I can imagine the engineer that designed this was given a crappy set of parts and a small budget and they thought "Fine, this will be my audition tape for my dream job at Sony then" I hope they went on to better things because it is deserved given how much this overachieves.
@@80s_Boombox_Collector Yeah it looks like the engineer was given very low-quality parts to work with, but he managed to convert a standard cassette mechanism, and adapt it into something that would play tape from a 7-in reel. Pretty neat.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 The fundamental core of the device is mainly old guff but I agree the new moulded plastic bits are actually designed to elevate the whole machine. The buttons, levers and dials add functionality whilst looking decent and the bearing and spring design on those reals are far more refined than they should be. Even the cheapest of tat will need new moulds but at least this tat was well thought out by someone who clearly cared.
I think it was the exact opposite. Engineer worked at Sony for 40 years, was retired out, gets a job at novelty electronic company, designs novelty reel to reel to function accurately, gets fired from novelty company for cost overruns.
I'm actually quite impressed how they adapted a standard cassette mechanism to operate as an open reel system, quite the unique repurposing method there... :)
As crazy as it sounds it would be feasible to repurpose a CD-R Drive (Burner) to a similar device imitating a reel2reel deck. Like an Akai GX77, you barely see the reels. This can easily be simulated with 2 fake reels or even a display. and the hidden disc records in MP3 etc, April fools day?
@@TheCurlyP I think TASCAM made 1/4 reel to reels well into the 00's, but those are [semi-]professional and expensive, obviously. Also, there isn't such a thing as a open reel "drive" - each manufacturer had their own custom mechanics, very few things were unified.
A (reel) shame they didn't add a radio; being able to record a three hour radio broadcast would have given it an actually useful function. Great video as always Matt.
That's a much better idea than holding one of those piano key portable mono tape recorders against the old radio speaker to record Alan Freeman's Saturday Pick of the Pops top 10 charts and you had to shout to everyone in the house not to talk for that hour but you couldn't stop the motorbike without spark plug suppressors going past.
Looking at the electronics and the user controls, it seems to have been based on an existing design for a karaoke machine with a CD player and solenoid-operated tape transport, hence the input mixing and the use of a joystick for the tape control. But there probably was no option for a radio in the original device, and adding one would have spoiled the aesthetics.
Trust me, you wouldn't want a tuner on this thing, it would be very low quality with weak reception and selectivity. That's the case for nearly all bluetooth speakers today. Most of them have total crap tuners compared to even just an entry-level boombox from the 80s.
When he said it used 1/8" tape, I was expecting it to use a cassette head and maybe one or two other standard parts on a custom playback system. I was not expecting an entire cassette mechanism modified slightly to feed the reels with a bunch of belts and such. It's really quite clever.
Cool junk. I have a pioneer 2024, the real deal. They were used in recording studios back in the day. I have a grand that says the 2024 sounds better than this crap. It's nothing more than glorified boom box.
Yes, very clever re-use of existing technology! Perhaps not the most HiFi of reel-to-reel machines, but it obviously does what is asked of it! A very interesting device. :)
@@kenbowser5622 Yeah, it probably does sound better. Does this look like hi-fi equipment to you? The price difference between the two is immense, no shit it'll sound better. One was meant for recording studios and the other for grandmother to use maybe once in their lives
I love it when one of your favourite YT celebs posts on another one of your favourite YT celeb’s video. The Melding of Mythical minds. (Or is that a tune I once had?)
hahaha. I knew it. My first thought was "Hainbach would feed an entire room full of tape through this device" and here you are with your comment. wonderful. Please start a little project together with technomoan. that would be epic :) MASTERS OF TAPE
Worth mentioning in this regard the Philips N7300 1/4 inch reel to reel deck, it weighs only 5.3kg (11 1/2 pounds) with the reels, all plastic from 1981, their last machine, awful build quality but even so sounds pretty good.
This looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a catalog of Christmas gifts. Every single one of those catalogs seemed to feature a Crosley record/cd/tape player around the time. I imagine this unit might have been given as a gift and then forgotten.
It certainly has that odd "almost quality, almost useful, but falls short in every category" feel to it. Like the gift you know was declared "cute" by a relative before ordering it from a catalog that had arrived in the mail. Simultaneously delighting and disappointing, because you've no use for it, and wonder what to do with it now you have it!
You have to give them credit for the ingenuity for modifying a compact cassette mechanism to create the Reel to Reel. Not viable or valuable but but novel.
I'm fascinated by a couple things: the full-logic controls for the tape transport, and the feature set. It's tempting to write this off as a repackaged boombox, but in 2002, I don't recall any boomboxes with full logic control and manually adjustable record levels, a crossfader, and so forth. Even if this thing used standard cassettes, I'd still be surprised at how competent this thing is. I would love to know the development story.
ive got a panasonic boombox from 2002 and the tape is full logic I also got my last denon cassette deck with dolby b in 2005 and its full logic as well.
Allright engineering department, we have this lot of old cassette mechanisms lying around and also some 1980s amplifier boards. You have one week to make a product out of it. Go!
if cassette mechanisms are reusable then we could reprogram old broken decks that have power problems or some kind of electrical issue that can't be fixed
What a truly fascinating thing. The sheer effort in engineering a weird blown apart cassette player to function as a reel to reel; it feels like an idea that should have been shot down at every stage of production!
_"Who else in the UK called Matt would want something this stupid?"_ 7:38 Here is a perfect collision of formats: playing a CD that looks like a vinyl LP, on a player that looks like a reel to reel tape deck.
Those are Verbatim brand. I used to use those exact ones in the days of CD-Rs. Verbatim really made the highest quality CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, with or without the novelty styling.
@@LordSandwichII it's the only way I can get Touhou doujun CDs in the USA. They only ever press a relatively small batch to sell at Comiket or Retesai, then after that you have to buy them from Bandcamp or Booth. So you buy the album as FLAC files then burn them to disk.
A good example of “let’s make an ornamental conversation piece” then halfway through the design process they decided to make it (kind of) practical too. Still looks lovely though 😊
What’s amazing is that if this could be made to play 1/4 track tape, this could be the “Crosley” of reel to reel players, and maybe tapes could make a “come back”
It feels as if this was invented as a method of disposing of miles of unused compact cassette tape pancake. I imagine there was quite a lot of that stuck, unwanted, in warehouses in 2004.
I think that is because the tape was being dragged out of the idle cassette shell, which likely had a good bit of resistance that you wouldn't have from the open reel, which is being driven by the mechanism. It actually didn't sound as bad as that when he replayed the recording from the CD.
It essentially is a cassette player disguised as reel to reel machine, but it looks like a well thought out "makeover". For something that was made just as a novelty there's some clever solutions here- and I like that!
I find it likely that there wasn't a ton of development in the hardware. It's essentially a CD / cassette "boom box", but repackaged into something designed to look nostalgic and designed to be inexpensively produced. It's the PT Cruiser of audio devices.
PT cruisers are actually pretty cool, if you can find one that is well maintained that is. Especially if its timing belt and related parts has been replaced at 100,000 miles on its interface engine.
@@commodoresixfour7478 but the pt cruiser is just a bigger heavier slower dodge neon, if I was inclined to own a Daimler Chrysler product from that particular time period and could only choose from a gt pt cruiser or a srt4 neon ID rather have the neon
Ok wow, with the front plate removed you can see the "tape mechanism" and I can honestly say I'm impressed. Not impressed about any audio quality but more by the ingenuity. The idea to make a reel to reel from a cassette mechanism is just cool on it's own.
It's seems somebody thought it would be a good idea to re-invent the reel. Though I will say, if someone asked me to gin up a reel to reel in 2004 with then-current hardware, I doubt I could come up with something as clever as this!
@@markevans2294 And a good one, too. That "3 balls on a spring" system certainly wasn't the cheapest thing to make but it works very well. And the spring-loaded tape door on it is just pure luxury.
The ball bearing design is definitely going to help them win the new format war! Jokes aside, I think the "new" format is actually quite ingenious. By the year of 2004, people still had a lot of old compact cassettes lying around. One could tape 6 of them together end-to-end and make a 6-hour reel and actually listen to it.
It certainly wouldn't win any fast wind awards imagine winding a full reel of tape, you could go have dinner, wash up the dishes and then be ready to play your recording LOL.
