Turning a Drinkman into a "Working" Walkman

The Drinkman is a Walkman lookalike. It is very close in size and even has the fake buttons. When I got mine, I had to open it up to see what the inside looked like.

Here is what it looks like next to a WM-3.


Here is everything dismantled:


Inside shot:


I thought, wow. There is alot of room in this thing. Let's put something in it to make it play music! I had this tiny MP3 player sitting in my junk drawer. I took it apart and this is what was inside:


I sanded the Drinkman logo off so I can put the Sony and Walkman logos on.

So I wired it all up with a bunch of long wires. I even took the SMD red led and wired that up so I could put it on the "Walkman"


I then drilled holes in the Drinkman's side.


The switches didn't reach the edge, so I back drilled the Drinkman, then my drill bit grabbed the part and went to town...


I repaired the switches with some plastic poxy.


I thought about the sound again and wanted it to act like the Walkman with two options for the headset...so I grabbed a 3.5mm headphone splitter and drilled holes to fit that in.


To fit the little MP3 player and have the SD card and power still accessible I had to add more holes...


Then comes the paint. I sprayed silver over the whole Drinkman.


I then sprayed it with Duplicolor blue.


Set the MP3 Player and a quick hit of silver spray again.I am thinking of going back over the front to clean up some of the lines.


Add the top switch:


Put the sticker back on the front that came with the Drinkman.


Little orange paint to the top:


I cleaned up the orange top button with some green stuff modeling putty and smoothed it out a bit more, then repainted.

It works!
Both 3.5mm jacks, the little light on top when you turn the switch on. The side buttons control all of the MP3 player features, and I even have it loaded with the Awesome Mix Vol. 1!!!



Let me know what you think. I have a few more Drinkman's on the way to convert. This one was a ton of fun.

Then, you add labels, clean up the side, add a belt clip, and even add a better sticker to the front that includes the Awesomemix Vol 1!

Finished Pics:



How does it hold up against a WM-3?



Great!

Just ordered mine! Great job!!

This is completely fantastic. I definitely need to do something along these lines.

Nice conversion!!

Added updated pictures.

I added a new sticker to the front, added the logos, belt clip, and cleaned up the side for the SD card access.

This one is finished!

That looks fantastic!

Great work turning a flask into a MP3 player.
But how did you get the buttons to function?

I drilled small holes in the buttons and holes in the backside and added small tactile switches in. You can see the white buttons in the pictures. Those are the tactile switch heads.

Man that is an amazing idea. I was just thinking how great it would be to have a prop that was an MP3 player. If you ever make this for sale let me know!

Iggy thanks for this wonderful idea. A great alternative for the budget and non budget minded costumers. Gonna build a static model with orange pad headphones connected for my 9 year old son. Would be too expensive to let him carry an original TPS-L2 or WM-3 Walkman for Halloween and convention visits. I plan to cut/dremel the front cassette tape window opening. Glue a thin piece of clear scrap plastic inside to add some realism and depth. Lastly will VELCRO a new old stock TDK CDing2 60 minutes cassette tape with the AWESOME REMIX #1 labels. This should make this prop "POP" visually.

Since this my first cosplay my craftsmanship is quite there yet. Anyway here is my drinkman to drinkman "guardians style". Had bad luck with the walkman and sony decals but the cassette decal came through. Paint job kind of screwed up but I ran with it and decided to go with a more used/worn walkman.

Nice. First cosplays are always the hardest. Good luck with the rest of the costume!

Any advice on how to open the darn thing?

You can squeeze the red part in the center right next to the black side. Then pull the side off. On mine there were four clip like notches. If you can squeeze the red part you can get the black portion off easily. Then just take the foam part out and the flask will fall out.