Love Hultén Wall Unit Stores 54 Cassettes, Plays Them on a 1997 Walkman

US buyers picked up 436,400 cassettes in 2023, up from roughly 80,000 in 2015, according to Luminate — and storage for them has mostly stayed stuck in the plastic-rack era. Love Hultén's answer is a wall-mounted wooden unit built for a client named Melted Veldt: a rack for around 54 tapes plus a player built from a late-1990s Sony Walkman WM-EX655. Hang it, slide in a tape, and the collection becomes the decor.

Hultén works out of Gothenburg, Sweden, and has spent years turning old tech into handmade wooden oddities, from an IBM-inspired tape cabinet to a crane-driven record player. This piece is calmer than most of his output. The details are pure Hultén.

What's on the panel?

A brushed aluminum faceplate holds a tiny oscilloscope screen, a speaker grille, and keyboard-style transport keys. Engraved lines connect the knobs and buttons like a circuit diagram. The oscilloscope wiggles along to whatever's playing — useless in the best possible way. A slot under the screen displays the current tape's J-card, so guests know exactly what you're making them listen to.

The aesthetic leans on 1960s and 1970s electronics, when Braun radios and portable TVs made metal panels feel like the future. The transport keys are sculpted like mechanical keyboard caps, three gray and one colored play key. Two toggle switches marked PW-ON and CH-ON sit above them beside a red indicator LED. Two aluminum knobs sit under the screen, each set into an engraved dial reminiscent of an old TV's tuning controls. From across the room it looks complicated. Up close, it's straightforward.

Why a Walkman from 1997?

Sony built the WM-EX655 between 1997 and 1999, wrapping it in a diamond-patterned aluminum shell it claimed was 2.8 times tougher than its predecessor's. It packed auto reverse and Dolby B, the noise reduction system that tamed the hiss every tape fan knows by heart. Hultén mounts the mechanism behind a rounded window, so you can watch the reels spin while the music plays.

He said this would probably be his last such build, since grade-A Walkmans are getting hard to source. Battery figures for the unit aren't public, though his earlier C-52 reportedly managed more than 40 hours per charge — long enough to forget where the cable lives.

How big is it, and can you buy it?

Below the deck, three columns of slots hold roughly 54 cassettes, each lying flat with its spine facing out. Hultén made a point of the horizontal storage, which turns the collection into something you browse like a bookshelf. Judging by the standard cassette cases, Yanko Design estimates the unit stands about 25 inches tall and 15 inches wide, roughly 65 x 38 cm — a bit shorter than the C-52, which measured about 31 x 14 x 3 inches (78 x 35 x 7 cm) and used dual round speakers instead of a single grille. The flat top doubles as a tiny shelf, already home to a vase and a spare clear tape.

The piece is a one-off commission for Melted Veldt and isn't for sale. If you just want to play tapes, FiiO's CP13 costs around $90, with an aluminum shell nodding to Sony's original 1979 TPS-L2 Walkman — but your tapes still need somewhere to go. Hultén keeps player and collection together, every spine on display. If cassettes keep selling at this pace, somebody should build a production version and copy the keycaps exactly.