Cassette tapes were a major way of listening to (and recording) music througout the 1980s and 1990s and were in every hi-fi stereo, boom box, and passenger vehicle of the era. Their decline was largely as a result of improvements in CD technology and the rise of the MP3 player, and as a result we live in a world largely absent of this once-ubiquitous technology. There are still a few places where these devices crop up, and thanks to some modern technology their capabilities as a music playback device can be greatly enhanced.
The build starts, as one might expect, by disassembling the cassette and removing the magnetic tape from the plastic casing. With the interior of the cassette empty it’s capable of holding a small battery, USB-C battery charger, and a Bluetooth module. The head of an old tape deck can be wired to the audio output of the Bluetooth module and then put back in place in the housing in place of the old tape. With the cassette casing reassembled, there’s nothing left to do but pair it to a smartphone or other music-playing device and push play on the nearest tape deck.
As smartphones continue to lose their 3.5 mm headphone jacks, builds like this can keep lots of older stereos relevant and usable again, including for those of us still driving older vehicles that have functioning tape decks. Of course, if you’re driving a classic antique auto with a tape technology even older than the compact cassette, there are still a few Bluetooth-enabled options for you as well.
Thats pretty cool!
How much energy could be harvested from the tape drive? Enough to charge a supercapacitor at a sufficient rate to play audio without dropping out?
A little silence between tracks wouldn’t be fatal to boost it up.
There isn’t a ton of torque from the take-up and supply pulleys, because it is there to turn some loose tape without snapping it. So gearing it up to spin faster to drive a dynamo is probably tough and the clutch will just slip. Maybe you could harvest a tiny bit of electricity from it, but a solar panel on the front the cassette might be a similar order of magnitude. The capstan spindle has all the torque in the system, but it is going to be hard to engage, it’s just a little metal rod.
I had funny toy synth that included rotation sensors that were shaped very similar to the tape reels on a compact cassette. I don’t think it’s exactly the same size, but some kind of sensor like that could make for an interesting way to turn the device on/off. https://phonicbloom.com/tape/
Rewind to recharge ?
Magnets along the outside and a rectifier? Gonna be a tiny amount of current, but it’d be interesting to see what it’d be.
Hmmm – during playback there is a strong rubber wheel pressed against it isn’t it?
-> Put a strong tape loop inside your “cassette” and turn a generator with it (including gears and whatnot).
Not sure about this one – bluetooth cassettes have been a thing for eons, and it seems like a fairly straightforward stick-it-in assembly?
A cool evolution could be charging it from the turning heads.
Likewise are some that have flash memory that you can load your MP3 files onto instead of using Bluetooth. I had a couple from when MP3 was becoming popular but Bluetooth wasn’t yet. And also likewise some with a cord and 3.5mm jack hanging out the corner you could plug into your iPod (or clone thereof) or early Nokia cell phone.
These were relatively common except you’re forgetting that weren’t “iPod clones”, dozens of MP3 players existed on the market before the iPod was released, many with better audio quality and easier management (most required no additional software).
I believe the comment is supposed to be, “No Wi-Fi, less space than a Nomad, L4M3.”
Not just Bluetooth. We also had a cassette with audio input for the old car radio. You could get them from “A” for very little money. Just search for “car casette adapter”.
The further development are the small Bluetooth devices for the cigarette lighter, which transmit on a (often configurable) radio frequency that can be received even without a cassette compartment in the car. Most of them also have a hands-free phone function and also work with a 1960s car radio and of course also play the usb-stick.
Well fumbled! It has that trashy fiddler aesthetic. 💙
Lots of hot glue, poor solder joints, loose parts.
For real though
There’s the professional version of this, which is pretty slick, but also a bit expensive: https://paulthings.com/
That one is WAY fancier with a screen and 3.5mm though.
very cool!
I still have an original ‘Digisette Duo’ / Rome MP3 cassette MP3 player! Welcome to the 2000’s!
