Kawasaki Dual-CoolKeys – Bending Heaven.

I was recently asked about the Kawasaki Dual-CoolKeys. The reader was asking if I had any experience with it or if I knew of any cool bend points.

Coincidentally, I had been messing around with a Dual-CoolKeys, not long before. I took some pics to document the device and wanted to share them.

kawasaki dual-coolkeys

I picked two similar Kawasaki keyboards up at Value Village for about 10 bucks. The guy looked at me super funny when I bought them. But hey, that’s part of the fun of circuit bending.

CIRCUIT BENDING AWESOMENESS #1


Upon opening up the Kawasaki Dual Keys keyboard, I noticed an amazing thing. The Dual Keys seems like it was built by someone who loves to circuit bend. Everything is modular and the whole keyboard comes apart beautifully. The screws are easy to reach and there ins’t much that is glued down. Really, the only glue is supporting the wires.

kawasaki dual-coolkeyskawasaki dual-coolkeyskawasaki dual-coolkeyskawasaki dual-coolkeys

CIRCUIT BENDING AWESOMENESS #2


I did some basic bend searching and found a resistor of particular interest. The thing that makes this perticular keyboard so perfect for circuit bending is that there is not one but at least two different timing resistors. This means that the timing for the drum track and the timing for the keyboard sounds are independently controlled .

kawasaki dual-coolkeys

I will be honest, it’s been a while since I was messing around with this Dual-CoolKeys, so I can’t remember if this resistor controlled the drum track timing or the keyboard sound timing (I’m pretty sure it was the keyboard) but either way, this is AMAZING!

IMG_0665

This is just the beginning. It’s easy to see the potential for circuit bending the Kawasaki Dual-CoolKeys into a much more amazing piece. I just wanted to get the ball rolling on the Dual-CoolKeys documentation. With some time and research, the Dual Keys, and the rest of the Kawasakies could be as popular as a Hing Hon or some of the more known synths out there.

If you have any information on the Dual-CoolKeys, feel free to shoot me an email or make a comment. If you write about, or have written about it, let me know and I’ll link to you.

Should you ever come across any of the Kawasaki line, (I have a few and they are all awesome) I highly recommend you pick it up.

DIY Drum Machine – Circuit Bending

I have been working on a diy drum machine for a while now. I wanted to post this video to show it’s functionality.

The core of this drum machine is from an electronic drum stick. You swing the stick and it makes drum sounds. The stick made 3 sounds; Snare, bass drum, and high hat.

DIY Drum Machine

When you swing the drum stick, it plays a snare sound. There are two buttons on the stick, that when pressed AND the stick is swung, play two more sounds. So this was easy to hook up to a 3-way switch with up as one button, down as another button, and middle was just like swinging the drum stick without pressing a button.

DIY Drum Machine

I rigged it up to a 555 timer and a 4017 decade counter and some pots and switches, and away it went. There is still some glitching that happens I think because of some switches which aren’t wired to ground to de-bounce them.

DIY drum machine - time signature controlerDIY drum machine - switches to control sound typeDIY drum machine - 555 timerDIY drum machine - 4017 decade counter

The 555 timer triggers the drum sound and advances the 4017. The 4017 sends a pulse through one of 10 3-way switches to hold the particular sound. The sound selection is set with the 3-way switch. I hope that makes sense.

Like I said, it’s a work in progress.

DIY drum machine - control board layout design

The case is from a kids toy (big surprise, I know). It was a light box for tracing. It use to have two lightbulbs inside and a semi-transparent screen. The cool thing about is that it has a battery compartment built in. All I had to do was modify it for the voltage I was using. I just shrunk it down. Easy (yeah right).

I painted it up white first and then spray painted a stencil of a fist on top of it. The body was also painted red. The final step for the paint job was to do some clear coat. All in all, a pretty sweet paint job.

Circuit Bending a DIY Drum Machine

In this video, you can see holes for the LEDs that will indicate which point in the sequence it’s at. I am having a heck of a time with that. It seems like, when connected, the sound plays but the LEDs don’t light up. I don’t know if it’s a lack of current or what. I have tried the LEDs in series and in parallel. Neither work now. The joke is, it all worked at one point when it was on a bread board. Upon soldering everything up, everything started changing. I suppose that is the nature of the beast.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Happy Bending,
Nick

Arduino Sequencer

NEW POST!!!

To quote noystoise…

wow, its been a long time since i have posted anything here.

It has been ages since my last post. So much has happened (Including planning a wedding and getting married). With that said, I have still been circuit bending and building things.

My Arduino Uno Micro-Controler

Recently, I purchased an Arduino Uno micro-controller. This thing is awesome. It doesn’t have much to do with true circuit bending (I know someone will have a problem with that) but it is insanely powerful.

Here is what I have been playing around with in the last few weeks.

This little Arduino Sequencer project that I have been working on is super simple to build. Really all you need is an Arduino Uno (and a computer to program it with), breadboard, speaker, potentiometer (any value) and some wires.

All of the functionality comes from the programming. The code is simple too. Basiclly, you use the built in tone generator (it’s just a square wave generator) to read the value of a potentiometer and place the value of that the potentiometer into a variable. Then you play a tone based on that value, pause, play another tone, pause, play another, etc.

