Cheap and easy DIY Hardware Tape saturation:

you're not getting real tape compression, but you are getting saturation effects from the tape deck.

Anyone tried this? How does it stack up against your saturation plugs of choice?

Looks interesting, I'll have to try this one. Great find! :)

How do you get tape saturation without any tape? 

Surely this is just overdriving a very cheap, poor quality transformer. I can't imagine this would be subtle or pleasant like tape saturation

How does this differ from simply sending the signal to tape deck input and monitoring the output?

This thread is interesting, and is relevant to something I have done in the past and am going to do again very soon. Back in the 90s a friend loaned me a Tascam 688 "for as long as I wanted to borrow it". Could not afford to pay for studio time, so I had to take what I could get. It was my first chance to take my time with a multi-track unit, and I had all the instruments I needed to get my ideas down to tape. 8 tracks on a standard cassette is really stretching it when it comes to trying to get a quality recording, but I did a lot of things to maximise my chances at getting a decent result. I used the highest possible quality Maxell tapes, only C-60s, as anything longer than that the tape gets way thinner, and I wanted the thickest tape possible. I also cranked the variable speed control on the 688 as fast as it would go. And lastly, I used the standard trick of mixing down to a Hi-fi stereo VCR at the fastest speed available (2-hour or "SP" speed). For those of you who have never heard of this or done it, here is the neat thing: The record heads record onto the tape diagonally. Not straight across (vertically), but it still uses the full width of the tape. The tape on a VHS tape is 3/4" wide, and, with the audio striped diagonally, what you have in essence is a 1" 2-track tape deck. I am currently remixing the multi-tracks in Reaper, but when I get ready to do my final mixes (I am just editing and working on FX and EQ at present), I am going to get out one of my VCRs and go for it again. I had great results the first go-round, but with Reaper and the other tools available to me, I am looking forward to the end result. :) Here is an interesting article on this subject: Hi-Fi VCR's Hidden Audio Capabilities

This is also a very interesting unit: cheers

cool stuff. Now I have to try it .damn it. :)

Wow, that is so cool about the Hi-Fi vcr tape! I had heard about it before but not the diagonal recording. I have an old VCR that's not being used (yet!)it says "Stereo 4 head Hi-Fi" Does this sound like a likely candidate?