The ScrubBoard — cassette scratching evolved

Cassettes for scratching? Been there - done that. But it's not been done in quite the same way that Jeremy Bell is proposing with his ScrubBoard Kickstarter project. It's a unique take on the idea involves samples on tape, and moving a cassette player head back and forth, all controlled from the Seesaw Killswitch.

scrubboard tape cassette scratching

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeremyseanbell/the-scrubboard

It’s Monday morning and after a weekend of heavy video editing, my mind is a tad scrambled and not wanting to think too hard. So when The ScrubBoard dropped into my inbox, all hell broke loose in my brain. So wait… it’s scratching with what? I see faders but nothing spinning but it looks like samples or something. Watch the video — all will become clear in a truly WTF way.

Nutshelling this, imagine recording audio samples onto cassette tape, accurately trimming the tape samples, laying them out on a board and moving a tape head back and forth to simulate vinyl scratching. That’s Jeremy Bell‘s basic premise for The ScrubBoard. But crazy ideas have a way of getting honed into something a little less crazy, and on rare occasions become something wonderful.

Analogue scratching in the digital age?

Obviously, the fundamental art of scratching involves vinyl, a mixer and a turntable (and cassettes apparently). And for a lot of people, that will never change. But for me, the principle displayed with The ScrubBoard is that middle ground between turntablism and sample play. So it’s not scratching as we know it, but definitely has merit.

The Seesaw Killswitch idea is very clever, and for me is the key feature of The ScrubBoard. It’s something that could easily be developed to be a tactile controller all on its own. We’ve proposed ideas like loading samples into line faders and scratching with the cross fader years ago, but this is a smart use of a fader controller.

But cassette tape? No. For a long list of reasons that don’t need explaining, this device should be entirely digital. I appreciate that the raison d’être of The ScrubBoard is ingenious and cool repurposing of old analogue technology, but this really does deserve the full digital treatment. Imagine this as a battery-powered device with an SD card slot.

scrubboard tape cassette scratching

The ScrubBoard is on Kickstarter

If you simply cannot resist the core idea of scratching with bits of tape, then you can help Jeremy fund his project on Kickstarter. He’s looking for $11K to take The ScrubBoard to first prototype phase.

Your Take

I could expound on this idea for hours, but then it would leave nothing for you to add. I urge you to watch the video to get a real idea of The ScrubBoard, but in particular some of the ideas it proposes. So what do you think about the The ScrubBoard? Is it a brilliant repurposing of bygone tech that should happen as is? Or is it a foundation for a new digital approach to hybrid scratching and sample play?

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Mark Settle
Mark Settle

The old Editor of DJWORX - you can now find Mark at WORXLAB

Articles: 1228

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9 Comments

  2. Ah, this takes me back!

    TDK EC1 endless cassettes with audio loops on.

    Piles of modified cassettes (leader tape removed, section of tape inserted which was the exact length required for the sound to be played). This was done so it could be rewound really quickly and played again without cueing.

    An Aiwa AD1250 “wedge” cassette deck with the plastic door removed so tapes could be changed quickly.

  3. Hi Jeremy, congratulations on such a cool invention. I love the format, not sure how I feel about tapes, but “moving the play device ‘to’ the samples” is great. careful…someone’s gonna blag that seesaw cutter idea :)

  5. Love the see-saw idea, neatly unique but useful.

    DJing with tapes isn’t new though, there’s a great performance in the 1991 DMC championships by Mr Tape.

    There’s also this outstanding performance recently;

    http://youtu.be/AFM8UarAuVw

    Moving it further into a performance & musical piece.

  6. this is awesome. I’m gonna throw some money his way as soon as I get my paycheck.

    It would be a hassle to change tape…anyone know how long it would take to really wear it down? I’d love to be able to relatively easily throw in tape from cassettes…I guess it would be easier to just record onto the tape that’s already in there.

  7. This is actually a. Wry clever approach. I had experimenters with the idea of linear tape scratching about 1-2 years ago. But I found the sound it produced to not be very audible without a bit of echo. I like his idea of cutting and scratching the sound with one hand. Maybe I’ll revisit this idea again. Here is what I did. I didn’t take the idea much further. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeJsOA5TNUA

  8. For the Scratch Ninjas, I’ve dabbled in this and then some :-). If you want to be up and running without modding look up Califone Cardmaster on Ebay…If you want to mod a Cassette player, those usb credit card readers are inexpensive and it’s all ready to go with tape head and all..turn it sideways and etc..etc,,,you do the experimentig. I posted the Cardmaster link before on my FB page since I own a few and thought some of you would take of running with ideas, not sure what happened. These are the types of Mods I have strictly for the Scratch Ninjas but haven’t found the right website in which to blast them out to the universe…If you need any help with your mods send me a message. Before Serato and Traktor this was pretty much the only way to try out some sounds prior to pressing, now the advantage to my ears is that it’s Analog…Analog Scratching still sounds the best to me…Looking forward to what you can come up with…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObeW5Gx8X98 (Ebay)

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