Elbow is a one-armed wonder winder that’ll save your cassettes
Step aside vinyl, there’s a new hipster medium in town
Imagine holding a CD in your hand and playing it without a case. That would never happen, because lasers. It can happen with tapes, though. Meet Elbow: a clever clip-on concept for your cassette collection, it has a single, swivelling arm which slots into one of the winding holes and drives the tape like it’s 1995. A biaxial build means you can switch the playback direction in a jiffy, while a control wheel lets you alter the volume and fast-forward at a range of rates. Charge it via microUSB, stick in a set of 3.5mm headphones and you’ve go-anywhere throwback tunes stuck to your pocket (thanks to a bundled pin).
Chris Rowlands
Freelance contributor