Yep, I bought a similar one 20 years ago.
Yup, very cool and the logic endpoint for all the functionality you’d want but… £65 😳
It’s weird that they feel the need to explain how to operate a tape deck … but I guess it’s necessary today.
As a joke I sometimes ask friends to insert a piece of paper into my typewriter. It’s not often they get it in there straight!
“It’s weird that they feel the need to explain how to operate a tape deck …”
I know, right!? I mean, it’s about same as operating an ordinary CD player.
Well not the part where you have to put it in the “TAPE OFF” position to play tape (if tape off was printed on two lines, they often omitted the slash)
One issue with this: most modern car cassette players detect the end of the tape and do a reverse to play the other side. This means the tape spool drivers need to be geared or belted together.
A basic auto-stop feature did exist since the 70s or so, I believe. I could be wrong, though.
Never was an issue for the ages-old 1/8″ cassette aux adapters. The pickup still does its thing regardless.
I remember using those more than 20 years ago… Nowadays I would spend the thirty bucks and swap out the cassette deck with a bluetooth one from ebay
I wish I could do that. My radio/tape deck is integrated with the ac controls and vehicle information display in the center console.
Actually, tape end is detected by a nylon “finger” ( where the erase head would be ) pressing against the tape, which is pressed back by the tension in the tape when the end is reached
Some of the old boomboxes had really nice sound, and batteries have improved. Find one for a few bucks at flea market , garage sale, thrift store, add rechargeable batteries or AC adapter, mp3 >.BT , cheap high performance portable sound system
Boomboxes, “old” ? These rounded radio cassette recorders? Aren’t they from the 90s?
By “old”, I rather think of the big, rectangular g-blasters from 80s/late 70s.
Those with the insanely big stereo speakers attached to them on each side.
(Normal radio cassette recorders looked similar, but had small speakers.)
I rather think of the big, rectangular g-blasters from 80s/late 70s.
Those are also known as boomboxes by people that do not wish to use negative connotations and have been since the late 70’s and 80’s
Really? To me, “boombox” is a fairly new term. Haven’t heard it up until the 2000s, I think.
People I know merely used the g-blaster term before (if at all), and explicitly had used it to reference the big, oversized, stereotypical 80s models.
I think it has become sort of a generic term here, like q-tip for cotton swaps has in the US.
Hence, I (and others I think) would rather do associate “boombox” with modern radio cassette recorders or CD/MP3 players from the 90s and up:
Those little, chubby, whimsical, deformed models so typical for that era.
That being said, I’m from outside the US, maybe that’s the reason.
Such vintage terms aren’t being so stigmatized over here yet, I suppose.
“negative connotations” Ew, political correctness. 😢
PS: I noticed that Google picture search apparently thinks similar to me, so I’m not the only one “doing it wrong” or being backwards.
G-Blaster (full word) provides mainly pictures of 80s models.
Boombox provides more pictures of stylish music players.
“Such vintage terms aren’t being so stigmatized over here yet,”
You’ve got it backwards. It isn’t an “okay term” that became stigmatized, it was created to be a negative term. They literally passed noise ordinances to ban them! Over time it became less stigmatized as people embraced the backlash. And really that term is the least offensive one.
But you’ve definitely got the word origins backwards.
“PS: I noticed that Google picture search apparently thinks similar to me”
Because the picture search is always going to preferentially give you newer things. Especially if those are things which you might buy. Because, y’know. Money.
“Because the picture search is always going to preferentially give you newer things” should have “and manufacturers don’t use the other term anymore.” As in, the other term’s popularity (in the US) was mostly the 80s, boombox is the term that ‘won.’
“You’ve got it backwards. It isn’t an “okay term” that became stigmatized, it was created to be a negative term”
Oh. Like “made in Germany”?
I heard it was meant to be more of a warning than a indication of quality, originally.
Anyhow, I’m pretty sure it never crossed our mind that it was negative somehow.
