It was so nice to have the day off. Today was Wednesday the day before Thanksgiving and I spent the entire day cleaning out the garage. Jenny and I are looking to remove as much clutter as we can from our lives before christmas really rears its head and takes us by surprise.
I have had this old 3/4 deck in my garage for a long time. It used to be at my office until a co-worker informed me that it was heading to the trash. I decided to save it.
I wanted to make space and I knew I didn’t want to keep this big old deck hanging around for much longer so I pillaged it for parts. It took me awhile to get through the whole thing but eventually I made my way completely through it.
One piece in particular I already had some plans for. The big metal drum in the upper left corner of the four pictures above is strong and heavy and has a nice long spin to it. So, I figured it might make a good mechanism as the basis for a foot-cranked potter’s wheel.
The rest of the stuff is really just fodder for tinkering. I pulled out multiple DC Motors and solenoids. I also pulled out numerous gears and other interesting moving parts.
Comments
2 responses to “Day 263 / Pillaging An Old 3/4 Deck”
I’ve torn down a lot of electronics, and am always disappointed by how little can generally be lifted from video tape decks :(
This looks pretty good though– the more professional (and older), the better! Did you get the VU meters out ok? Looks like some nice buttons and switches too…
Yes, I was pretty happy with the results of this tear-down. I did get the VU meters in tact. I was mostly interested in the moving parts more than anything. Although, I have a bunch of old circuit boards from an old Sony mixer I tore down a while back. I haven’t done any desoldering or anything but I have this idea of following some of the projects in Craig Anderton’s book Electronics Projects for Musicians using mostly old components I can desolder off of these circuit boards. It would make for a rather long process but it might add a unique character to the sound of the pedal than if I purchased them all off the internet.
Thanks for the comment.