@@Ramog1000 Right of course, however who would know the effect of having a full reel of tape. It would have more mass at the end plus the take up reel would be spinning faster you saw how it went past the rest spot when Matt rewind to test the clip's ability to hold. I personally would want more leader tape and do away with the clip as long as the tape is rewind instead of fast forward auto stop would still function in the user's absence. Just a factor concerning tape. I had one of those cassettes with the miniature reel to reel hubs and it snapped the leader when it reached the end in a normal rewind anyway it snapped at the end.
As an ex consumer electronics repair tech of over 25 years, I found this very interesting. I've seen tons of things like this during my time, but this one is uniquely clever, albeit it incredibly cheaply made. Very cool!
I remember working at a local infomercial TV station. One company sent a one inch video tape master with instructions to dub it down to beta. I had never used the 1" deck and had to figure it out on my own as it was 3am and there was nobody to call. The deck wasn't commanded by our master control system so you had to take to black, zip across the room and start the deck playing. It had a vacuum feed system that sucked the tape through all the gizmos but I didn't get it on the take up correctly and after it was running I shot to the other side of the room to do some editing. A few minutes later I hear this weird rustling and the thing is dumping all the master source on the floor. It was 2/3rds done so I prayed I got a good dub and dumped all the tape in the trash.
That would be a auto lacing Sony BVH 3000 1inch machine with with vacuum holes in the take up spool. Never really worked properly and the older 2000 was much nicer.
It wasn't your fault. It was always a coin flip if they would spool up right. Of course, had you known that, you would have babysit it more, but don't feel bad about it. I am not sure any auto-lacing system was very reliable. It was trying to solve a problem that no one had a good solution for. Well, cartridges were eventually the solution. Before that, technicians would prefer manual lacing every time, even the exceedingly convoluted ones. If only for peace of mind.
Another "I agree" comment. Some engineer really tried hard with this one and deserves a round of applause. It would be great if they saw this video and left a comment.
I thought it was going to be a load of rubbish, ended up smiling at a genius solution and something that actually did its job. Even the novelties were made better, reminded me of the little record player I had when I was a kid, the records I played on it are still good today cos although cheap the build quality was decent and the stylus wasn't a pile of crap.
I picked up one of these in a thrift store about 8 years ago minus the reels. Of course I thought it was 1/4" at first too, so I tried that and it didn't work.. so the ebay search began.. 2 years later I found a guy who bought out a bunch of the reels from a warehouse and now I have a few extra.. it all still works
There is an entirely stunning amount of over-design and new design that went into these reels! Ball-bearing and spring capture, tiny spring-loaded leader clamp... if you'd gone back in time and shown these to an actual open-reel user they'd have laughed you out of the room! (Then perhaps quietly started trying to reverse engineer them and you'd have broken the timeline. :-D )
The 'held-on' arrangement of the tape onto the reel wouldn't be practical on 1/4" decks with large reels. The high fast winding speed and inertia of the tape and reels would probably snap the leader tape when it reached the end if it was held onto the reel. Handling 1/4" tape is easier than 1/8" anyway so loading onto a reel is easier to start with.
The solution doesn't come from out of nowhere though... I've got a normal-8 film projector which uses the same spools as 1/8" reel-to-reel tape, only that on film spools you do have a slot as well where you're supposed to put the start of the film into, just as it's done here.
I dunno, man. I think Ashens takes the top spot there -- "FUCKING INFLATABLE FUCKING CROWN" brims with such ire and contempt that I think it's hard to beat.
Let us raise a glass to the one engineer at the design meeting who kept insisting that they just use traditional 1/4" tape, and glared at the bean counters pushing for a cheap hack to a cassette mechanism. Clearly he lost the argument, but he TRIED. We know he did. This cassette-based internal solution is actually hilarious, to be honest.
They aren't making reel-to-reel mechanisms anymore on any mass scale so I doubt the conversation you suggest even happened. This was the only way they could do it. It's not bad at all, really. It's not R2R...but it's not that bad.
This would be actually be really useful if you were into '80s computers. You could put put your entire program collection onto 1 tape. As long as the counter was genuinely accurate, anyways.
@@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug Yes indeed. Anything that can record and playback what is effectively an analogue audio signal would do the job. It doesn't matter if the recorded format itself isn't analogue, in fact digital would be more reliable anyway.
I can’t believe the amount of effort gone into its design given what it is. As it was designed and built not ages ago it would be interesting to find out a bit more about the design brief and who engineered it.
Maybe an engineering firm in Taiwan ROC at the time, PRC wasn't the destination to farm out engineering to that it is now. Maybe with some luck they'll watch the vid and make themselves known, i'd certainly applaud that.
Thank you, Matt, as I quite enjoyed this one and was impressed with all the thought that went into this product. What impressed me most, however, was the design of the reels; the springs, the bearings, the ingenious pull-back mechanism for retaining the tape end! Someone really cared about and was proud of their work despite it being for a novelty. Whoever you are, bravo!
I have seen an old advert for a turntable that converted into a reel to reel tape deck while Technology Connections has reviewed the CD changer that doubles as a Record Deck !
Oh, I remember seeing these advertised. At the time you could still get an actual reel-to-reel off ebay for next to nothing so it felt a little pointless. Still, as a novelty it's quite impressive. Also, I wonder if the previous owner bought it with the intention of playing back existing tapes and then put it back in the box when they realised their mistake.
Wow it's hard to believe there was a time that reel to reels were worth next to nothing! They are so expensive now! Some of the late 70's Pioneer's can go for $2,000!
@@jimdayton8837 A lot of broadcast machines were being sold off in the early 2000s, up until about 2009 when the prices started to rise again. 2004-2008 was particularly cheap as no-one was producing fresh tape until RMGI and ATR started up. I passed on getting a second Studer A807 for about £100 in Cardiff, what a mistake that was.
That is a really cool device; like you said: a lot of thought went into it. I love the ingenious way they used a regular cassette mechanism for the tape deck.
as soon as you said the tape gauge was the same as in a compact cassette, i thought it must’ve been so that they could use a standard cassette head… little did i imagine that they’d have stuck an entire cassette mechanism inside!
Using a cassette mechanism to make a reel-to-reel machine is IMO dodgy but also ingeniuous at the same time. Totally agree with you on the 80s tech look inside. They even got the sleeve colors of the capacitor right for that era. Today they are mostly black, and not this light blue with a bit of pink. I'd say that could even be on purpose. Good luck with getting tape or reels for that today.
I'm curious what the date code on the chips would have been. Would they have been 2002 also, or perhaps mid 80s? Was the amp a new old stock part for a mid 80s boomboxe that never got made?
@@TheGramophoneGirl The IC at 21:47 is a Sanyo LA6541ND which is the power driver for the CD spindle motor, tracking and focus actuators and the tray. The date codes on this reads "4?S1" (can't see the 2nd letter/digit). Sanyo date codes always start with the last digit of the year, so it's either 2014, 2004, or 1994. The IC around since 1990 and the marking is done by laser. So I definetly not from the 80s. My guess is 2004.
@@ChipGuy Oh I meant it's cobbled together with 2004 parts and maybe older boards. So a mix of old and new - hence curious about the date codes on the amp ic's. Just seemed odd to have so many capacitors in an item made this century.
Interesting how the reels are never filled up. There will be a reason for that. My guess is either insufficient back tension on the slow moving supply spool when full, or an inability for the cassette mechanism to drive heavy reels. You (someone) could splice a few tapes together to make a super-long one and see whether it worked, but I suspect it would work badly.
When you said that a 1/8 tape reel must've been expensive I figured it would just be made from cheap Cassette deck components. I didn't expect an entire cassette mech though!
I laughed my self silly when you showed that the reel to reel was in fact a cassette player. I never saw that coming. Its cheered me up after having dental torture this week. Please keep these videos coming.