How could we know if nobody told us?
We thought that areas of people living in poverty were just a legit part of the personality of that nation, I guess.
“Boombox” WAS used in the 1970s. Source: I was born in 1962. “Ghetto Blaster” was also used. However when I worked at Radio Shack, “Portable Stereo” was the preferred term. “Personal Stereo” was the term for what Sony called the Walkman .
“How could we know if nobody told us?”
That… that’s the entire point.
Ghetto Blaster a negative term? Oh, the you really don’t want to know what I’ve heard them called. Let’s just say it would probably get somebody arrested today.
Yah, that’s why I said it’s the least negative. Not likely people would’ve embraced the other terms.
“Box” is by far the preferred term.
90s are old and have been for a while. We are antediluvian
Nooo! The 90s are merely 20 years ago, just like the 80s! :D
“big, rectangular g-blasters”
G-blasters are boomboxes. The boombox term is older: they were box-like with more bass, hence “boombox.” G-blaster was a perjorative for them that mostly rose in the 80s. By the 90s boomboxes were on the decline due to the rise of personal media players.
I’ve always thought of the rounded aesthetic that showed up in the 90s as just due to them adding CD players on the top.
“G-blaster was a perjorative for them that mostly rose in the 80s.”
Cool. The 80s were the favorite decade of people of my country, from what I’ve heard.
It never crossed our minds that the g-term was negative anyhow, I think.
Even Elvis, the king, did sing the song “In the Gh???o..”
On a second thought, though, we also didn’t make much fuss about the n-word over here.
We had a children’s song called “Then little n.” that was sung just naturally by parents and their kids in the 90s, still.
“By the 90s boomboxes were on the decline due to the rise of personal media players.”
Maybe in the US, but I’m not sure about my country (GER).
I think “Radio cassette recorders” were equally beloved among the young in the 70s/80s/90s.
Walkmen (cassette) had been still the #1 prizes of prize competitions in comic magazines for kids in mid-90s.
By late 90s, this had changed, of course. Now, Discmen (CD) were the new #1 prizes.
DVD, MP3 players and so on weren’t a thing until ca. 2003 or so.
These things replaced our previous home entertainment tech rather late.
I remember how the kids still bought second Pokèmon movie on VHS, for example. That was in 2001 or so.
Up until 2003, at least, VHS was still an common item of daily life.
Those round, cubby radio cassette recorders did appear in the 90s and were being label “boomboxes” over here first time, I think.
(Maybe much earlier among music fans, not sure.)
Probably because political -ew- correctness -ew- wasn’t a thing until then.
So it wasn’t necessary to adopt this new, friendlier term earlier.
The mid-late 90s was the time in which harmless children jokes in comic magazines had been politically “adjusted” to not harm anyone anymore.
Things like East Friesian jokes (Newfie jokes ?) had been changed, for example. Sigh.
“East Friesian” had been replaced by “Stupid Villager” or something.
But with such unnecessary changes, people can’t grow a thicker skin anymore.
Because, by our logic, it’s just healthy to poke fun at each others.
Merely a little bit, of course. So we won’t become over-sensitive.
“I’ve always thought of the rounded aesthetic that showed up in the 90s as just due to them adding CD players on the top.”
Maybe that’s one reason. They also had a CD player not seldomly, yes.
Though my “boombox” from mid-90s was just a chubby dual stereo cassette deck recorder with a built-in FM radio.
It was silver, made of cheap plastic and had looked very cheap, too.
I would never made the connection that this is same thing as a g-blaster.
It was just a small, cheesy looking cassette recorder, at best.
Speaking under correction.
PS: Maybe my comments seem to be very naive, sorry if that’s the case.
I have searched the internet before, but couldn’t find much information.
