Weekend Project: Transistorize Your iPod


Get vintage sounds from time-warp radio with this fun “back to the future” project. Top 40 songs from the 70’s don’t sound the same on big stereo systems or headphones but they will now!
To download Transistorize Your iPod MP4 click here —— or subscribe in iTunes.

Check out the Transitorize Your iPod MAKE 13 “Transisorize Your iPod” & you can see that in our digital edition.

20 thoughts on “Weekend Project: Transistorize Your iPod

  1. Felis says:

    The tone of your weekend projects is getting better, Kip, and that’s nice. I still think there’s some more space in the projects to be less “follow-this-recipe” and more “void the warranty and hack around”.

    I guess it’s time for you to step up the game and start doing projects that aren’t from the magazine: it makes buying the zine feel a little stupid.

  2. Phillip Torrone says:

    @Felis – most people do not buy the magazine and we need to constantly showcase all the cool things you can do in MAKE, our other videos (like mine from robobusiness) are things that aren’t in MAKE – we’ll try to have a bit of both and so far, i think we do.

    out of every project in MAKE, there are less than 1% that have videos.

  3. jkiniston says:

    Cool project this weekend.

    Kip your videos look better every week.

    I have one thing I’d to ask for a clarification on.

    You mention two strand wire, Is it two strand per conductor or one strand per conductor?

  4. Sean St. says:

    Man… I liked some of the previous videos, but that radioshack ad right in the middle was pretty intrusive. I know the sponsorship helps the mag, but man oh man does it hurt to watch.

    Nice project, but I’ve got to agree that it’d be nice to see some projects that aren’t in the MAKE.

  5. Phillip Torrone says:

    @Sean St. the video and the content on MAKE has is free, surely a few seconds from a company with the heritage of radioshack is bearable so we can continue to bring you more great content.

    the videos for now will mostly come from the magazine, we have less than 1% of our projects as videos, we need to get more out there so folks get an idea of what MAKE is all about.

    if you look at our videos on the site you’ll see dozens (if not over a hundred by now) of other things, like my robobusiness coverage…

  6. KipKay says:

    @jkiniston – Yes it’s one strand per wire. Two wires total. One goes to the ground (-) and the other to the towo ends of the resistors. Thanks

  7. lego man says:

    I like the idea of having it play through a 70’s radio, but Wouldn’t it be cooler if the iPod fit inside with cutouts in the back to use the iPod? Or did you do your design to work with other things, like cd players?

  8. gear head says:

    excuse the rookie question but does the attenuated signal from the iPod go through the preamp in the radio to get that ‘AM sound’?, is that why it was injected at the volume control instead of directly to the speaker? Or was the 70’s vintage recording of sufficiently ‘poor’ quality that you could have hooked it to the speaker anyway.

    I like the idea of this project and am thinking of doing the same to a 40’s era radio for an even more vintage ‘big band’ experience.

  9. KipKay says:

    @lego man – yea that would have been a bit better but the nano would not fit inside. In the original project he used a newer shuffle that may have fit inside but I think using the controls would have been an issue.

  10. KipKay says:

    @gear head – The idea behind that was so you could control the volume of the iPod from the radio. The audio I fed into it was pretty ‘low-fi” as it was. It would likely sound bad mainly because of the quality/size of the speaker in the radio.

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