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tape loops/tape delay anyone????



I was wondering if anyone out there is building or has built a home-made tape delay unit. I know some people were talking about the double reel to reel "frippertronics" setup, but I was thinking more along the lines of a home-made Copycat style box. Something with a few (or more) heads, variable speed, and a tape loop. I heard somewhere (maybe on this digest???) a while back that Stockhausen had a single reel to reel that he had modified to do long delays equivalent to that of a twin setup. Anyone confirm this.
Anyway, I ask because I've had this project in mind for some time: since before I got a looper in fact, though after acquiring a dl-4 and an echoplex, I'm still wanting to go ahead with this. It seems simple enough. I have a four head teac a-1200 (the fourth head is for auto reverse), 3 spare play heads of off various consumer model reel to reels of various makes, a couple of spring reverb units, and the desire to hook them all togethor. I was thinking that if anyone out there has built such a creation, we might be able to share some ideas. The things I am still trying to wrinkle out are head placement (and whether/how to make them moveable) and varible speed control. I looked into some dc speed controllers, and it looks like there are some relatively simple designs to choose from, most of them some or all assembly required. I just need to spec out what my voltage range requirements are and that sort of thing.
Long loops will be accomodated by a sort of board mounted above the machine with a maze of sewing machine bobbins attached as tensioners. I'd like to have switches for each head, and maybe even a footswitch for sound on sound.
I'd love to hear about any design ideas.
Thanks,
Devin


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