I lived through this era and they even made it to my town in Cowflop USA. Boombox and ghetto blaster were used interchangeably in my area but there were mainly indications of size of the device. I recall they had tvs in them with LEDs all over flashing to the music and stood a good 2.5 feet tall and were 3 feet long. This monstrosity often had 32 band eq and ran on a carload of D batteries for maybe 3 or 4 hours. I had a standard gray boombox as did most of the kids on my bus. Only the highschoolers were allowed to bring them on the bus and play music so it was early run dmc and fat boys for fun. Later on a fella named Luke Skywalker and his nasty rap got them banned from the bus though. That was what pretty much killed it. The obscene raunchy stuff that really has no place being played near 8 year olds trading GPK cards and Now n Laters. By the time I was 12 or so I got a walkman and never looked back. I would put on some Faith No More and put my head against the seat in front and would be at school half way thru side B lol. I guess the rest of the world liked a personal listening device as well since no one carries around boomboxes any more. I really don’t know why ghetto blaster is considered a pejorative term when there were contests between these guys to see who could find the biggest and loudest portable music system out there and were quite proud to own them. Anyway g blaster just looks stupid and people are just gonna have to look up ghetto blaster anyway if they arent familiar. It would be like saying boatorcycle is bad because jet skis are proper phraseology. Sometimes things are what they are. The real crap of it all with those monster boomboxes is one thing could go out and the whole thing was basically dead. Lord help you if one of the 80 transistors driving display leds or a cap in the eq dried out lol. I wish I had a couple of those to tinker with but totally remember opening a few and just being overwhelmed. Somehow the tuning string always went around the entire thing lol. Ah good times…
Yes, I take ghetto blaster to mean the older square boomboxes as opposed to the aerodynamic ’90s boomboxes.
I keep seeing this rehashed over the last couple of decades, but why they always seem to start with an actual cassette tape when there are already ubiquitous and cheap cassette adapters that already have a quality tape head built into it, is beyond me. This one has a particularly janky head mount that has less than half a chance of being aligned.
And yes, you can buy one with either Bluetooth or MP3 functions from your favorite Asian online supplier, they all seem to end up being junk, so making your own is an appealing option. The history of these obscure devices is surprisingly long.
The first commercial version, as near as I can tell, was the RomeMP3 with a paltry 32Mb($200!), somewhere around the year 2000. Then the Digisette Duo-DX, which started at 32Mb then upgraded to 64Mb came out with an MMC slot to expand it’s memory, and actual spindle sensors that let you control the tracks through the cassette players REW/FFW controls($230). The next was MobiBlu around 2005, (which is not Bluetooth, by the way, and just a remake of the Digisette) at 128 Mb, then 256 Mb later, with an expansion slot and FM receiver. The cheap Asian items then started flooding the (somewhat negligible) market. These had the typical membrane button IR remote control that somehow had to get its signal through your cassette door. The Mixxtape Kickstarter venture brought things into the modern era with an actual display for you to navigate your files, Bluetooth and MicroSD, all for a more reasonable sub $100 price, but we’ve lost the cassette control sensors along the way.
The lack of audiophile sound quality, at audiophile prices doomed the earlier models to obscurity. The cheap Asian model is fine if you just want to let a playlist run it’s course, but if you want to use your cassette deck, boombox, or car system with playback controls, a Bluetooth only model is all you need.
If your looking for a more Hipster lifestyle I guess any of these hung around your neck with headphones is the way to go.
It’s easy enough to just stuff a $7 micro MP3 player(that actually has a somewhat navigable LCD, and MicroSD) into a cassette adapter and use it in a deck or with headphones, but the simple Bluetooth module in a cassette adapter seems like it has more utility. I’ve always been inclined to NOT use my phone as a BT music player, and gravitated towards a dedicated device. But now that I have so many older Android phones and tablets laying around, it’s more palatable to just use Bluetooth.
“when there are already ubiquitous and cheap cassette adapters that already have a quality tape head built into it,”
There are cheap cassette adapters with a quality tape head built into them?? Friggin where? Every one I’ve bought it’s a crapshoot if it aligns and you end up with this clicking noise half the time.
