The story
This is a 1950’s Wurlitzer vacuum tube organ I got for free on Front Porch Forum (Vermont’s Craigslist) processed through two different cassette tape machines and one special sample processed as a crumpled up tapeloop for extra character.
Nine different voices/combos were sampled giving a variety of tonal qualities to choose from. Recorded with condenser mics on the front facing tube amp speakers and then onto cassette tape using a Technics RS-TR232 dual deck tape recorder. I recorded one note for each voice (“middle” C) to be spread across the keyboard.
The samples were played back using two different tape machines; the Technics (stereo) and a Coby (mono) shoebox tape player. Each machine has a unique noise character and eq curve, as well as varying degrees of wow/flutter/dropouts. The tapeloop was physically mangled and played back on a walkman.
There was some noise/hum-reduction applied to the original recordings because this old organ has a hefty background hum but the cassette samples were left with the noise intact except for some light high-pass filtering to limit low end build-up.
I’m finding myself using the samples way more than I ever used the organ because I can adjust the adsr. I particularly like giving a long attack/decay and spreading the voices across the stereo field. Included is 1 Logic Sampler and 1 Logic Quick Sampler intrument to give examples of how they can be used.
Enjoy!
Reviews for Cassette Tape Organ
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
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I LOVE THIS INSTRUMENT!!!
Just thank you... The first time of many I suspect that I will give 5 stars to recording quality when it is perfectly imperfect! Just a great example of how inspiring these tape instruments can be. A testament to the whole ethos of Pianobook. For me the sound evokes old 1970s government information films. This instrument is used extensively in one of the episodes in season 7 of Inside No9 and the makers of that series love it! See if you can spot it Andrew!!! Thanks again for the inspiration.
just wow
I love that cassette sound, it has a more analog and real touch. Thanks a lot for the sample.
Love at first sound
Amazing sound! As soon as I started playing this instrument, I was in love with it. I have a project coming up that this will fit perfectly into, in fact I think this instrument could be the focus of a whole album, it has so much to work with! The tape sound is fantastic, but it still maintains the nice organ tone. Immediately you'll notice the GUI, I think the best of all pianobook instruments I've seen. Volume and Pan knobs for each of the 9 instruments/parts of the sound easily customizable.
A Beautifully Realized Instrument
Just about every combination of the parameters provided produces a rich tone.
