What would it take to make a cassette based tape echo?

[tubegeek]

Could one have good results recording just audio to VHS?

If the question is about just straight recording, a VHS Hi-Fi deck does have some significant merits: long record times, good quality, cheap media, cheaply available machines, just for a few. As PRR and I have pointed out, the mechanicals would be tricky as hell to try to do an echo unit with a helical-scan video machine.

Back on subject:

I had a mystery mechanism which looked like a 12" record turntable but with "tape heads" riding on the rim on spring-arms. It recorded on solid iron (like the first magnetic recorders, or later "metal" tape). You'd capture a second and then repeat it over and over. The rest of the contraption tuned a variable filter leading to a stylus which rubbed on wet fax paper wrapped around a cylinder mounted on the turntable. There's an iPod app for that now. But anyway.... you could probably record on a brake drum or disk if you are handy enough.

PRR: you lost me at the last turn. What did the stylus/fax paper/cylinder part do?

There is another older technology for echo called an "oil can delay," and there is a bunch of info guess where? Yup, GEOFEX, check it out. Recording is done on a special oil on the surface of a rotating drum, sounds crazy to me but I'm told they can be persuaded to work with some TLC.

[wavley]

Could one have good results recording just audio to VHS?

If the question is about just straight recording, a VHS Hi-Fi deck does have some significant merits: long record times, good quality, cheap media, cheaply available machines, just for a few. As PRR and I have pointed out, the mechanicals would be tricky as hell to try to do an echo unit with a helical-scan video machine.

Back on subject:

I had a mystery mechanism which looked like a 12" record turntable but with "tape heads" riding on the rim on spring-arms. It recorded on solid iron (like the first magnetic recorders, or later "metal" tape). You'd capture a second and then repeat it over and over. The rest of the contraption tuned a variable filter leading to a stylus which rubbed on wet fax paper wrapped around a cylinder mounted on the turntable. There's an iPod app for that now. But anyway.... you could probably record on a brake drum or disk if you are handy enough.

PRR: you lost me at the last turn. What did the stylus/fax paper/cylinder part do?

There is another older technology for echo called an "oil can delay," and there is a bunch of info guess where? Yup, GEOFEX, check it out. Recording is done on a special oil on the surface of a rotating drum, sounds crazy to me but I'm told they can be persuaded to work with some TLC.

I believe the VHS format you're speaking of is called S-VHS, a lot of guys used to master to S-VHS back in the ADAT days, also an S-VHS tape will work in an ADAT.  I honestly don't miss either one of those machines, although S-VHS masters can sound pretty good, I hated ADAT's.  I wish I could find a blackface one just because I have some tapes that never got mixed down, but geez a lot of the problems of tape and all of the not good of early digital!

These guys http://telrayoilcanaddicts.yuku.com/ have all you need to know about the Tel-Ray Oil Can stuff.  They're actually quite good sounding, but if you think 1/4" heads are hard to source imagine how hard it is to source the rubber heads that are in the oil can.

PRR's mystery machine brings us back to the Binson Echorec, if it's good enough for Syd Barrett, David Gilmore, and Hank Marvin... I'm gonna guess it's good enough for me.  Here is a nice description of the drum and flywheel arrangement http://www.effectrode.com/binson-echorec-memory-system/

[Ice-9]

Plenty Alesis adats on fleebay, here is a blackface. Only problem with these is you have no idea how well worn out they are.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alesis-ADAT-Blackface-Recorder-w-LRC-remote-MIDI-Sync-Box-8-Track-Machine-/321295822286?pt=UK_Recorders_Rewriters&hash=item4aceb92dce

[PRR]

> S-VHS

No, this was an external audio-only converter for a bog-standard video deck. Never common in the US.

> the Tel-Ray Oil Can

Have one here.

You can also put audio down a pipe. Ma Bell even used that for some testing. Cooper Time Cube is a studio box.

[cureboi69]

Thought I'd hop in here and share this. There was an old thread on here that I got a lot of useful information from in making this project, but that thread's been dead since 2010 so I figured I'd just leave this here.

[vinyvamos]

I know this is a very old thread but just thought I'd post this as a reference for people...

Here's what I managed to achieve within a Technics Hifi Cassette Deck which uses standard unmodified cassettes:

http://atomicanalog.blogspot.ie/p/flu.html

Will finish the write-up very soon and do some better sound samples, but it gives an idea of how I did it.

I am also looking into making a more compact unit which could even fit onto a pedal board as a stomp box. There will be a swell pedal to control tape speed/feedback. Just did the first tests this evening: