Once you make the tape loop, you can use whatever was on it before or record over it the way you would any ordinary tape.  The loop will be a little more than 5 seconds long.  If you want to make it longer, leave some of the original tape around the reels and then just wrap the tape you use for the loop around it the way you would otherwise with the reel.

The tutorial has a lot of steps, but it’s not that complicated.  I just made it very detailed.

The only things you need are:

1.  A cassette tape

2.  A miniature Phillips head screwdriver, like they sell for electronics repair at places like Radioshack or even from an eyeglass repair kit

3.  Scissors

4.  Normal clear adhesive tape (like scotch tape)

OK, here we go!

1.  Choose your victim!  Make sure the tape you choose has screws on the outside corners that you can access.	2.  Remove the screws.  There may be one in the bottom center also.
3.  Take off the front half of the plastic cassette and the slip of paper or plastic that shields the actual tape from the cassette.	4.  Remove the tape from the reels.  You can just pop the reels out with your thumb.
This is what you have now.	5.  Cut a length of tape about as long as your forearm.  Run it through the canal at the bottom of the tape, around the little guide reels at the bottom, around the pins just above them and around the reels, and mark off with your fingers the length needed.  Look at the larger version of the picture for a detailed look at how to spool the tape.  If the little rectangular thing (pressure pad) at the bottom comes out of place, make sure you put it back the way it was or the tape will NOT play.  Look at another tape for reference on how to put it back.
6.  Cut the tape to the necessary length, leaving a little bit of extra tape and taking note of how much extra tape there is.  Unfortunately there are slight variations in how long a piece of tape you need because of differences in cassette component layouts, so I can’t give you an exact figure.	7. Lift the tape back out of the cassette,overlap the ends, and make sure it is not twisted.  Cut in the area where the ends are overlapped, at a diagonal, so that the amount cut off is the amount of tape you left as extra in the previous step.  Err on the side of making it too long, but only by 1/4 inch or so.  I used a knife in the picture but scissors are actually easier.
8.  Now when you line up the two ends of the loop they will fit together perfectly.  This allows for the cleanest splice possible.	9.  Cut a small piece of [adhesive] tape and stick it to one end of the [magnetic] tape.  Carefully attach the other end so that they line up exactly and form a continuous line of tape with no overlap.  It is easiest to do this by setting the end of the loop with the adhesive tape on it on a flat surface with the sticky side of the adhesive tape up and then lowering the other end of the loop into place.
10.  This is a bad picture.  But use the scissors to cut the extra sticky tape off the sides of the tape loop.	11.  Put the loop into the bottom half of the cassette the way you did before.  It may help to get someone else to hold the reels in place for you, or weigh them down with something.  The tape should be a little loose.  If it is too tight for you to be able to spin the reels easily with your finger, it will jam up your tape player.   The looser it is, the more weird time modulations it will have while it is playing, But if it is TOO loose, the tape won’t roll properly when you try to play it.
12.  Put the plastic or paper slip and the cassette top back on, and screw the screws back in.  You are ready to play your loop!	I didn’t have the forethought to use a completely clear tape for the demo, so here’s a picture of a different one to show you what a finished tape looks like!

If your tape won’t play, make sure the pressure pad is in the right way.  There are a lot of ways that you can put it in that seem correct, but only one of them actually is.  Also make sure it’s not too loose or too tight by making sure that when you spin the reels with your fingers, the loop of tape spins.  Actually, you should check all those things before you even close up the tape.

HAAAAAAAAAVE FUN!

Here are a couple pictures of the original guitar.

Because the guitar had a built in speaker, it also had a simple amplification circuit inside which, upon taking it apart in my attempt to “fix” it, I discovered to be extremely touch-sensitive. I didn’t recognize the type of IC used as the core of this circuit and couldn’t find any identifying markings, which was a shame because the circuit was very simple and I would have liked to be able to fabricate these on my own.

components side of little guitar circuit board

I got this fancy Nicaraguan cigar box to house it inside. It has little brass feet, a brass handle, gold seals and a black tassel and it is lined with some black plushy fabric. Michael came up with the name “Noriega Surprise” to honor its Nicaraguan heritage.

PIMP

What I actually did was very simple and in fact I would hardly call it a “bend” at all. I just connected 7 carefully chosen points on the circuit board that yielded interesting screeches and squelches when touched to 7 conductive tacks that I hammered through the top of the cigar box. This allows for much more precision when “playing” the circuit board.

inside view of cigar box lid

It is really impressive actually how much control you can get with this setup. I also put in a volume control pot (which doesn’t do very much because of the value I chose but I got lazy and decided not to replace it) and a new 1/4″ output because the guitar’s original one bypassed the amplification circuit.

I don’t know why I went so long without building anything but I am definitely really excited to get back into it! My next project will probably be either the mini-looper/sampler I’ve been dreaming of or a bend of this already-weird tape recorder/voice changer I have– something much more interesting than ANY of the stuff I’ve done before! Stay tuned!

That said, this is one of the nicest things I have ever made if not the most complicated, if I do say so myself. I made it last week for the craft fair and it was purchased by Rory from the band Black Telephone. This is the second time I have tried to bend one of these toys; the first time I ended up tearing one of the PCB contacts beyond repair. The original toy is called the “Backyard Safari Animal Caller.” It is in the shape of a horn, and has a selector switch allowing you to choose between 10 different animal sounds. To operate it, you can switch it to “demo” mode which makes the noise once, or you can blow into it like a hunting horn and an internal fan and infrared motion detector keep the animal sound repeating.

