Tag Archives: Elbow

Got Some Mixed Tapes Still Lying Around? The Elbow Player Can Squeeze The Music Out

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Many of you reading this have never used a cassette tape. You might’ve heard of them, sure, but likely you’ve never seen on in real life, and the Elbow will just seems a curiosity. But for those of us born in the early 80’s, there’s a chance we still have a little collection covered in dust somewhere, rich in nostalgia. Maybe it’s that mix tape you made in high school. Maybe it’s an Aerosmith album or something. The Elbow Player is a tiny conceptual device meant to play cassette tapes, and give back access to sounds otherwise lost forever. One section of the player grabs the spool and spins it, while the reader picks up the music. The image above is pretty self-explanatory

Sadly, it’s a concept project that doesn’t seem to be turning into a Kickstarter or anything. Which is a shame, because we bet there’d be a market for this.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ DudeIWantThat ]

Hello Cassette My Old Friend

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On rare occasions, I come across a product that stops me in my tracks, and makes me all starry eyed like a little child. After a long time, the Elbow Cassette Player made me revisit that glorious feeling.

What happened inside cassette players has always been a mystery. Unlike CD players that became pretty minimal (one must check out Muji’s wall mounted CD player), the cassette tape was long gone before minimalism ever kicked in as a design trend. What the Elbow does is innovative, geeky, kitschy, revivalist, and incredibly cool… all together! The small device, barely the size of a cigarette box, opens up, swivels, and snaps onto a cassette (almost like it was meant to be how cassettes were to be played!). The name for the product comes from how it looks like an ‘L’ shaped elbow when it sits on the cassette.

Unlike most cassette players that looked more like devices with the cassettes being the plug-ins, the Elbow is so petite, it looks almost like an accessory for the cassette tape! While it grabs the cassette’s spools in its elbow arms, the hinge sits against the exposed magnetic tape. A knob on the device allows you to control playback. The entire set-up is literally small enough to feel like you’re holding an iPod Classic. It even comes with a small magnetic clip, allowing you to attach it to your clothes, or a bag.

The Elbow comes with a 3.5mm audio output, allowing you to connect your earphones, or a speaker to it. It even pushes things a notch higher by including a MiniUSB port, not just for charging the Elbow, bot also for allowing you to digitally extract audio from a cassette tape to your PC! Looks like it’s time to bring the era of cassettes back!

Designer: Brainmonk

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