I mean you follow that statement up with:
“And yes, you can buy one with either Bluetooth or MP3 functions from your favorite Asian online supplier, they all seem to end up being junk,”
which aligns much better with my experience.
Ironically I just found an older one yesterday, now I just might add a bluetooth module I also had laying around…
If you stick to recognized brand names, (that weren’t previously bought out by an overseas company just to use the name to fool people) then most are ok in my experience. We are, of course talking about cassette adapters that have the attached cord with the 3.5 mm jack plug on the end to play your external device to the cassette head, to be clear.
I’ve never had one that made a clicking noise. Perhaps there are some that were just repurposed “head cleaner” cassettes, and still contain the geared cam that moves the wiper back and forth, and the came is hitting something inside? Indeed, I do have a Sony CPA-9C that retains the cam gear as an idler gear between the spindles, but it doesn’t make any noise. Mind you, all of these will have standard stereo heads which will only align when the cassette is inserted to play the A side.
Surprisingly, the RomeMP3 and the cheap, white, Asian model both came with auto reverse heads, that you could play on either side.
“If you stick to recognized brand names, (that weren’t previously bought out by an overseas company just to use the name to fool people) then most are ok in my experience.”
You keep saying stuff without mentioning anything specific, and my experience is that what you’re saying (a recognized brand name that wasn’t bought by an overseas company) is pretty much a used eBay purchase.
CPA-9/CPA-9Cs aren’t made anymore and a used one on eBay is $20+ (with new ones being $50+!). At that price level I’d start hacking my own just for reproducability when it breaks.
“I’ve never had one that made a clicking noise.”
As far as I can tell the click’s from the fake gear thing getting pushed around and twitching the head if it’s poorly aligned. If you take it out and put it back in, eventually you’ll get it so it works. At least for a while.
My Duo-DX is down in my music player collection in my basement; 100% operational. Wish I could find a 256MB MobiBLU model…and at a reasonable price!
My 128Mb MobiBLU was stolen last year and I’m still upset 🙁
brownie points if you can replace the battery for a supercap and charge it by mechanically engaging the spindle with some kind of generator.
Aaaah! You beat me to it!!! 😂😭
I’ve always wondered if you could power it via a generator turned by the spindles or the pinch roller now that there’s no tape.
Well as everyone seems to be so fond of saying this is already a commercial product but it would be fun to use this technique to make an 8 Track BT adapter, although you’d only get 2 tracks out of it.
Why not? Just put in a Piezo sensor to detect the “Ka-chunk” of the track changing solenoid to play the next track.
Put in a MD player lol
If only the rubber belts lasted. I just threw out a tape deck because rubber belts were deteriorated.
Yes, most slot loaders may eat whatever you put in when the main belt don’t move anymore and the auto shutoff-safety goes into a fit. Some use the main belt motion to eject!
Good decks sensed takeup motion not supply because if it failed tape got eaten so this rig wouldn’t trip auto shut off. Given the choice auto reverse was never a good deal, twice the most precise parts for the same sound or worse. Worse yet a stuck tape would just mess up back and forth. Quite a high price to pay for that little convenience.
Can you add tape hiss to the output? Maybe add a “DNR” on/off button!
I own a commercial version of this. The Play button starts the mp3 play back. FWD skipped forward Rewind skipped back. Had 256mb memory card. No idea if it still works used special thin rechargeable batteries.
This can already be done by combining a 3.5mm to cassette adapter & a Bluetooth receiver together.
If the first thing you do is take the tape out it’s not Cassette-Tape-Plays-mp3s, more like Tape-Cassette….
I was hoping someone had figured out how to make cassette tapes play mp3s.
Issue is… many decks have sensors on the supply reel that.. if not rotating, they will either trip the stop button, the reverse to side 2, or eject. There needs to be spool to spool engagement.