This reminds me a bit of a hack Laurie Anderson did — She replaced the string on her bow with a piece of audio tape, and put a tape pickup head on her violin, and she could move the bow back and forth to sample from the piece of tape. (She does this in one of her movie concerts – “Home of the Brave”, I think.)

Please…. You don’t RUN voltage through anything. You can run a current through a wireless, not voltage.

Wireless=wire. Dang autocorrection

Hay, that’s badass! But can’t you do it with a simple 555 timer. I have a 555 timer circuit already made on my breadboard, I never knew VideoTape was conductive AT ALL! But it makes sense, it’s Iron powder stuck to plastic isn’t it? I have GOTTA give this a try…

Mouse Jay: You may also want to try the old pencil mark resistor trick. Works for pitchbending. Try different thicknesses of marks and see what results you get :)

In the synthesizer world, this known as a “ribbon controller”

Any of the “Hub Feed” magnetic tapes that used graphite as lubricant would be worth investigating.

A prime example to start with is 8-track tape. There’s an interesting design element to 8-track tapes. At the switching point=where one audio program ends/the next one begins there is a metallic foil strip. That metal strip bridges a set of contacts to activate the head position solenoid. Over much of the format’s life span, the foil often was used to actually carry the solenoid current. And some attempts to have a transistor etc triggered by that foil were subject to graphite buildup on a spliced tape causing false track jumps.

Another historical tape re-use method was slit down computer tape being used for reel feed VTR’s. The lubricants that worked ok for computer data heads often left horrid deposits in video heads and on the various tape path bits.

put the conductive pad in a seat and sit bare-assed?

old well known ribbon controller hack

@Oren Beck is a bit confused, no mag tape used graphite, or any, lubricant. It is the iron oxide itself that scrapes off old tapes and leaves a deposit on the heads.

Different tape compositions will give differet results, normal iron oxide, chrome, and so-called “metal tapes – you milage will differ.

In the conventional ribbon controller the player isn’t part of the circuit – the tape is held suspended just above a metal support and pressed down onto it, forming a variable resistor. this helps to avoid hum and noise injection.

An oldie, but still tres cool.

His… CAT? 8-O

Here is your Laurie Anderson clip.

Her instrument was very different. It had (has?) a bow with prerecorded samples on it, and she played it across a magnetic pickup.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Anderson#Tape-bow_violin

MUST be S-VHS or ADAT tape, as used in the Alesis ADAT home studio type recorders or late generation S-VHS style VCR’s. Standard VHS tape doesn’t do the trick, its not conductive. Also use an old plastic mini-blind with a conductive strip inside raised off of the surface. Here’s a modular synth ribbon controller example, although this one somehow uses standard ferric oxide tape (I think?): http://modularsounds.com/?p=689