copyrighted and trademarked, if it isn’t already, all rights reserved. ;)
Dunno why kids love amplifiers, causing noise and disturbing other people but its pathetic.
Grow the fuck up.
Aww that’s just grumpy old man sandkiller.
Jeopardy is on in a few minutes, he’ll go back inside.
if i find an old tapedeck on the fleamarket i`ll try the “write-option” ! would be great to write from a microphone to the tape :-)its tricky enough to get one proper tone out of this noisy thing.but : every sound is usefull if you loop it! i do it live with a looper and ableton.sample the radio noise and gate it rhythmic,done ! :-)
Sandkiller, the LM386 amplifier he’s using is not going to shake anybody’s walls: it’s the class of thing that goes in pocket AM/FM radios and clock radios.