RSR537 - Rich Bernett - The sound of machines: Contact Mics, The Cassettone, Guitar Pedal Feedback Loops, Oh My!
Recording Studio Rockstars
Lij Shaw
4.8 • 543 Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 123 minutes
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Summary
Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: https://MixMasterBundle.com
Howdy Rockstars, my guest today is Rich Bernett, aka Sound of Machines, a Richmond, Virginia - based sound artist, builder, and experimental musician. Rich designs and performs with his own DIY instruments like the CassetteTone 2 and Rotary Drone, blending circuit bending, contact mics, and field recordings to create wild, organic, and otherworldly soundscapes. With a growing following on YouTube, Patreon, and Instagram, Rich shares his creative process and connects with a community of makers and musicians exploring new sonic frontiers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of Recording Studio Rockstars is brought to you by Isotope, Native Instruments, |
| 0:06.7 | S-A-E- Institute, Adam Audio, Spectra-1964, and Picker. |
| 0:12.9 | In fact, you're hearing my voice right now, recorded through a Spectra-1964 STX-100 mic-Pree, |
| 0:20.5 | and mixed with Isotope, ozone, and RX on atom audio monitors and headphones. |
| 0:27.4 | Grab my free mixing course at Mixmaster Bundle with the link in the show notes below, |
| 0:33.1 | and please make sure to visit our fantastic sponsors also in the show notes and like and subscribe to our YouTube channel because it's a great way to help support this show. |
| 0:44.1 | Now get ready to rock. |
| 0:47.0 | And what it is, it's a hacked cassette player. |
| 0:50.9 | There's actually a variable speed potentialometer in these cassette players. |
| 0:55.0 | I think they set it at the factory to the best of their abilities to... |
| 0:59.0 | Right, right. But you can change it to what you want. |
| 1:02.0 | You can hack into it and then connect four or five or however many variable resistors you want. |
| 1:08.0 | And then if you wire it up in the right way, then you can trigger different |
| 1:12.4 | speeds of your cassette player with different keys. So what I did is, yeah, I made it so that you can |
| 1:19.2 | change the pitch for each key with the variable resistor. So it's not a little bit of portamento |
| 1:26.1 | to get to the next speed. A bit of a ramp, but it's fast. |
| 1:40.7 | Welcome to recording studio rock stars. |
| 1:43.6 | I'm Lid Shaw, and this is the podcast created to help you become a rock star of the recording studio. |
| 1:55.3 | Rockstars, are you ready to unlock the full potential of your mixes and masters, then you need |
| 2:03.2 | isotope ozone 12. |
| 2:06.1 | This complete tool set gives you 20 Pro modules, including the new base control, Unlimiter, |
| 2:12.6 | and StemEQ, plus the IRC5 maximizer for loud, clean mixes and masters without distortion, |
... |
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