Turbo-Sonic Whopper

21M.380 12/3/09 Turbo-Sonic Whopper The Turbo-Sonic Whopper (TSW) is an instrument which has been designed in the spirit of technology based musical creation. With a majority of its parts being constructed from found materials, the TSW is truly a piece of experimental music technology. The inspiration for the TSW comes from Nicholas Collins’ book Handmade Electronic Music as well as from various class discussions. I was intrigued by Collins’ use of tape heads to read credit cards and I enjoyed the unique sounds which this practice made when we created instruments from tape heads in class. I found that just using ones hands to wave a tape head over the magnetic strip was rather rudimentary, and thus I decided that I wanted to create another medium with which to use the tape head and with many class discussions of both turntables and various controllers, the idea for the TSW was born. The Turbo-Sonic Whopper, so-called because of the “whop” noise it makes as it spins, is consistent of three main components. The first of these is the turntable unit shown in Figure 1.