Probably the reason why they went with 1/8" tape is probably due to the availability of an inexpensive tape head. Since cassette decks are still being made, it probably made more sense to go with that system and adapt the reels given that it would be less expensive to manufacture the 1/8" reels. Further, as it has been mentioned, Nagra does have a 1/8" reel system as well, so 1/8" tape reels are available. Granted, it is less standard, but if they went with a standard 1/4" tape, I believe this would have ended up a much more expensive item. EDIT: I had to walk away from this for a while, but coming back in at about 18:00 to see that they actually used a FULL cassette mechanism as the base has me tipping my hat to the designer for creating an ingenious design that adapts an actual cassette deck mechanism to reel to reel. Sad that this is not a high end piece as if it was higher quality, there is certainly some merit to having an open reel deck playing 6 hours of music on one reel. Given the price point though, it might be still worth considering even for a novelty point of view. BTW, my father did have an actual RCA reel to reel recorder back in the day that was about the same size, and like the machine above, it really wasn't made by RCA, it was made by Toshiba for RCA. It was a mono deck only and could play and record at 3 -3/4 ips and 7.5 ips. I had it for about a year or so after my father's death, but it broke and I just deemed it not feasible to fix back up since it was very large for a mono machine and I have plenty smaller portable 5" reel to reel machines that can run off batteries to boot! @Techmoan Suggestion for use is if you have a party or get together outside, just bring it out as a conversation piece. You can play 6 hours of music from the tape and the whole machine is self contained, so set up should be minimal. Too bad that the designer didn't think of auto reverse for the tape mechanism!
Did tanashin even make auto reverse recorders, I know they did with players but I'm guessing they didn't really want to bother with the whole flipping the heads thing that auto reversing recorders had to do.
@@compzac I don't know about that one. More than likely it is as you said, they only had the one type of mechanism for playback only. Still, even so, it would be worth it even if the auto reverse didn't work in record. I recall some old reel to reels were like that. You still had to flip the tape in record mode, but in playback mode, it had auto reverse.
I have to applaud the creators & designers of this product for adapting an existing cassette transport to function as a reel-to-reel, kinda neat!!! And it actually sounds alright too, the same as a decent cassette recorder (natch), but with much more playback time thanks to the larger reels (6 hours a reel compared to 1.5 to 2 hours a cassette). :) I'd think it's safe to say that this is the now the 2nd 1/8" open-reel format in existence (beaten by the Nagra SN of course :) ).
Had one of these few years ago Had spooled tape from a cassette on it Gave it away when I got my True RtoR AKAI Thanks for the video As usual your Audubon curiosity is mind stimulating thanks Matt
This reminds me of those "all in one" CD/cassette recorders you see in mail-order brochures. Quite impressive how they've used an off-the-shelf part to create a reel-to-reel!
I was already thinking they went 1/8" to be the same as regular compact cassettes. I was thinking just to use cheap standard mech heads... Not expecting the whole damned thing to be lurking in there
This was surely the only feasible way to get any kind of tape mechanism in 2004. So if they wanted to do something like this it was basically the only way without breaking the budget. And apparently the did break a budget since the radio is missing ;-)
@@michaelthomsen8771 Haha. Yep what goons. If they made that head cover thing flip down and didn't remove the teeth for the supply/takeup wheels of the hidden tape mech, that item would also have been able to play compact cassettes. They spent tooling costs to have tape wheels made with no teeth in order to make the item more useless - And they gained nothing from doing so. With engineering like that, I'm not surprised they omitted the radio and I'm even less surprised they went out of business!
@@hydorah They might well have simply bonded the pulleys onto the compact cassette tape wheels. Remember, a good portion of a product is to make the manufacturing costs come down. They're already sourcing a standard compact cassette mechanism, if they can just glue or press-fit their parts onto that standard mechanism that would probably be cheaper than getting the supplier of the cassette mechanism to do something custom for them.
How neat! I'd guessed they used 1/4" tape because that was cheaper and easier for them to get by the early 2000s, but building the whole thing around a casette mechanism is genius in a way. I'd almost want one just for the novelty factor and fun engineering
1/8th cassette isn't 1/4, I can guess that the reason it's based on a cassette was that finding the bits to make a transport system for 1/4 reel to reel was exceedingly expensive by the early 2000s and they were going for cheap as chips, you can kinda see it based on them just taking a tanashin tape mechanism and expanding the reels with a load of belts
Again, great video. Thanks. I must admit having ideas about creating a similar device myself using an old reverse cassette deck with LED meters etc. Now you have shown us that it basically is this simple with some 3D printing, rubber pullies and some patience. I recon that these reels if fully loaded with tape could be up to 12 hours recording and playback time on a single side which makes sense now building one like this for show. With some Arduino and some speed sensors you could imitate behaviour of REVOX, Pioneer or AKAI devices in a lot smaller but cheaper form-factor. There might actually be a market for these new type of reels with CrO2 and metal again. The fact that a REVERSE mechanism isn't present in this system is only because the main cassette mechanism hasn't got it but it could have been in here. You should try to find a club of enthusiasts that wanna build a kit with all the necessary spindles and pullies needed to make this yourself. Basically any REVERSE Cassette Deck mechanism is capable of being converted. One of your best finds in my opinion, opens a world of DIY projects.
People ware looking for CrO2 cassettes as well, if any new tape was made now, but it doesn't seem possible. It cost a ton to set up manufacturing, you might need a larger market for it that might not actually have the requisite demand. I wonder how it is with standard ferric tape, there sure is some around, but i don't know if it's actually still being manufactured or just a ton of new old stock. There are a lot of fakes as well, just split video tape, which doesn't work very well at all.
I have read in multiple places that there will never be chrome or cobalt-doped Type II nor Metal Type IV tape manufactured again. The environmental costs of the processes for the particles are what would stop it from being done. However, I continue to hold out hope for some other ferric oxides of at least reasonable quality (such as RTM Fox).
@@kirkmooneyham But what about CD-R, DVD-R and BD-R manufacturing? Billions of plastic discs with some kind of metal or organic dye still produced today, when will that stop and reduce CO2 emissions?
@@SianaGearz In Holland, where i live, people sell their old stock of used tapes in bulk. If you want 100 tapes, you can. Normal fanatics never exceed that demand of tapes. They have a CD Player with MP3.
Surprisingly smartly made device. I like those kinds of solutions where you take some existing mechanisms and adapt them instead of reinventing the wheel. Made sense to me to use the same format as for cassettes as likely that would be easier and cheaper to source still at the time, both tape and mechanism, probably still is. At least for more of a novelty device it makes a lot of sense.
An entertaining vid about an ingenious, offbeat and amusing bit of retro technology that actually works, clearly put together by quite an adept engineer.
How unique!!! Like you said, everything works! And the use of a standard cassette deck to drive the tape transport is very creative! The T handle transport control is reminiscent of the old Craig portable reel to reel and cassette decks from years ago. The use of a rotation sensor, the differential braking for the reels, the wood enclosure... very ingenious! The VU meters need to be damped though... I HATE bouncy meter movements as you can't actually read them reliably. Thanks for showing everything!
That was one of the more enjoyably weird items! It looks like someone made it as a wild proof-of-concept and their boss said "I love it! Le's make them for real!" And, y'know, with a bit of finagling, someone could put in a 1/4" tape head to make it compatible with normal reel-to-real tape. Apart from the speed difference.
If you used self recorded tapes it would playback at the same speed the recording was made. So other than that it's all good. A speed regulator would be nice too.
@@florianm3170 Many tape decks had multiple speeds. 1 7/8" ips and 7 1/2" ips were common alternative speeds to 3 3/4" ips on domestic open reel machines.
Holy crap, that's cool. With a better amplifier, (or use the line out), It would be perfect for parties. The thought and work that has gone into this is awesome. I would never have thought to just put a cassette dech in there and extend the feed/take-up spindles.. Genius. I'm going to look for one. What a surprise, there are'nt any. LOL.
Of course the other odd thing about this reel-to-reel machine, is that the oxide side of trhe tape is facing outwards! Obviously it has to, as it's using a standard cassette mechanism. I love it, just quirky. David.
Interesting you mentioned this, because the very first high-fidelity audiotape recorders made in the 1930s by AEG in Germany under the "Magnetophon" model name also were designed to use their tape with the oxide facing out, due to where the heads were mounted (under the tape path). One example of these Magnetophons was brought back to America by then-US Army SIgnal Corps officer Jack Mullin from a German radio station seized by the Allied Forces during WWII, and with Bing Crosby's help, was the basis for America's first commercially available audiotape recorder, the Ampex Model 200 in 1948.
