Cassette Tape Organ

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!