Cassette Player/Walkman trick

[JACK BURTON]

Now listen up ladies and gents and ol Jack Burton will teach you something from his bag of tricks. So it seems obvious that people prefer to use turntables with pitch adjustment as their main sample sources while cassettes get no love. Well.... Ol Jack has a trick up his sleeve. If you turn your Walkman over there will be a tiny circular opening on the back. Find yourself a small eye glasses repair Phillips screw driver and stick it in that hole. Turn counter clock wise to slow the motor and turn clockwise to speed the motor up. You'll find that you get about as much pitch adjustment as on a standard tech1200.

Enjoy, my friends

[rrr*]

I LOVE YOU. lol all i do with mine for Quasimoto vocals is putting pressure on the fast forward button

[Euclid Ov Oåklånd]

This sounds awesome, thank you!

[JZTR]

I never knew that. Nice one man!

[JACK BURTON]

I LOVE YOU. lol all i do with mine for Quasimoto vocals is putting pressure on the fast forward button

Yah, I also mash down on the play button to get that warble effect.

One last heads up for ya'll on the cassette front. So when you have a blank tape they usually have a number on them like T30, T60, T90 etc etc. Well that number is the time in minutes that can be recorded to the tape. The higher the number the more "lofi" your recording will sound, the lower the number the better it will sound. Tapes 30 minutes and under are much more expensive than the higher ones. Most commonly you see T60. My fav cassettes to use are the super old ones that have already been recorded on. They tend to add a lot more character to the sound.

Boom.

[Chopperman]

Cool tips, thanks!

[aNT0JE]

wish i had a walkman to try it.. :'-(

[Kei Kurono]

Nice! thanks for sharing !

[springwater]

I remember finding the little notch that you had to hold in to get your walkman to play while the cassette door was open. Then id just put my finger over the spinner to slow it down. On boomboxes too. Wasn't sampling back then, just wanted to hear my jams at a slower speed. Now, its a fad!

[hseiken]

I found an interesting bleeding effect if you have a tape recorder with select-able modes. This is what I personally did, I haven't experimented with it just yet...I'll leave that to you guys.

Record some audio on your tape using METAL (Type IV).
Rewind so that you're at the start of this recording then record over it using NORMAL (Type I). You should hear only ghosting of the second recording.

I found this out by accident when I was attempting to bounce some stuff from the SP. I did this on a Metal tape, so I'm not sure if that's required for this. I'm not even sure of it's usefulness to people, but maybe someone might dig it.

[Rodney]

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[spacetrip]

are 30 min tapes really better quality? cus i just got a box of 32 min tapes cus i didnt want 60 min per side..i want the lofi sound that tapes give, i never heard that more minutes to record is more lofi. and it looks like everywhere i check the more time to record the more money it is.

[JACK BURTON]

Smaller length tapes have better quality because the tape material is thicker. The longer the length the thinner it gets making it easier to break or to have a faulty recording. To get best possible recording, use the slowest recording/playback speed and shortest tape length.

If ya don't trust ol Jack, he's got some Wikipedia for your ass.

"Tape length usually is measured in minutes of total playing time. The most popular varieties are C46 (23 minutes per side), C60 (30 minutes per side), C90, and C120. The C46 and C60 lengths typically are 15–16 µm thick, but C90s are 10–11 µm and C120s are just 9 µm thick, rendering them more susceptible to stretching or breakage. Some vendors are more generous than others, providing 132 meters (433 feet) or 135 meters (442 feet) rather than 129 meters (423 feet) of tape for a C90 cassette. Even C180 tapes were available at one time, but these were extremely thin and fragile and suffered from such effects as print-through, which made them unsuitable for general use. 150 minute length is still available from Maxell (UR 150), Sony (CDixI 150) and TDK (TDK AE 150)."

[Euclid Ov Oåklånd]

Yo, Jack are you near Oakland 'cause I could use a little help with an old cassette recorder restoration.

[spacetrip]

oh wow thanks jack, seriously i had no idea! im new to the tape game