@@RyanSchweitzer77 Yes, I did know about that. I also seem to remember One of the early EMI machines had the heads mounted in that way. We had them at an advertising agency that I worked for in the '60s.
"Not that it's going to be good, just that it's going to be unique". Your thinking is so spot on. My dad had 1/4" reel to reels and I used to use a 1/4" Nagra recorder in film school. Audio guys often said how "warm" analog audio was compared to digital.
I laughed when Mat took the front off revealing it was literally just a repurposed cassette deck, but considering the tape it's using I should have expected as much. Best part: 23:46 "Just a touch of wow and flutter here and there"
This would only be worthwhile if it came with a huge house to display it and the maid to dust it! Otherwise I am glad to have seen it but it is just a big dust collector with a box to hide somewhere!
Yea , when you said it uses CC tape I was expecting to see some modified standard tape mechanism to be the guilty "part" inside, but wasn't expecting to be as close to what it would look like in a cheap boombox. I mean they hardly do any modifications on the deck part, yet it works.
It reads the CD that fast just because that's a normal CD player, which is not able to recognise MP3 or other data CDs. But Audio CDs can be initialised that fast because the audio CD player doesn't need to make sessions check etc.
I think that techmoan is excited as most of us are excited by any "prop" then later find that it is just a dust collector since beyond a momentary sense of "that's cool" have no real use for it. I mean I have seen a ton of pinball machines and so forth that just hang out and have long ago stopped having any appeal over being initially though of as "cool" to have. The same is true for buying movie props and so forth. I mean you can demonstrate them but can't really use them for anything and you can't even get parts.
Is this the last new analog recording format to debut? I like this in the same way as the one with the built in tape: this essentially came with the only tape it'd ever hold. And yet it's a logic controlled deck in a retro shell. Perfect thing to hook up to a CC Radio and record hours of Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
Since it was released in 2004, I'm going to guess that it was a lot easier to get ahold of 1/8" tape and heads for cheap than 1/4" tape and heads. Also that since the target market likely wouldn't actually have any 1/4" reels, the incompatibility wouldn't necessarily have been that big a deal? [Edited to add "and heads" 2x]
I get a similar feeling when noticing an elegant, or even weird and Heath-Robinson but effective, solution someone has come up with on a piece of equipment I'm repairing. Another great video, thanks Matt!
This reminds me of three things, the anacronistic tech one finds on Terry Gilliam movies, the 90's Batman the Animated Series with it's art deco, late 80's early 90's tech mix and the TV show Fringe and it's paralel universe. This is the kind of machine you'd expect to see in an alt-history show or movie. Rather interesting.
Do you think maybe the extra wow/flutter when playing back from an actual cassette had anything to do with it not pulling from the intended wheel? Maybe the cassette has different resistance than the wheel it's designed to pull from, so the playback is wonky?
This was fun. I noticed the VUs being sort of "accurate" at the start and you were eventually impressed by the thoughtful history behind the novelty. Clever is always clever and one must admire it.
While I had expected a cassette mechanism of some sort from the moment you said the size of the tape, I had only expected the heads, not the whole thing. Honestly, it's an impressive hack all around. It feels like this was one engineers passion project, and someone above them saw it and decided to sell it.
If they would have made it for 1/4 inch tape they would have sold like hot cakes. Love your videos man, you come across as very real and I'm always impressed with how you delve into things and try to repair the items that don't work. Keep at it.
As soon as you said it used 1/8" reels I thought "Yes, I know what they've done!" didn't think they'd be that cheap! It's kind of something from Amstrad from back in the day, like their double decker video recorder or their four track recording stu-di-o. Made from cheap parts so the standards functions would be done to the standard of a cheap device, but the special, unique features had a bit of thought and engineering put in so they worked surprisingly well.
I must admit, when you took the back off, I immediately thought of 80’s electronics. It does look as if it went wrong you could actually buy off the shelf components to repair it. As others have said, I can’t believe the effort put into this, it would certainly be a talking point if it was on show and playing a tape. Thanks for a great video.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
I can imagine the engineer that designed this was given a crappy set of parts and a small budget and they thought "Fine, this will be my audition tape for my dream job at Sony then" I hope they went on to better things because it is deserved given how much this overachieves.
Problem is, what's the quality of the heads and the circuitry supporting them. Crap in this case.
@@80s_Boombox_Collector Yeah it looks like the engineer was given very low-quality parts to work with, but he managed to convert a standard cassette mechanism, and adapt it into something that would play tape from a 7-in reel. Pretty neat.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 The fundamental core of the device is mainly old guff but I agree the new moulded plastic bits are actually designed to elevate the whole machine. The buttons, levers and dials add functionality whilst looking decent and the bearing and spring design on those reals are far more refined than they should be. Even the cheapest of tat will need new moulds but at least this tat was well thought out by someone who clearly cared.
I think it was the exact opposite. Engineer worked at Sony for 40 years, was retired out, gets a job at novelty electronic company, designs novelty reel to reel to function accurately, gets fired from novelty company for cost overruns.
“Audition tape”
I'm actually quite impressed how they adapted a standard cassette mechanism to operate as an open reel system, quite the unique repurposing method there... :)
Yeah the weird tape format makes sense now, was anybody still making 1/4 drives at this point? Probably not. Very clever
I was going to say the same thing but you beat me to it.
As soon as he said it's a normal tape size, the first thing that popped into my mind was it's probably just a cassette deck being used.
As crazy as it sounds it would be feasible to repurpose a CD-R Drive (Burner) to a similar device imitating a reel2reel deck. Like an Akai GX77, you barely see the reels. This can easily be simulated with 2 fake reels or even a display. and the hidden disc records in MP3 etc, April fools day?
@@TheCurlyP I think TASCAM made 1/4 reel to reels well into the 00's, but those are [semi-]professional and expensive, obviously.
Also, there isn't such a thing as a open reel "drive" - each manufacturer had their own custom mechanics, very few things were unified.
A (reel) shame they didn't add a radio; being able to record a three hour radio broadcast would have given it an actually useful function. Great video as always Matt.
...but it has an AUX input
That's a much better idea than holding one of those piano key portable mono tape recorders against the old radio speaker to record Alan Freeman's Saturday Pick of the Pops top 10 charts and you had to shout to everyone in the house not to talk for that hour but you couldn't stop the motorbike without spark plug suppressors going past.
Looking at the electronics and the user controls, it seems to have been based on an existing design for a karaoke machine with a CD player and solenoid-operated tape transport, hence the input mixing and the use of a joystick for the tape control. But there probably was no option for a radio in the original device, and adding one would have spoiled the aesthetics.
Trust me, you wouldn't want a tuner on this thing, it would be very low quality with weak reception and selectivity. That's the case for nearly all bluetooth speakers today. Most of them have total crap tuners compared to even just an entry-level boombox from the 80s.
Huh huh woodcock
The moment it's revealed that the whole thing is essentially a modified cassette mechanism totally blew my mind. That's so cool!
When he said it used 1/8" tape, I was expecting it to use a cassette head and maybe one or two other standard parts on a custom playback system. I was not expecting an entire cassette mechanism modified slightly to feed the reels with a bunch of belts and such. It's really quite clever.
Cool junk. I have a pioneer 2024, the real deal. They were used in recording studios back in the day. I have a grand that says the 2024 sounds better than this crap. It's nothing more than glorified boom box.
Same!
Yes, very clever re-use of existing technology! Perhaps not the most HiFi of reel-to-reel machines, but it obviously does what is asked of it! A very interesting device. :)
@@kenbowser5622 Yeah, it probably does sound better. Does this look like hi-fi equipment to you? The price difference between the two is immense, no shit it'll sound better. One was meant for recording studios and the other for grandmother to use maybe once in their lives
Actually impressed by all the ingenuity, especially the way that the tape locks in the spool. Better than on a Nagra SN, which is a bit fiddly.
I love it when one of your favourite YT celebs posts on another one of your favourite YT celeb’s video.
The Melding of Mythical minds. (Or is that a tune I once had?)
HAINBACH! The LEGEND!
🤣 turns out it’s a ‘must have’!
hahaha. I knew it. My first thought was "Hainbach would feed an entire room full of tape through this device" and here you are with your comment. wonderful. Please start a little project together with technomoan. that would be epic :) MASTERS OF TAPE
It's like some hobbyist project packaged and sold. Love it!
