Category: Weird & Wonderful

Archive for the ‘Weird & Wonderful’ Category

Cuttin’ Vinyl

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

This has been doing the internet rounds lately.

(Read about the process of making this on Ishac’s site)

Then I saw a link to this:

Which predates the first by a long, long time!

Posted in All things vinyl, analogue, video, Weird & Wonderful | No Comments »

retr0bright instructions

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

I’ve started gathering the ingredients to mix up some retr0bright, but still some way off. Today I found this Google translated French article describing the process:

Retr0bright on Obligement.

Posted in Retro, Weird & Wonderful | No Comments »

Some clever animations made using the strobe effect gained by filming with the correct shutter speed under household lights which are strobing undetectably at 50 or 60hz (depending on where you live). This is the same principle as the red dots that are used as a speed guage on the outside of the platter of some turntables.

The illusion of movement with a record player.

Watch as hidden animations come alive by using a specific frame rate and shutter speeds of a camera and RPM of a record player.

To me this is one of the ultimate illusions.

Definition of Illusion: something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality.

I used a Numark turntable set to 45 RPM and the camera was set to 24 FPS. The shutter speed was set to around 840. With that combination of settings a 30 frame animation would appear to stand still. I used the slider to increase / descrease rpms which caused the images to move foward or backward.

The sequence of the guy jumping on the blocks was the most difficult but turned out the best, in my opinion.

The images of the guy jumping is me. I recorded myself jumping in the living room then took 30 frames from that footage and traced the images in photoshop and filled with black. Then printed out the 30 images and cut each one out. I used 30 wooden blocks and glued them to a piece of construction paper then taped the images of the jumping guy to the clear sheet and aligned them with the blocks.

I also love the pac-man animation. It’s so simple but just has such a cool feel to see the mouth opening and closing.

brasspup on YouTube

Tags: animation
Posted in video, Weird & Wonderful | No Comments »

Columbia’s Portable Mixing Rig

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

Recently spotted a Columbia GMX-3 mixer on eBay. A portable mixer from Japan which is designed to be used with a pair of GP-3 portable turntables. Interesting piece of kit, but from what I can find online the turntables are only mono although they do have pitch control and built in speaker. Each device runs on either 100/110VAC (with built in tranformer) or batteries.

Going on recent eBay prices it would cost over £350 (US$560) to buy a pair of turntables and a mixer.

Tags: columbia, diggin, gmx-3, gp-3, japanese, portable, record player, turntable
Posted in All things vinyl, analogue, Related Devices, Retro, video, Weird & Wonderful | No Comments »

A More Vintage Portable Turntable?

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

(Thanks to Bill B for the image)

Posted in All things vinyl, analogue, Related Devices, Retro, Weird & Wonderful | No Comments »

Becoming vinyl

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

“Music lovers can now be immortalised when they die by having their ashes baked into vinyl records to leave behind for loved ones.”

wired.co.uk

Posted in All things vinyl, analogue, Weird & Wonderful | No Comments »

Retr0Bright – De-yellow your Sony?

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

After the question posed by A.R. on this post, and my request for a “magical chemical solution” he did some amazing detective work and found a possible solution to the yellowing problem that many Sony PS-F5s and PS-F9s exhibit in their old age. This is mainly brought on by exposure to Ultra Violet radiation which reacts with chemicals in the ABS plastic of the case.

Some vintage gadget enthusiasts have come up with a home-brew chemical gel that can be applied to yellowed plastic which restores it to its original colour. This wonderful sounding product’s called Retr0bright.

“We have now proved on several forums that plastics yellowing can be completely reversed in hours without damage using our mixture.”

There are a number of recipes on their Wiki. Thankfully all of the chemicals involved are easily obtainable (at least here in the UK) and all are safe apart from Hydrogen Peroxide, which is the main ingredient in hair bleach and is to be treated with respect. Be sure to wear gloves and goggles and work in a well ventilated room.

I was initially concerned about any chemical solution affecting the printing on the case, but then I saw this Lego piece in the Retr0Bright gallery, which is painted. The paint appears unaffected by the process:

Although the Problems and Pitfalls page on the site does show some examples of label fade, the printing on the PS-F5 is generally of good quality with a heavy black ink, so hopefully this won’t be too much of an issue, especially if the Sony’s not too yellowed, and therefore doesn’t require many applications.

There are other examples in the gallery with stickers and paint too, all of which suggest that it should be safe. Something I’m not sure about is whether the smoked transparent plastic on the front of the case would need to be removed prior to applying the gel. Maybe masking would be safest, attempting to remove the glued in smoked panel may cause breakage.

I’d like to give this a try, but would really appreciate it if anyone out there has a spare case (or piece of case, ideally one with some printing) for their PS-F5 that they’re willing to experiment on and report back to the site so I can let everyone know for sure that this works on our Sonys and is safe.

“There were an incredible number of people at first that said this was impossible – that was until they saw the pictures, then tried it and proved it for themselves. The usual reaction was ‘No way!’ then ‘WOW!!’.

Tags: aged, chemical, paste, plastic, restore, Retr0Bright, white, yellow, yellowed
Posted in Retro, Sony PS-F5, Sony PS-F9, Weird & Wonderful | No Comments »

A Record Player About As Portable As You Can Get

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

GGRP have created an advertising mailer which is a record player that magically appears out of the cardboard sleeve of a 7″ record. See it in action here: