tape loop

5 Articles

Round And Round With A Tape Delay Synth

September 11, 2025 by 7 Comments

Over the years we’ve been entertained by an array of musical projects from [Look Mum No Computer], and his latest is no exception. It’s a tape delay, loop generator, and synth all in one. Confused? That’s what you get if you position a load of tape heads around a rotating disk with magnetic tape on its perimeter.

Taking a circular piece of inch-thick Perspex, he wraps a length of one inch tape round its perimeter. This is placed as though it were a turntable on a stepper motor with variable speed, and the tape heads are positioned around its edge. Each read head feeds its own preamp which in turn drives a mixer array, and there’s also a record head and an erase head. If you’ve ever played with tape loops you’ll immediately understand the potential for feedback and sequence generation to make interesting sounds. There’s a lot of nuance to the build, in designing the mount for the motor to stop the enclosure flexing, in using a gearbox for increased torque, and in balancing the disk.

The result is as much an effect as it is an instrument in its own right, particularly in its prototype phase when the read head was movable. We’re treated to a demo/performance, and we look forward to perhaps seeing this in person at some point. There’s a future video promised in which a fix should come for a click caused by the erase circuitry, and he’ll make a more compact enclosure for it. Continue reading “Round And Round With A Tape Delay Synth” →

A Tiny Tape Synth

April 7, 2025 by 12 Comments

Afficionados of vintage electric organs will know about the Melotron, an instrument from the 1960s that had pre-recorded sounds on a bank of tape loops. A real Melotron in working order will set you back a bit, but it’s possible to play with the idea using much more attainable hardware. [Decurus] has made a simple tape based synth using a cassette deck.

It uses a loop of cassette tape, and varies the pitch by changing the speed of the cassette motor. There’s an RP2040 and a motor controller, which can take a MIDI signal and use it to drive the motor. We’re sorry to see that there’s no recording of the result, but it’s described as a drone.

Part of this project is a 3D printed tape loop holder to fit a cassette mechanism. We won’t go as far as to call it a cassette in itself, instead it’s a sort of tape loop frame. We can see that it might be an interesting component for other tape loop experimenters, now that cassettes themselves are no longer ubiquitous. This certainly isn’t the first tape pitch synth we’ve seen.

A Tape Loop Echo You Can Build

March 10, 2023 by 18 Comments

Echo and reverb are now electronic audio effects done in a computer or an integrated circuit, but originally they were achieved through mechanical means. Reverb units used springs, and echo units used loops of magnetic tape. As a musician hankering after a mechanical tape echo unit, [Adam Paul] was left with no choice but to build his own. We featured an early prototype, but now he’s back with a finished version that’s intended to be replicated by other musicians.

The unit takes a cassette mechanism from one of the last still-manufactured players available through the usual sources. It splits record and play heads, with the normal cassette replaced with a tape loop made from extra-thick computer tape. A custom PCB replaces most of the electronics, and the auto-reverse system is disabled.

The result is a functional tape echo system, as can be seen in the video below the break. This is ready to build yourself, with everything on a GitHub repository and an extremely comprehensive build guide, so do any of you fancy a go?

Read about the device’s earlier incarnation here.

Continue reading “A Tape Loop Echo You Can Build” →

Hackaday Podcast 066: The Audio Overdub Episode; Tape Loop Scratcher, Typewriter Simulator, And Relay Adder

May 8, 2020 by 3 Comments

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys stomp through a forest full of highly evolved hardware hacks. This week seems particularly plump with audio-related projects, like the thwack-tackular soldenoid typewriter simulator. But it’s the tape-loop scratcher that steals our hearts; an instrument that’s kind of two-turntables-and-a-microphone meets melloman. We hear the clicks of 10-bit numbers falling into place in a delightful adder, and follow it up with the beeps and sweeps of a smartphone-based metal detector.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (60 MB or so.)

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Tape Loop Echo Made With An Actual Tape Loop

October 7, 2015 by 10 Comments

A lot of digital processes are named after an old analog device that they’ve since replaced. It’s not uncommon to “tape” a show nowadays, for example, even though the recording work is actually done by a digital video recorder. Sometimes, though, the old analog devices have a certain je ne sais quoi that is desirable even in today’s digital world. This is certainly the case with [Dima]’s tape loop echo which is actually made with a physical tape loop.

The process of building the tape loop hardware is surprisingly non-technical. By positioning a recording head and a playback head right next to one another, a delay is introduced. An echo is created by mixing the original live sound signal with this delayed signal coming from the tape By varying the speed of the tape or altering several other variables, many different-sounding effects can be achieved.

Although in practice it’s not as simple as it sounds (the device required a lot of trial-and-error), the resulting effect is one that Pink Floyd or Beck would surely be proud of. Analog isn’t the only way to go though, there are plenty of digital effects that are easily created, and some with interesting mounting options as well.

Continue reading “Tape Loop Echo Made With An Actual Tape Loop” →