As an owner of several reel-to-reels, I could only laugh when you were able to easily lift it with one hand.
As an owner of several reel to reels I was very happy I could lift it with one hand - and without pulling my back out.
I had a “portable” Ferrograph that weighed 50 pounds!
Worth mentioning in this regard the Philips N7300 1/4 inch reel to reel deck, it weighs only 5.3kg (11 1/2 pounds) with the reels, all plastic from 1981, their last machine, awful build quality but even so sounds pretty good.
I picked up an old Teac R2R a couple summers ago, and was shocked at how much they were able to make that thing weigh.
Agreed… I have an old Akai reel-to-reel deck, and that thing is HEAVY.
This looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a catalog of Christmas gifts. Every single one of those catalogs seemed to feature a Crosley record/cd/tape player around the time. I imagine this unit might have been given as a gift and then forgotten.
It certainly has that odd "almost quality, almost useful, but falls short in every category" feel to it. Like the gift you know was declared "cute" by a relative before ordering it from a catalog that had arrived in the mail. Simultaneously delighting and disappointing, because you've no use for it, and wonder what to do with it now you have it!
RUclipsr *VWestlife* receives those _Heartburn America_ catalogues. I wonder if it has ever featured in there?
ISTR seeing this in a Sears catalog back around 2003. I know I've seen this before.
Re-gifted, like fruit cake :o)
You have to give them credit for the ingenuity for modifying a compact cassette mechanism to create the Reel to Reel. Not viable or valuable but but novel.
I'm fascinated by a couple things: the full-logic controls for the tape transport, and the feature set. It's tempting to write this off as a repackaged boombox, but in 2002, I don't recall any boomboxes with full logic control and manually adjustable record levels, a crossfader, and so forth. Even if this thing used standard cassettes, I'd still be surprised at how competent this thing is. I would love to know the development story.
The only thing missing is a hi-bias mode for chromium tape :)
Perhaps some alcohol was involved. Does it come with a commander module to expand dynamics ?
ive got a panasonic boombox from 2002 and the tape is full logic I also got my last denon cassette deck with dolby b in 2005 and its full logic as well.
I have a aiwa cassette deck that is full logic and it is from 1978
14:50 It actually restarts the CD track when you start the recording.
That is indeed a neat little thing there. Points for the effort.
It's just another example of how execution of an idea sometimes far outstrips the usefulness of said idea.
Allright engineering department, we have this lot of old cassette mechanisms lying around and also some 1980s amplifier boards. You have one week to make a product out of it. Go!
A univerisity engineering lab project one semester.
@@markclowe More likely a high school group.
if cassette mechanisms are reusable then we could reprogram old broken decks that have power problems or some kind of electrical issue that can't be fixed
What a truly fascinating thing. The sheer effort in engineering a weird blown apart cassette player to function as a reel to reel; it feels like an idea that should have been shot down at every stage of production!
If it was developed in Beijing, the engineers might have been shot down after poor sales.
_"Who else in the UK called Matt would want something this stupid?"_
7:38 Here is a perfect collision of formats: playing a CD that looks like a vinyl LP, on a player that looks like a reel to reel tape deck.
Those are Verbatim brand. I used to use those exact ones in the days of CD-Rs. Verbatim really made the highest quality CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, with or without the novelty styling.
@@CamdenBloke What do you mean "in the days of CD-Rs"? I still use them!
@@CamdenBloke Ah, Verbatim! Bless 'em! I'm sure I still have hundreds of them in storage somewhere. 😂
@@LordSandwichII it's the only way I can get Touhou doujun CDs in the USA. They only ever press a relatively small batch to sell at Comiket or Retesai, then after that you have to buy them from Bandcamp or Booth. So you buy the album as FLAC files then burn them to disk.
@@SenileOtaku Exactly, and not everyone has a brand new car with bluetooth audio.
A good example of “let’s make an ornamental conversation piece” then halfway through the design process they decided to make it (kind of) practical too.
Still looks lovely though 😊
What’s amazing is that if this could be made to play 1/4 track tape, this could be the “Crosley” of reel to reel players, and maybe tapes could make a “come back”
It feels as if this was invented as a method of disposing of miles of unused compact cassette tape pancake. I imagine there was quite a lot of that stuck, unwanted, in warehouses in 2004.
You must have missed his video on prison tech.
23:22 I burst out laughing at the sheer you're-doing-it-wrong silliness. The "touch of wow and flutter" was icing on the cake.
I think that is because the tape was being dragged out of the idle cassette shell, which likely had a good bit of resistance that you wouldn't have from the open reel, which is being driven by the mechanism. It actually didn't sound as bad as that when he replayed the recording from the CD.
It essentially is a cassette player disguised as reel to reel machine, but it looks like a well thought out "makeover". For something that was made just as a novelty there's some clever solutions here- and I like that!
I find it likely that there wasn't a ton of development in the hardware. It's essentially a CD / cassette "boom box", but repackaged into something designed to look nostalgic and designed to be inexpensively produced. It's the PT Cruiser of audio devices.
It’s not _that_ bad though, is it? Like maybe the ‘02 Thunderbird of audio devices?
PT cruisers are actually pretty cool, if you can find one that is well maintained that is. Especially if its timing belt and related parts has been replaced at 100,000 miles on its interface engine.
Only ok to play drumbeats?
@@commodoresixfour7478 it's the next meme car after the pontiac aztek
@@commodoresixfour7478 but the pt cruiser is just a bigger heavier slower dodge neon, if I was inclined to own a Daimler Chrysler product from that particular time period and could only choose from a gt pt cruiser or a srt4 neon ID rather have the neon
Ok wow, with the front plate removed you can see the "tape mechanism" and I can honestly say I'm impressed. Not impressed about any audio quality but more by the ingenuity. The idea to make a reel to reel from a cassette mechanism is just cool on it's own.
The front plate is the Wizard of Oz's curtain.
It's seems somebody thought it would be a good idea to re-invent the reel. Though I will say, if someone asked me to gin up a reel to reel in 2004 with then-current hardware, I doubt I could come up with something as clever as this!
Wouldn't surprise me if they looked into using standard R2R tape then saw how much they'd have to pay for the tape heads and thought sod that!
@@natejgee That was my thought, too. Instead of sourcing 1/4" heads and all, they just took a cassette drive and rearranged the pieces.
And do it cheaply adapting existing simple tech. Almost looks like the prototype might have been fabricated by a kid with a big box of old parts.
@@rolfs2165 On the other hand they seem to have created a custom spool system.
@@markevans2294 And a good one, too. That "3 balls on a spring" system certainly wasn't the cheapest thing to make but it works very well. And the spring-loaded tape door on it is just pure luxury.
This seems surprisingly well made and is not optimised for cheap manufacturing cost. This device just boggles my mind.
four words
momentary switches
The ball bearing design is definitely going to help them win the new format war! Jokes aside, I think the "new" format is actually quite ingenious. By the year of 2004, people still had a lot of old compact cassettes lying around. One could tape 6 of them together end-to-end and make a 6-hour reel and actually listen to it.
More than 6 I would imagine as the reel looks like it could hold a lot more tape.
It certainly wouldn't win any fast wind awards imagine winding a full reel of tape, you could go have dinner, wash up the dishes and then be ready to play your recording LOL.
@@darinb.3273 I mean it has auto stop so everything has been thought of xD
@@Ramog1000 Right of course, however who would know the effect of having a full reel of tape. It would have more mass at the end plus the take up reel would be spinning faster you saw how it went past the rest spot when Matt rewind to test the clip's ability to hold. I personally would want more leader tape and do away with the clip as long as the tape is rewind instead of fast forward auto stop would still function in the user's absence. Just a factor concerning tape. I had one of those cassettes with the miniature reel to reel hubs and it snapped the leader when it reached the end in a normal rewind anyway it snapped at the end.
you could fit a whole audiobook on one or two of thesea
As an ex consumer electronics repair tech of over 25 years, I found this very interesting. I've seen tons of things like this during my time, but this one is uniquely clever, albeit it incredibly cheaply made. Very cool!
I remember working at a local infomercial TV station. One company sent a one inch video tape master with instructions to dub it down to beta. I had never used the 1" deck and had to figure it out on my own as it was 3am and there was nobody to call. The deck wasn't commanded by our master control system so you had to take to black, zip across the room and start the deck playing. It had a vacuum feed system that sucked the tape through all the gizmos but I didn't get it on the take up correctly and after it was running I shot to the other side of the room to do some editing. A few minutes later I hear this weird rustling and the thing is dumping all the master source on the floor. It was 2/3rds done so I prayed I got a good dub and dumped all the tape in the trash.
That would be a auto lacing Sony BVH 3000 1inch machine with with vacuum holes in the take up spool. Never really worked properly and the older 2000 was much nicer.
It wasn't your fault. It was always a coin flip if they would spool up right. Of course, had you known that, you would have babysit it more, but don't feel bad about it. I am not sure any auto-lacing system was very reliable. It was trying to solve a problem that no one had a good solution for. Well, cartridges were eventually the solution. Before that, technicians would prefer manual lacing every time, even the exceedingly convoluted ones. If only for peace of mind.
You should have improvised during broadcast by throwing up a "technical difficulties" slide whenever the video started to distort.
Not gonna lie that opening shot is professional! You've upped your game again these last couple months!
Another "I agree" comment. Some engineer really tried hard with this one and deserves a round of applause. It would be great if they saw this video and left a comment.
I thought it was going to be a load of rubbish, ended up smiling at a genius solution and something that actually did its job.
Even the novelties were made better, reminded me of the little record player I had when I was a kid, the records I played on it are still good today cos although cheap the build quality was decent and the stylus wasn't a pile of crap.
Brilliant! Taping a cassette tape cartridge to a reel to reel deck and it plays. That is definitely a piece of work.
@23:19 -- Hahaha -- the optics! The all-time hack, taping a cassette to a reel machine.
Awesome concept. Great find, Matt!
I picked up one of these in a thrift store about 8 years ago minus the reels. Of course I thought it was 1/4" at first too, so I tried that and it didn't work.. so the ebay search began.. 2 years later I found a guy who bought out a bunch of the reels from a warehouse and now I have a few extra.. it all still works
There is an entirely stunning amount of over-design and new design that went into these reels! Ball-bearing and spring capture, tiny spring-loaded leader clamp... if you'd gone back in time and shown these to an actual open-reel user they'd have laughed you out of the room! (Then perhaps quietly started trying to reverse engineer them and you'd have broken the timeline. :-D )
The 'held-on' arrangement of the tape onto the reel wouldn't be practical on 1/4" decks with large reels. The high fast winding speed and inertia of the tape and reels would probably snap the leader tape when it reached the end if it was held onto the reel. Handling 1/4" tape is easier than 1/8" anyway so loading onto a reel is easier to start with.
The solution doesn't come from out of nowhere though... I've got a normal-8 film projector which uses the same spools as 1/8" reel-to-reel tape, only that on film spools you do have a slot as well where you're supposed to put the start of the film into, just as it's done here.
"Absolutely guaranteed, bloody-well will not". No one does contempt quite like Matt!
I dunno, man. I think Ashens takes the top spot there -- "FUCKING INFLATABLE FUCKING CROWN" brims with such ire and contempt that I think it's hard to beat.
I can't believe it! Mat just swore! 😁
there is a challenge to find a 1/4in RTR tape player/recorder pre this one. Must be one if only a dictaphone type one
The ingenuity that went into this is amazing. I wish more novelty stuff was this thought out.
Something like this would actually be a great piece to have in the background while entertaining guests. It is very visually appealing.
Let us raise a glass to the one engineer at the design meeting who kept insisting that they just use traditional 1/4" tape, and glared at the bean counters pushing for a cheap hack to a cassette mechanism. Clearly he lost the argument, but he TRIED. We know he did.
This cassette-based internal solution is actually hilarious, to be honest.
They aren't making reel-to-reel mechanisms anymore on any mass scale so I doubt the conversation you suggest even happened. This was the only way they could do it. It's not bad at all, really. It's not R2R...but it's not that bad.
Nope. They never intended on making a solid product, the whole idea is to make cheap novelty that kinda works.
This would be actually be really useful if you were into '80s computers. You could put put your entire program collection onto 1 tape. As long as the counter was genuinely accurate, anyways.
Great idea! 😊
Wow, thats a genius idea!
A friend from school had a reel tape machine connected to his Speccy.
Can't you also just record the programs as digital audio? Would not even need to rewind or fast forward.
@@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug Yes indeed. Anything that can record and playback what is effectively an analogue audio signal would do the job. It doesn't matter if the recorded format itself isn't analogue, in fact digital would be more reliable anyway.
That is so clever, and it doesn't sound too bad either
I loved seeing the journey you went through - from disgust, to grudging appreciation, to wonderment - fantastic!
Humbled Mat being "blown back" by this device was a real genuine moment. Cheers and thanks!
I can’t believe the amount of effort gone into its design given what it is. As it was designed and built not ages ago it would be interesting to find out a bit more about the design brief and who engineered it.
It's got to be someone in China. I guess those folks can be pretty darn clever.
Maybe an engineering firm in Taiwan ROC at the time, PRC wasn't the destination to farm out engineering to that it is now. Maybe with some luck they'll watch the vid and make themselves known, i'd certainly applaud that.
The amount of research and work going in your videos are exceptional. It translates easily into pure enjoyment and excitement. Thank you 🤓
"Of course, he's put two and two together, there. I'm the only bloke who'd want something stupid like this."
I love this channel.
They need to start making these again, I would TOTALLY get one! Even if it was only used a handful of times per year, it'd be fun!
Thank you, Matt, as I quite enjoyed this one and was impressed with all the thought that went into this product. What impressed me most, however, was the design of the reels; the springs, the bearings, the ingenious pull-back mechanism for retaining the tape end! Someone really cared about and was proud of their work despite it being for a novelty. Whoever you are, bravo!
casette as reel to reel is the weirdest alternate universe
You have given me the idea to try and turn my open reel Tandberg into a cassette deck. 😁
I have seen an old advert for a turntable that converted into a reel to reel tape deck while Technology Connections has reviewed the CD changer that doubles as a Record Deck !
Oh, I remember seeing these advertised. At the time you could still get an actual reel-to-reel off ebay for next to nothing so it felt a little pointless. Still, as a novelty it's quite impressive. Also, I wonder if the previous owner bought it with the intention of playing back existing tapes and then put it back in the box when they realised their mistake.
Wow it's hard to believe there was a time that reel to reels were worth next to nothing! They are so expensive now! Some of the late 70's Pioneer's can go for $2,000!
@@jimdayton8837 A lot of broadcast machines were being sold off in the early 2000s, up until about 2009 when the prices started to rise again. 2004-2008 was particularly cheap as no-one was producing fresh tape until RMGI and ATR started up. I passed on getting a second Studer A807 for about £100 in Cardiff, what a mistake that was.
@@tapewolf Ugh! I paid about $5K for a mint A807 recently
@@jimdayton8837 Only if they were completely refurbished they would be worth that kind of money.
@@watchnerd You overpaid for sure.
That is a really cool device; like you said: a lot of thought went into it. I love the ingenious way they used a regular cassette mechanism for the tape deck.
The fact that he taped a cassette tape to it to prove that it should be able to play it was next level greatness. ✔💯
as soon as you said the tape gauge was the same as in a compact cassette, i thought it must’ve been so that they could use a standard cassette head… little did i imagine that they’d have stuck an entire cassette mechanism inside!
Using a cassette mechanism to make a reel-to-reel machine is IMO dodgy but also ingeniuous at the same time. Totally agree with you on the 80s tech look inside. They even got the sleeve colors of the capacitor right for that era. Today they are mostly black, and not this light blue with a bit of pink. I'd say that could even be on purpose.
Good luck with getting tape or reels for that today.
I'm curious what the date code on the chips would have been. Would they have been 2002 also, or perhaps mid 80s? Was the amp a new old stock part for a mid 80s boomboxe that never got made?
The tape is easy, just pull it from a regular cassette. The reels will be tricky, that's true.
@@TheGramophoneGirl The IC at 21:47 is a Sanyo LA6541ND which is the power driver for the CD spindle motor, tracking and focus actuators and the tray. The date codes on this reads "4?S1" (can't see the 2nd letter/digit). Sanyo date codes always start with the last digit of the year, so it's either 2014, 2004, or 1994. The IC around since 1990 and the marking is done by laser. So I definetly not from the 80s. My guess is 2004.
@@ChipGuy well spotted!
@@ChipGuy Oh I meant it's cobbled together with 2004 parts and maybe older boards. So a mix of old and new - hence curious about the date codes on the amp ic's. Just seemed odd to have so many capacitors in an item made this century.
Interesting how the reels are never filled up. There will be a reason for that. My guess is either insufficient back tension on the slow moving supply spool when full, or an inability for the cassette mechanism to drive heavy reels. You (someone) could splice a few tapes together to make a super-long one and see whether it worked, but I suspect it would work badly.
Yes. The cassette mechanism will be delivering much more torque than it was originally designed for.
I hadn't even thought of that... 2 chaps here with engeneering savvy minds.
I was thinking that this "reel to reel" mechanism sounds like cassette player. Then you revealed the hidden tape deck. Marvelous contraption 😀
When you said that a 1/8 tape reel must've been expensive I figured it would just be made from cheap Cassette deck components. I didn't expect an entire cassette mech though!
I laughed my self silly when you showed that the reel to reel was in fact a cassette player. I never saw that coming. Its cheered me up after having dental torture this week. Please keep these videos coming.
"Who else In the UK would want something so stupid?" Mat, you are a crazy man!
You have missed the point Simmy..it’s novelty that put a smile on your face
I admire the cleverness of using a normal cassette mechanism to make the frankentape player/recorder on it.
Probably the reason why they went with 1/8" tape is probably due to the availability of an inexpensive tape head. Since cassette decks are still being made, it probably made more sense to go with that system and adapt the reels given that it would be less expensive to manufacture the 1/8" reels. Further, as it has been mentioned, Nagra does have a 1/8" reel system as well, so 1/8" tape reels are available. Granted, it is less standard, but if they went with a standard 1/4" tape, I believe this would have ended up a much more expensive item. EDIT: I had to walk away from this for a while, but coming back in at about 18:00 to see that they actually used a FULL cassette mechanism as the base has me tipping my hat to the designer for creating an ingenious design that adapts an actual cassette deck mechanism to reel to reel. Sad that this is not a high end piece as if it was higher quality, there is certainly some merit to having an open reel deck playing 6 hours of music on one reel. Given the price point though, it might be still worth considering even for a novelty point of view. BTW, my father did have an actual RCA reel to reel recorder back in the day that was about the same size, and like the machine above, it really wasn't made by RCA, it was made by Toshiba for RCA. It was a mono deck only and could play and record at 3 -3/4 ips and 7.5 ips. I had it for about a year or so after my father's death, but it broke and I just deemed it not feasible to fix back up since it was very large for a mono machine and I have plenty smaller portable 5" reel to reel machines that can run off batteries to boot! @Techmoan Suggestion for use is if you have a party or get together outside, just bring it out as a conversation piece. You can play 6 hours of music from the tape and the whole machine is self contained, so set up should be minimal. Too bad that the designer didn't think of auto reverse for the tape mechanism!
For what it’s worth, 10” reels at 3.75 ips will get you 6 hours of music
Did tanashin even make auto reverse recorders, I know they did with players but I'm guessing they didn't really want to bother with the whole flipping the heads thing that auto reversing recorders had to do.
@@compzac I don't know about that one. More than likely it is as you said, they only had the one type of mechanism for playback only. Still, even so, it would be worth it even if the auto reverse didn't work in record. I recall some old reel to reels were like that. You still had to flip the tape in record mode, but in playback mode, it had auto reverse.
I have to applaud the creators & designers of this product for adapting an existing cassette transport to function as a reel-to-reel, kinda neat!!! And it actually sounds alright too, the same as a decent cassette recorder (natch), but with much more playback time thanks to the larger reels (6 hours a reel compared to 1.5 to 2 hours a cassette). :)
I'd think it's safe to say that this is the now the 2nd 1/8" open-reel format in existence (beaten by the Nagra SN of course :) ).
I'm blown back by how good your channel and content have remained over the years.
Had one of these few years ago
Had spooled tape from a cassette on it
Gave it away when I got my True RtoR AKAI
Thanks for the video
As usual your Audubon curiosity is mind stimulating thanks Matt
Interesting item. Nice to see a lower end/novelty piece surpassing expectations for a change too! Fun vid as always.
This reminds me of those "all in one" CD/cassette recorders you see in mail-order brochures.
Quite impressive how they've used an off-the-shelf part to create a reel-to-reel!
One of the most interesting videos I have seen from you or even the best and most interesting. I was really blown away like you were.
It feels like they accidentally gave the designer too high of a budget and forgot to tell them it's a novelty device.
I was already thinking they went 1/8" to be the same as regular compact cassettes. I was thinking just to use cheap standard mech heads... Not expecting the whole damned thing to be lurking in there
This was surely the only feasible way to get any kind of tape mechanism in 2004. So if they wanted to do something like this it was basically the only way without breaking the budget. And apparently the did break a budget since the radio is missing ;-)
@@michaelthomsen8771 Haha. Yep what goons. If they made that head cover thing flip down and didn't remove the teeth for the supply/takeup wheels of the hidden tape mech, that item would also have been able to play compact cassettes. They spent tooling costs to have tape wheels made with no teeth in order to make the item more useless - And they gained nothing from doing so. With engineering like that, I'm not surprised they omitted the radio and I'm even less surprised they went out of business!
@@hydorah They might well have simply bonded the pulleys onto the compact cassette tape wheels. Remember, a good portion of a product is to make the manufacturing costs come down. They're already sourcing a standard compact cassette mechanism, if they can just glue or press-fit their parts onto that standard mechanism that would probably be cheaper than getting the supplier of the cassette mechanism to do something custom for them.
@@hydorah That is an interesting thought, then they could have included an extra transparent plastic cover, so you could see the cassette playing!
How neat! I'd guessed they used 1/4" tape because that was cheaper and easier for them to get by the early 2000s, but building the whole thing around a casette mechanism is genius in a way.
I'd almost want one just for the novelty factor and fun engineering
1/8th cassette isn't 1/4, I can guess that the reason it's based on a cassette was that finding the bits to make a transport system for 1/4 reel to reel was exceedingly expensive by the early 2000s and they were going for cheap as chips, you can kinda see it based on them just taking a tanashin tape mechanism and expanding the reels with a load of belts
Again, great video. Thanks. I must admit having ideas about creating a similar device myself using an old reverse cassette deck with LED meters etc. Now you have shown us that it basically is this simple with some 3D printing, rubber pullies and some patience. I recon that these reels if fully loaded with tape could be up to 12 hours recording and playback time on a single side which makes sense now building one like this for show. With some Arduino and some speed sensors you could imitate behaviour of REVOX, Pioneer or AKAI devices in a lot smaller but cheaper form-factor. There might actually be a market for these new type of reels with CrO2 and metal again. The fact that a REVERSE mechanism isn't present in this system is only because the main cassette mechanism hasn't got it but it could have been in here. You should try to find a club of enthusiasts that wanna build a kit with all the necessary spindles and pullies needed to make this yourself. Basically any REVERSE Cassette Deck mechanism is capable of being converted. One of your best finds in my opinion, opens a world of DIY projects.
Great idea!
People ware looking for CrO2 cassettes as well, if any new tape was made now, but it doesn't seem possible. It cost a ton to set up manufacturing, you might need a larger market for it that might not actually have the requisite demand. I wonder how it is with standard ferric tape, there sure is some around, but i don't know if it's actually still being manufactured or just a ton of new old stock.
There are a lot of fakes as well, just split video tape, which doesn't work very well at all.
I have read in multiple places that there will never be chrome or cobalt-doped Type II nor Metal Type IV tape manufactured again. The environmental costs of the processes for the particles are what would stop it from being done. However, I continue to hold out hope for some other ferric oxides of at least reasonable quality (such as RTM Fox).
@@kirkmooneyham But what about CD-R, DVD-R and BD-R manufacturing? Billions of plastic discs with some kind of metal or organic dye still produced today, when will that stop and reduce CO2 emissions?
