Soundwagon/Vinyl Killer toy bus that plays LPs

The Soundwagon is a little toy bus that drives around a vinyl record playing the music from its onboard speaker. (The product is sometimes called the Vinyl Killer which is probably a more descriptive name.) I'd seen them in pictures before but never in operation. I especially like this video because it shows the Soundwagon on a transcription record, 16" platters from the 1930s and 1940s first used in cinemas to play film soundtracks and later at radio stations for recorded programs, before the proliferation of magnetic tape. Soundwagon (Amazon)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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http://www.facebook.com/people/Joseph-Edwards/565360372 Joseph Edwards

There’s a reason theyre called vinyl killers. Fun to look at, but never put one of those things on a record you care about.
Larry Rubinow

At the outer edge of a 12″ LP, the needle travels through roughly 35″ of groove every rotation. Close to the label, the needle travels through only about 12″ of groove each rotation.

In other words, though the turntable speed is constant, the relative speed of needle to groove is nearly 3x faster at the start of Side A than at the end of Side A. So in order to maintain anything like fidelity, the bus would also have to move 3x faster at the start of the side than at the end.

Unless this is a very clever little bus, slowing down as the curve it’s tracing gets tighter, I can only imagine how awful this sounds.
- Clemoh
  
  Boogernuggets.
- Brian Riggins
  
  That’s a really good point…how the heck do turntables compensate for that?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Norm-Tedford/1220611758 Norm Tedford

Somebody should buy all of them available for sale, them blow ‘em up real good. They are killers of an endangered species.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Somebody should buy all of them available for sale, them blow ‘em up real good. They are killers of an endangered species.
  
  Why not just make some new vinyl?
Mark Dow

It would be fun to have a wagon that cut sonic grooves in a suitable substrate. Wood floors?
- Blaze Curry
  
  That, my friend is an excellent idea.
  I can see a dining room floor/wall with circular “scuffs”, that when a certain object is placed upon them, play lovely dinner music.
  - amber steele
    
    Yes please! Effin’ brilliant!!!
http://www.facebook.com/ted.mills Ted Mills

There was a cartoon they used to show on Bravo (or A&E) back in the early ’90s that featured one of these (and a woman with chicken legs). Does anyone remember this cartoon?
sluggo

I have a case of these, new in the box. Anyone want ‘em? They’re the seafoam green Ice Cream truck version.
- amber steele
  
  I’d take one- how much?
Glastafarian

Also seen in Money Mark – Hand in your head (1998) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dqxYjkwfzY
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

I had one of those when I was a kid only it was a Saturn V rocket that you pushed to the gantry and it played special records that were in a straight line, not just any record. But it was a needle in vinyl. It was given to me by a woman who had hit me with her car. (not too badly)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

I have a half-dozen or so of those 16″ transcription disks. Radio programs with music by the Air Force Reserve Band. And no way to play them!

I’d be willing to risk damaging them to finally hear the programs.

(Of course, if anyone out there is interested in them, you can have them for the cost of shipping.)
http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

Scratch-O-Phone. I like that.
gorgar

When I was a kid I remember using a compass to get tinny sounds out of a record. The record was never the same, but it was fun.
AviSolomon

There was a similar low-tech option at the NYC Maker Faire:)
http://makerfaire.com/pub/e/6914
@man

I had one of these in the 80′s. I think a friend brought it back from Japan. Don’t remember what became of it…
http://twitter.com/danlockton Dan Lockton

Not the same, but it reminds me of Nervous Squirrel’s ‘Audio Cars’http://www.nervoussquirrel.com…“16 boards were made, containing a total of 7.9 kilometres of tape, all laboriously glued by hand. Once the boards were prepared, 3 radio controlled cars were driven around on top of them. Each car had a tape playback head attached to the underside, connected to a transmitter, which sent the audio picked up from the tape back to a PA system (or headphones when the RFH employees wanted a break).”
http://www.facebook.com/people/Carol-Gordon/1442202392 Carol Gordon

sluggo – Oh that would be huge, could you really ship? Whatever you do don’t talk to Norm Tedford, there really is enough crappy vinyl to go around.
millie fink

I actually like the advice about avoiding the dangers of caffeine.

Try it for 30 days–you’ll see.
Patric_1m

Ok, I’ve got one, the Vinyl Killer that is, now I where can I get some of this transcription discs of movies dialogue etc.???
RobDobbs

I seem to recall MixMasterMike of the Beastie Boys was using one of these in the documentary Scratch about turntablism put out by Palm Pictures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(film)
- not a doktor
  
  I saw that and I’ve wanted one ever since.
- Cynical
  
  IIRC, it was DJ Qbert, because he had stuck photographs of the various members of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz in the windows of the bus.
  
  /pedant
Jellodyne

By turning the record at a constant RPM — which is trivially easy using the stationary turntable spinning a record frame of reference, but not an option at the toy bus driving along following a groove frame of reference.