HISTORY / INFO:
I got this for $5.00 at Odd Lots. It plays a tape, has a microphone jack so you can be the DJ and has four sound effect buttons. When you turn on the unit, 'On The Air - LIVE' lights up.
To say I hate this thing is an understatement. At the time, I thought it would be a cool idea. I could fart around with the tape speed and tweak the sounds. Maybe even figure out how to distort the microphone. But this was pre-knowledgable bending. Egads! For one, the first one I bought just plain didn't work. Odd Lots had two of them, both on clearance and they had been sitting there for at least a month. Funny thing is, though, it wasn't until a month later that I found out that it didn't work. I just assumed it would. So I went back and, a month later after buying the first of only two that the store had, I returned the stupid thing. Amazingly enough, the second one was still there. I plunked in a tape at the store and it worked. Whee. I got it home and upon further listening, the speed of the tape was a bit off. And if you stopped and started it, the pitch was different everytime. Looking at the innards, it has haphazard wiring. Probably a sweat-shop kinda thing. I feel bad now that I bought it from a retail store.
PRE-MODIFICATION PICTURES:
Sorry, there are none. But there aren't too many mods, so it pretty much looks the same as the modded pics.
MODIFICATIONS:
1) Slight speed up - Throw a switch on the side and the pitch of the cassette music goes up.
2) RCA male audio output - I was so preturbed at this bend that I gave it the shittiest audio out I could find. I had hacked the end off of a speaker wire about 10 years ago. I somehow remembered that it was in my toolbox. I striped off the ends, butchered a hole at the top and that was it.
POST-MODIFICATION PICTURES:
 front view |
 back view |
SOUNDS:
dj-studio.mp3 - Just a sample me playing around with the DJ Studio while listening to a copy of Army Of The Pharoahs dub from vinyl.
FUTURE MODIFICATIONS PLANNED:
1) Rewire the audio out - I am certain that the level coming out is too hot since I did such a butcher job on this one.
2) Find bends on the sound effect buttons - I tried for a while but never found anything. I'm sure there are ways to bend the sfx, at the very least some pitch changes.
3) Rewire the voltage input to the motor - I tried adding a pot inline with the hopes that I would have a variable speed motor, but my brief first attempt failed and I was so pissed off that I never tried anything else.
4) Wire in an input jack - Many people have modded cassette players into distortion pedals. I figure I could either just put the jack inline or get creative with a DPDT toggle, though I think being able to play a cassette and plug in a guitar would be much more interesting.
Last Modified: February 13, 2005