billow build workshop

Welcome to the billow build workshop. Cassette player speed-control hack, to musical effect.

By way of introduction, this build is specific to a particular tape recorder hack, but general enough you could use it as a more general guide.

Depending on the audience, I can switch between English and German.

Billow is a 5 button, six note, mellotron-like portable cassette player. It is a simple circuit bend, involving the removal of the motor fine tuning potentiometer and replacing it with an array of pots and buttons. The last pot can, with next to it, be set to the ‘default’ speed. And so the player can be used as a normal cassette player.

Now, billow does not STOP. That is, you only fine tune the play speed, but lifting your finger from a button does not stop playing. Just so you know!

Here, a bread board view of the construction:

What we cover in the workshop.

1. Principles discussion. One resistor to rule them all. IE. speed control. and a discussion of what makes a good player to hack.

2. Collect parts, parts list, considerations.

   

3. Assemble the controller board.

   

4. Player selection, dissassembly.

   

   – oops, I snapped the antenna cable (fix later) shit does happen.

   

5. Hacking the guts. IE, two wires suffice.

   

– the internal tuning potentiometer can be seen as a triangle arrangement, bottom middle :)

– nasty, snip out the small pot (not visible here)

– solder two wires as displayed here (pot in & wiper in the middle)

6. Bore a hole in the case about … there

   

7. Fix the antenna (optional) and put in the board retainer screw

   

8. Solder the control board after having pulled the wires through the case hole.

   

9. Insert batteries and test that the speed of the motor is controlled and that the switch work to set a constant speed.

10. Reassemble and use double sided tape (here 2mm thick) to affix the board to the back of the player

    

11. Go on World Tour

    

12. Further considerations, aka, motor controller hacks considered.