tape head amp question

[alankalter]

Hi folks. I wired a 1/8" tape head from a walkman type player to a eurorack patch cable and put it through the Music Thing Modular Mikrophonie to amplify it but the output was still unusably low when i run the head over some tape that I attached flat to some cardboard.
I don't know much about tape heads. could someone suggest a solution to make this work ? I imagine i have the wrong amp?

Here's a pic

IMG-2220.JPG

Thanks for your help!

T

[butter]

https://www.thonk.co.uk/shop/magnetophon/

[fg]

yes magnetophon, schema is here

https://github.com/TomWhitwell/Magnetophon

[Graham Hinton]

I wired a 1/8" tape head from a walkman type player to a eurorack patch cable and put it through the Music Thing Modular Mikrophonie to amplify it but the output was still unusably low when i run the head over some tape that I attached flat to some cardboard.

An 1/8" cassette tape has four tracks so they are less than 1/32" wide (with gaps). The head has the same dimensions, so it will be difficult to align them by hand and get a maximum signal. The head has to be perpendicular to the tape to get the gap on the tape and also the amplitude is proportional to speed. You will need a decent mic pre with over 60dB gain.

You would get better results with 1/4" tape and a 1/2 track head.

[alankalter]

Thanks for all the info! I'm gonna get that magnetophone. I should have guess that Music Thing would have done something like that!