Walkman Distortion Box

[AttDestroyers]

So i saw this sweet site about making a cassette tape walkman into a distortin box and decided to try it. i made it just like the site said but with little/no luck. mine is very clean, there's not even a hint of distortion or fuzz. anyone ever try this or know what i did wrong? anything will be appreciated.

[gryphon]

Where's the site at?

[ne7]

i made one of these - works fine - just open the walkman / cassette player case and wire the input jack directly to the play head (i hooked mine upto the wires coming off of the play head) then just plug your synth/guitar in and hit play - instant filth oh and it also has the added bonus of being able to record at low dirty volume if i put a blank tape in hehe which is odd

[Signal:Noise]

Yeah did this as well, though mines now dead.

[AttDestroyers]

alright, well mine wasn't "instant filth" ... which disapointed me. here's the website that i found info at.

http://www.necrosensual.com/bent/no-fi/no-fi.html

a few questions...

1. do you leave the tape head hooked up to it, because i didn't.

2. do you have to leave the tape player section in it, because i didn't. I just used the circuit.
        -Is this why you said "hit play" because it has to go through the tape to make it distort?

Thank you all for the responses.

[ne7]

on mine i left the whole thing intact and just fixed the input into the case near the output ... works great and is seriously filthy

[Signal:Noise]

I re housed mine, didn't affect it initially. but the batteries ran down quickly. gonna try adding mains adapter power.

[omgphil]

I did this and all I got was this dirty noise with no input sound at all. Followed all the instructions and my soldering was nice and neat so beats me. I think its maybe because it is a newer quite high quality model. The tape head wasnt so straight forward, theres some micro circuitry and stuff in this one so not just 3 wires to solder.

I have some kids toy walkie talkies, do you reckon i could rewire them to be demonic bringers of distortion?

[computer at sea]

I've been thinking about walkie talkies lately as well.  My plan is to remove the speaker from one of the pair and replace it with an output, thus making the world's coolest and totally gritty cordless mic.

[rusty sheriff]

I've just destroyed an old walkman too...  Some brands must be better than others...?

Walkie talkies sounds like a great idea!

[egr]

I've been using this trick for a long time.  I always like the results.  If you want to try it with basically no risk pick up one of these:



Slap it in any tape player and you've got a line-in!  If you don't like the background hiss and motor noise you can open it up and snip the motor wires.  Play around with the volume both on your instrument and the tape deck to get that "saturated" distortion that I can't ever get enough of.  Yay!

[goldenbaby]

Sorry for the crap quality, but my camera took this photo and shut off due to low battery.  Whatever, I picked this up last week to make the distortion box with.  It looked the oldest, though it has the fancy EQ and digital radio tuner.  I threw one of those tape convertors in with my iPod as an input, and I heard only a normal amount of fuzz coming out,

Am I doing something wrong, or is this just too new and not able to be fuzz-boxed?
Or maybe it's gonna work once I do it all up plug in my guitar?

[goldenbaby]

Sorry for the crap quality, but my camera took this one photo and shut off due to low battery.  You can blame me for the blur; I've got shakey hands.  Sucks for soldering, but it's a cross to bear.  Whatever, I picked this up last week to make the distortion box with.  It looked the oldest of options available, though it has the fancy EQ and digital radio tuner.  I threw one of those tape convertors in with my iPod as an input, and I heard only a normal amount of fuzz coming out,

Am I doing something wrong, or is this just too new and not able to be fuzz-boxed?
Or maybe it's gonna work once I do it all up plug in my guitar?

[computer at sea]

I'd go ahead and do the popular mod where you remove the tape head and so forth (not sure of the link at present; necrosensual's one above is broken).  That gets a nasty sound.

[goldenbaby]

Yeah, it's only two jacks.  Provided there's still a chance it will work, I'll try it out and just steal my jacks back if I needed.  I only spent a buck.