So I was playing around with this a bit yesterday and I've been having a lot of fun figuring things out. I might even write my own Instructable to expand a bit (if you don't mind).



First off, the washer and matboard seem to be pretty unnecessary, in fact I've had success just wrapping the tape around the little wheels at the bottom to make it much shorter, or around the little clear plastic pegs throughout the cassette (the one I used had 6). I also made one with the tape wrapped around both the reels and with that one I was able to fast forward or rewind for superfast playback.



The Mobeius tape loop worked out alright, but it was not super practical. Half of it plays back regularly and half plays whatever is on the other side of the tape, but in reverse and more quietly. Also, I was only able to record over the 'regular' side, and had to flip it over and time it just right to record over the other half.



You can still use both sides of the tape.



It seems like cutting the tape at an angle and taping it carefully will give a really clean loop, but whenever I try to record a drone over the whole thing, I get a bit of silence, presumable from the distance between the bit of the tape machine that erases and the bit that records when I press stop. This can be overcome by either using a pre-recorded tape or by recording a loop and then shortening it (though so far I've been too lazy to try the second option).



It is possible to make a microcasette loop, but it is a total pain to do and isn't much quicker than a cassette loop (since the tape speed is slower). Basically the tape has to be really snug and the tape is more delicate so you can't handle it too much (I wore a blue plastic glove and used tweezers).