Original Appearance of the Animal Caller

The one I got was used and all gross on the inside so I decided to forget about the whole fan concept, and even though the enclosure looked really cool, I eventually decided it would be much easier if I took it out of its enclosure entirely. The animal selector switch was set up in a really interesting way. On the horn shaped-PCB, there are a three rows of metal contact pads and originally a three prong sliding switch which would select different combinations of contact pad values. Any single contact pad connected to the middle yields a certain animal (this is the first four animals) and any pair of one from the top row plus one from the bottom row, connected to center, yields one of a different set of animals (there are four unique combinations, which equals four more animals). To work this out, I ended up making a pretty funny logic diagram (“elephant x kookaburra = howler monkey,” etc). There is one more animal which is the default for “open” (when the middle is touched but nothing else). Mysteriously, I couldn’t figure out how to get the 10th sound once I had taken the toy apart.

Inside View of Animal Roar Box

I decided to house it in a cigar box and connect an external contact point to one pad with each of the five initial values. It has to be played by connecting one or more of the four points from the outside to the middle point with a metal object. Wiggling the metal object makes it make glitchy, fast-changing combinations of different animal sounds that sound like the hepatitis monkeys are fighting with pterodactyls or something.

Other than changing the interface, the only bend I could find to do consisted of adding a 500k-ohm potentiometer to change the speed/pitch and a body contact for quick, expressive oscillations of speed and pitch. I also added a 1/4″ output jack and reset button. It runs on 3 AA batteries.

A Hepatitis Monkey lurks within

This toy is really great if you want to make sounds of angry, diseased animal chaos. The sped-up and slowed down versions of the animal sounds sound like shrieking raptors and dying mammoths, respectively. If you got like 3 or 4 of these things going at once it would sound like all the prehistoric animal skeletons at the Natural History Museum had come to life and started trying to eat each other. It’s some seriously harsh noise.

Oddly, one of the things I’m most proud of is the finishing. I replaced the hinge on the box and stained it. For the first time with any of my toys, everything inside is all screwed, glued and stapled in place instead of just jammed in, so nothing’s going to be rattling around getting loose in here.

I must admit I saw someone else’s version of this on YouTube before I built it, so I’m not going to pretend this was some brilliant inspiration of mine. With newer toys there’s usually only one or two things you can do anyway because the components are usually micro tiny or nonexistent. This just happens to be a toy that sounds amazing with the simple pitch knob and body contact I gave it, because of the inherent, simple awesomeness of the toy itself.

It has 3 keys which each trigger a monophonic melody (“London Bridge,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and something else with the same rhythmic patterns). The melodies repeat as long as you keep the key pressed down, an immediate advantage giving it the ability to loop. They have a robust, triangle-wave tone that sounds really good loud, and when you speed them up with the 1 megaohm pot I added they sound like some wicked vintage sequencer action. It’s also great for sampling with the SK-5.

This was an extremely simple toy and a fast project but is one of Moon Pie’s favorites.

This is largely because of the matrix of 35 LED’s that it has and the insane stuff that they do when the toy is glitching out.

Before I started going to the flea market all the time, I posted a request on Freecycle for unwanted noisemaking battery-operated toys and expected to get a lot of responses. My parents had that stuff lying around until I was like 18. But I only got one response, and this is what I got.

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The Leapfrog Learning Drum or something

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Depending on which mode it’s set to, it can play a bunch of snippets of songs like “La Cucaracha” and “Eine kleine nachtmusik”, say the letters of the alphabet in a child’s voice (in order, one every time you hit it), say numbers (likewise) or play little drum patterns. A square of red LED’s on the top either show the letters and numbers or make patterns. If you don’t play it for a while the voice will laugh and say “More!” and sometimes it says things like “Let’s play the drum!”

When I opened it up, all the components were super-tiny and I could only find one bend which was the standard pitch bend, which was not surprising. Then I had the idea to mess with the LED matrix, which turned out to be the most exciting part of the whole thing. I painstakingly removed most of the red LEDs and replaced them with random other colors and in the process of doing so messed up some of the connections, which fortunately just made it act weird and glitchy.

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Inside view after switching out LEDs

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In it’s finished state, this toy basically just does the standard slowing down, speeding up thing, with the multicolored LED matrix as an added bonus… until you slow it down a lot and it goes into “mass hysteria” mode. At that point, ALL BETS ARE OFF. It will start unleashing these neverending, siren-like, pulsating, spiraling drones while the LED’s strobe around randomly. Herein lies the true power, and the appeal, of this device. This is a very common toy so I may make more in the future and combine them for a mesmerizing, strobing ensemble of hysteria.

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Space Saucers! High-frequency photosensitive sine wave oscillators!

The Space Saucer sounds sort of like a theremin and emits a sinewave whose pitch depends on how much light is shined on it. You can play it with a flashlight, or in an environment where there is already light, you can let the light shine on it and manipulate the pitch by covering it and uncovering it with your hand at different distances. It can make some crazy crazy noises… bloodcurdling shrieks and wails… especially through effects.

I build these using this schematic for a two-tone sinewave test oscillator that I foundon the internet. I just use half of the design to make it a single-tone option. Here are some pictures of the build process:

circuit board with all components on it

I actually don’t know what value of any of the photoresistors I’ve used because I bought a whole bunch of them and then accidentally mixed them all up and they all look pretty much the same… try any within the range of 10k to 100k and they will all get different sounds.

everything fits inside a tiny little tupperware