First Concert with my Floppy Tape Delay

[Paleorama]

Hi fellow floppy fans!

I want to share a concert (and some pics) of my latest encased floppy drive. I am really in love with this instrument and I keep discovering new aspects of it.

Here's a pic of the drive, encased in a transparent VHS case, with switch between 555 timer for the stepper motor and a button for manual stepping. There's a switch between two mini jack pussys for having audio input and output cable at the same time and switching between playback and recording to/from the disc. There's also a switch for the direction of the stepper and a knob for 555 frequency.


I wanted to build an amplifier with some OP-AMP but I didn't succeed in this, so instead I used the intestines from an old walkman, which runs on 4.5V as the FDD does, so they share the same power supply (including the 555 timer) which is neat.

This monday I played at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, where I currently attend my bachelor's degree in electronic music under DIEM (Danish Institute for Electronic Music - more info about my project here http://www.dogenigt.com)

Here's my setup for the concert:


I included an old Sinewave Oscillator, partly for adding an extra layer to the sound, but also using it to record to the floppy. The wooden box contains the walkman amplifier.

The entire concert can be experienced here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5akuGrnOTVw

[guest]

awesome
i enjoyed the recording. and that oscillator is pretty sweet.

[mcanulty]

Woah this is awesome, I'm so glad to see you're still playing with it, and the use of the walkman is great. I actually had a little walkman I had taken apart when working with floppies and found it came in very handy on another project for a very similar purpose. The performance sounds good, crazy sounds, the floppy effect works really well with the oscillator. Thanks so much for sharing!

[mcanulty]

Oh yeah, in fact, just checking out your site, I used the walkman to make a birthday gift for a friend along the lines of Christina Kubisch's headphones, so my friend could walk around and listen to all the electronic sounds in the air. The walkman worked great because just had everything already built in, I just hid it in a little box with a knob and some headphones coming out. Very cool to see you're having a good time at DIEM, that sounds like an awesome place to be!

[Paleorama]

Thank you so much guys, I am absolutely in love with the floppy tape delay - the principle of DIEM, Wayne Siegel, came up to me after the concert inquiring about the setup and he went: "what did you use for the echo effect?" and I had to explain as gentle as I could that it was all entirely from the FDD!

I have another build right up my sleeve, as this one is dedicated to my composition teacher, Jonas Olesen, who's very much into old consumer electronics and obsolete hardware. He's very grateful for it and he really loves it as a musical instrument too. (next build will involve arduino-based step patterns and motor speed/pitch control - can't wait to launch it)

I could wish for a youtube video embedding function here! :)


And, mcanulty did you just connect some inductor coils to the tape head amp in the walkman? Interesting!

[Paleorama]

I've posted a little review on the concert and the techincal background for the flopblivious ones :)
I've mentioned this forum and posted a direct recording of the drive.

http://www.dogenigt.com/2012/11/concert ... disks.html

[mcanulty]

Nice! Yeah, in the states you can buy them at Radio Shack under the name 'Telephone pickup', they're just little induction coils in a case with a 3.5mm mono jack on the end.