@@SianaGearz In Holland, where i live, people sell their old stock of used tapes in bulk. If you want 100 tapes, you can. Normal fanatics never exceed that demand of tapes. They have a CD Player with MP3.
"A touch of wow and flutter here and there" ... that's hilarious. Yet another quirky fun Techmoan video from across the pond.
Mat was so stunned that it actually worked that he's making up new phrases! "Blown Back!" Love it!
Surprisingly smartly made device. I like those kinds of solutions where you take some existing mechanisms and adapt them instead of reinventing the wheel. Made sense to me to use the same format as for cassettes as likely that would be easier and cheaper to source still at the time, both tape and mechanism, probably still is. At least for more of a novelty device it makes a lot of sense.
An entertaining vid about an ingenious, offbeat and amusing bit of retro technology that actually works, clearly put together by quite an adept engineer.
Pretty ingenious way of reusing off the shelf cassette parts to make something approximating a reel to reel recorder.
Some engineer out there had an absolute blast making this, I bet. It's kind of heartwarming in a way.
How unique!!! Like you said, everything works!
And the use of a standard cassette deck to drive the tape transport is very creative!
The T handle transport control is reminiscent of the old Craig portable reel to reel and cassette decks from years ago.
The use of a rotation sensor, the differential braking for the reels, the wood enclosure... very ingenious!
The VU meters need to be damped though... I HATE bouncy meter movements as you can't actually read them reliably.
Thanks for showing everything!
That was one of the more enjoyably weird items! It looks like someone made it as a wild proof-of-concept and their boss said "I love it! Le's make them for real!"
And, y'know, with a bit of finagling, someone could put in a 1/4" tape head to make it compatible with normal reel-to-real tape. Apart from the speed difference.
If you used self recorded tapes it would playback at the same speed the recording was made. So other than that it's all good. A speed regulator would be nice too.
Yes, go look up the Philips N7300, was done back in 1981, it also plays 1 7/8, that is cassette speed.
@@florianm3170 Many tape decks had multiple speeds. 1 7/8" ips and 7 1/2" ips were common alternative speeds to 3 3/4" ips on domestic open reel machines.
Holy crap, that's cool. With a better amplifier, (or use the line out), It would be perfect for parties. The thought and work that has gone into this is awesome. I would never have thought to just put a cassette dech in there and extend the feed/take-up spindles..
Genius. I'm going to look for one.
What a surprise, there are'nt any. LOL.
There are a couple of sellers who offer blank tapes, though; I made a separate comment about that.
I love this. Especially your appreciation of the engineers.
Of course the other odd thing about this reel-to-reel machine, is that the oxide side of trhe tape is facing outwards! Obviously it has to, as it's using a standard cassette mechanism.
I love it, just quirky.
David.
Interesting you mentioned this, because the very first high-fidelity audiotape recorders made in the 1930s by AEG in Germany under the "Magnetophon" model name also were designed to use their tape with the oxide facing out, due to where the heads were mounted (under the tape path).
One example of these Magnetophons was brought back to America by then-US Army SIgnal Corps officer Jack Mullin from a German radio station seized by the Allied Forces during WWII, and with Bing Crosby's help, was the basis for America's first commercially available audiotape recorder, the Ampex Model 200 in 1948.
@@RyanSchweitzer77 Yes, I did know about that. I also seem to remember One of the early EMI machines had the heads mounted in that way. We had them at an advertising agency that I worked for in the '60s.
"Not that it's going to be good, just that it's going to be unique". Your thinking is so spot on. My dad had 1/4" reel to reels and I used to use a 1/4" Nagra recorder in film school. Audio guys often said how "warm" analog audio was compared to digital.
I laughed when Mat took the front off revealing it was literally just a repurposed cassette deck, but considering the tape it's using I should have expected as much.
Best part: 23:46 "Just a touch of wow and flutter here and there"
This would only be worthwhile if it came with a huge house to display it and the maid to dust it! Otherwise I am glad to have seen it but it is just a big dust collector with a box to hide somewhere!
Yea , when you said it uses CC tape I was expecting to see some modified standard tape mechanism to be the guilty "part" inside, but wasn't expecting to be as close to what it would look like in a cheap boombox. I mean they hardly do any modifications on the deck part, yet it works.
The CD player opened so fast and violently, it could take your eye out. It also read the disc incredibly fast!
It reads the CD that fast just because that's a normal CD player, which is not able to recognise MP3 or other data CDs.
But Audio CDs can be initialised that fast because the audio CD player doesn't need to make sessions check etc.
I bet some serious CD deck from computer market. I repaired many of them with used tray belts, some have direct drive
its like the till on open all hours ,i think they nicknamed it jaws
I liked your "Franken-monster" cassette tape addon conglomeration. Ingenious.
You sounded excited about this player. I will admit it is cool to have toy actually work like the real ones would or did. Thanks for the video Matt.
I think that techmoan is excited as most of us are excited by any "prop" then later find that it is just a dust collector since beyond a momentary sense of "that's cool" have no real use for it. I mean I have seen a ton of pinball machines and so forth that just hang out and have long ago stopped having any appeal over being initially though of as "cool" to have. The same is true for buying movie props and so forth. I mean you can demonstrate them but can't really use them for anything and you can't even get parts.
Is this the last new analog recording format to debut? I like this in the same way as the one with the built in tape: this essentially came with the only tape it'd ever hold. And yet it's a logic controlled deck in a retro shell. Perfect thing to hook up to a CC Radio and record hours of Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
I feel happy that I totally called it being a repurposed cassette deck. Really impressive engineering, though, making it work!
Since it was released in 2004, I'm going to guess that it was a lot easier to get ahold of 1/8" tape and heads for cheap than 1/4" tape and heads. Also that since the target market likely wouldn't actually have any 1/4" reels, the incompatibility wouldn't necessarily have been that big a deal? [Edited to add "and heads" 2x]
WoW... Just Wow. This is a cool unit, especially for the time. Your enthusiasm and thorough explanation is welcome and appreciated. Thank You.
I get a similar feeling when noticing an elegant, or even weird and Heath-Robinson but effective, solution someone has come up with on a piece of equipment I'm repairing. Another great video, thanks Matt!
This reminds me of three things, the anacronistic tech one finds on Terry Gilliam movies, the 90's Batman the Animated Series with it's art deco, late 80's early 90's tech mix and the TV show Fringe and it's paralel universe. This is the kind of machine you'd expect to see in an alt-history show or movie. Rather interesting.
Do you think maybe the extra wow/flutter when playing back from an actual cassette had anything to do with it not pulling from the intended wheel? Maybe the cassette has different resistance than the wheel it's designed to pull from, so the playback is wonky?
I was amazed by the quality of sound through the headphone output, cd & tape!!! Would be fun to replace the internal speakers for a few decent ones!
This was fun. I noticed the VUs being sort of "accurate" at the start and you were eventually impressed by the thoughtful history behind the novelty. Clever is always clever and one must admire it.
While I had expected a cassette mechanism of some sort from the moment you said the size of the tape, I had only expected the heads, not the whole thing. Honestly, it's an impressive hack all around. It feels like this was one engineers passion project, and someone above them saw it and decided to sell it.
If they would have made it for 1/4 inch tape they would have sold like hot cakes. Love your videos man, you come across as very real and I'm always impressed with how you delve into things and try to repair the items that don't work. Keep at it.
I'm blown back by the Techmoan channel.
As soon as you said it used 1/8" reels I thought "Yes, I know what they've done!" didn't think they'd be that cheap!
It's kind of something from Amstrad from back in the day, like their double decker video recorder or their four track recording stu-di-o. Made from cheap parts so the standards functions would be done to the standard of a cheap device, but the special, unique features had a bit of thought and engineering put in so they worked surprisingly well.
I’d forgotten about the Amstrad double decker VHS! Built with one dubious purpose in mind - taping the rentals from Blockbusters 😂
I must admit, when you took the back off, I immediately thought of 80’s electronics. It does look as if it went wrong you could actually buy off the shelf components to repair it. As others have said, I can’t believe the effort put into this, it would certainly be a talking point if it was on show and playing a tape. Thanks for a great video.
I love that you’re now also taking stuff apart ❤️