1950 GE Play-Talk Turntable Tape Recorder
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Complete Record: This channel is not monetized. If you like what you see here and would like to help me continue sharing cool stuff on my channel, please consider making a donation via Venmo @Pea-Hicks. Here's a demo of an odd bit of transistional tech. This is a GE Play-Talk from 1950. It's a kid's toy, but it's actually pretty advanced for the time, since tape recorders were just start to become available. This is a tape recorder / record player hybrid. The paper disc is coated with magnetic tape, and the tonearm has a tape recorder head on it. The little plastic disc that goes over the "tape" disc has a spiral groove for guiding the tonearm. The speaker serves double duty as the microphone. All tube electronics. What's great is the way you can play/record in random access mode. There's no erase head, so the sounds just keep building on top of each other until you erase the disc with a bulk tape eraser. In the 2nd part of the video, I use another fantastic GE toy- the Tote-A-Tune keyboard from the early 70s. I record a scale onto the disc, then attempt to play a tune by manually moving the tonearm over the disc. Lots of creative lo-fi applications for this sucker!! MUCH thanks to Llyswen for getting this thing for me (years ago) and Robert for recently bringing it back to life!!
Transcription
this is the GE play talk weird hybrid tape recorder and record player type thing from the late 1940s early night now it's got to be early 50s or mid 50s or something like that it's got these nice graphics around the side and this is a weird thing the way it works is it's got a tape head instead of a stylus and this is basically like recording tape except on a disc and weight there and you put it in talk mode see that talk mode and turn this up oh wait oh and then and the grooves are on this little plastic disc hang on there we got okay this is a great little demo the grooves are there and then see this thing has a little needle that follows the grooves and so you put this on and now we're in record mode which is called talked on here okay and oh and this is the microphone slash speaker so when you're in record mode this works as a microphone so hello hello hello now we are recording some talking on the plate talk okay so then we switch it back to play mode and then we can go back here Oh we're recording oh is it skipping happy I smell something burning where's my recording Oh for the husband who's that when you're in record this works as a microphone so how well below hello now we are recording some talking on the plate top okay okay and then okay turn this off and there was a disc that came with this thing Robert fix this for me by the way Robert and there was one that came with that had original recordings from children on it so we're gonna listen to those dope hang on complicated process here okay Oh
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Original permalink · Record added: 2025-09-17 01:38:10