[sdiy] UK - B&Q Tape adapters

[Scott Nordlund]

> The problem is that you will also need to find an erase head to wipe
> the tape loop before your write head. I also wouldn't count on the mp3
> heads being able to read either. If you had a donor tape
> recorder/player to give you a erase and read head (plus some of the
> tape transport/movement elements, it could see that maybe having
> multiple write heads writing signals back to the tape in variable
> places might be quite interesting.
> 
> Making an Echo has always been one of my bucket list items, I probably
> need to start soon since magnetic tape is becoming quite rare in my
> part of the US these days.
> 
> Tom C.  
I've found a few lesser known but pretty convenient ways to do it. The Sony TCM-5000ev is a portable 3 head cassette recorder with pitch control (with a simple mod it can have a quite wide range). It's mono only and fairly noisy (is that bad?) but cheap on ebay. They were supposed to be for journalists, sort of a poor man's Nagra. Also the Tascam 122 (and the older 112 also, I think) is a very high quality 3 head cassette deck. It has a pitch control, but I'm not sure how easily it can be modded to extend the range. It's quite cheap right now. Of course there are other 3 head cassette machines, but they tend to be desirable hi-fi items and thus still pretty expensive. The Tascam 122 was targeted more at studios, so it's not the audiophile fetish object that it could be. 3 head cassette decks will give quite short delays, but still... get two and have a thru-zero tape flanger. I think most of the problem of trying to add more heads is mechanical. A really robust tape path will take some work. Reel to reel machines are of course nice, but at this point many of the good models (with 3 heads and pitch control) are either getting too collectible or too decrepit.