Tape Deck Guitar by Weird & Wired

When in doubt...bolt on a guitar neck! 🎸 My original plan with this Philips D7528 Electronic Clock Radio Recorder was to hack the radio/speaker and turn it into a Lofi Amp, whilst also modding the tape deck with a 1/4" jack to allow easy use in a studio environment for experimental sounds and techniques. Unfortunately when I opened this up it was in worse condition than first thought which has a shame; perhaps one day I'll create the experimental studio tape deck recorder/lofi amp! However, as a big fan of the Bo Diddley rectangular guitar shape, I saw the potential of still using the bulk of this dead tape deck/clock/radio as a guitar body. The size of this machine lent itself well to the scale length of a guitar and the plastic casing was easy to work with. I thought it would be too easy to turn this in to a guitar and not incoporate some element of the sounds I originally wanted out of this, so I wired it up with a single neck humbucker for a smoother tone as a nod to it's analogue function as a tape deck instead of a raunchy, bright bridge pickup. As for the radio sound effect, I fixed a piezo pickup directly under the bridge which gives it a gnarly tinny sound. It's come a long way from what I first envisioned this project would be, but it was a lot of fun to build and is certainly a lot of fun to play! What do you think of the Tape Deck Guitar? How would you play with the different tone choices? Let me know all below! 👇🤖