The subsiquent tones are based off the original tone, they are just multiples of that first value.

The program loops and starts all over again. That’s it!

Arduino uno diy sequencer

Here is the link to the tutorial that I followed originally. It has some schematics and in depth instructions about how to set it up and how the code works.
Arduino Tone Follower Tutorial

Here is the code:

/*
SecondHandSynth Digital Arduino Sequencer
https://secondhandsynth.wordpress.com/

Plays a pitch that changes based on a changing analog input

circuit:
* 8-ohm speaker on digital pin 8
* Breadboard
* Some resistors and wire

This example code is in the public domain.

Original code before modification came from
http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Tone2

*/

void setup() {
// initialize serial communications (for debugging only):
Serial.begin(9600);

//boot up sound
int var = 100;
while (var < 500)
{
tone(8, var, 50);
delay(150);
var=(var+80);
}

}

void loop() {
// read the sensor:
int sensorReading = analogRead(A0);
int delayTime = 175;
int durationTime = 5000;

// print the sensor reading so you know its range
Serial.println(sensorReading);

// map the pitch to the range of the analog input.
// change the minimum and maximum input numbers below
// depending on the range your sensor's giving:
int thisPitch = map(sensorReading, 0, 1023, 50, 2000);

// print the mapped range
Serial.println(thisPitch);

// play the pitch:
tone(8, thisPitch * 2.5, durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 2), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 1.5), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);

//second string
thisPitch = thisPitch * .5;

tone(8, thisPitch, durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 1.5), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 2), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 2.5), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);

//second string
thisPitch = thisPitch * 1.5;

tone(8, thisPitch, durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 1.5), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 2), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 2.5), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);

//second string
thisPitch = thisPitch * .5;

tone(8, thisPitch, durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 1.5), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 2), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);
tone(8, (thisPitch * 2.5), durationTime);
delay(delayTime);

}

Try it out for yourself and let me know how it works. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Thanks for reading and HAPPY BENDING!

Inventory Management

I went on my usual route to find new synths from second hand and thrift stores.
Of course I found a couple of things.

When I got home to throw them into my closet with all the rest of them, I thought, jeez I have a lot of toys.

I figured I would make a blog post about the toys I have and what I was thinking (if anything) when I bought them.

Dollar Store Synths
05_02_2010 044
They were one dollar… can you believe that?!
Unfortunately, when I got them home I found out that they don’t have a timing resistor. I’m sure i will be able to come up with something cool to do with them but for now… they are gonna sit.

The Sound-X Kids
05_02_2010 038
I think I got this one for 3 bucks. This thing is AWESOME. It has tons of sound effects. It has some really cool drum beats (which you can even play backwards). It has a scratch pad. And, it even has a little keyboard with quite a few neat sounds. There is nothing generic about this little guy. The only problem with the keyboard sounds is that they don’t have any sustain. The are basically just little recordings that play once.

I think there is a resistor that is heating up inside too, because the case gets REALLY hot in one spot when you use the scratch pad a lot.

Kawasaki Dual-Cool-Keys
05_02_2010 042
The idea behind this one is that two people can play with it at the same time. I got it because I figured that it would have twice the polyphony (I don’t know if that is the right term) as a normal toy. Most of the toys you can only hold down 1 or 2 keys at one time, making complex chords impossible.

At the same time I got another Kawasaki (each for 4 dollars!) of the same series. It has a little 6 trigger drum pad with drum sequences already build in. It has some interesting drum loop samples as well. The keyboard to this one is only bi-phony but it has some really cool sounds to it.

Another Kawasaki
05_02_2010 043
I haven’t put batteries in this little guy yet, but I’m hopping it’s every bit as cool as it’s older brothers.

Just some Rand-O’s
05_02_2010 041
The blue/purple 4 button thing is just drum loops. They are really annoying. I have seed this little guy on youtube and on Reed Ghazala’s Website.
Reed Ghazala's  Doppler Wind
It’s called the Doppler Wind (whatever that means).

The little red keyboard, beleive it or not, is the same circuit that was in my very first post. So I guess I get to revisit that nightmare over and over again.

The DJ looking think is pretty lame. It could make a good housing but it really doesn’t do much. It has four drum loops and a few lame sound effects. I have another one of these but it is in a different package. It has drum pads on it but the drum loops are the same. That’s how I know it comes from the same place. I don’t know if those drum triggers are in this DJ one. Some day I will take them both apart and find out if they are truly the same circuit.

Playschool Guitar
05_02_2010 040
This is a pretty lame toy too. The cool part though is the built in tremolo. I don’t know whether it is just another voice that sounds like that or if it truly mods the sound of the guitar. Only time (and a screwdriver) will tell.

Let me know if you have any of these and have found any interesting bends.

Happy bending!

Insect-A-Tron – (Mini-Keys circuit bending part2)

I can’t tell you how excited I am.

I just finished my mini-keys keyboard that I was working on (Mini-Keys — A little keyboard circuit bend (part 1)).

I’m so stoked on this that I can’t even think of a good way to tell about it. So, I’m just going to show you this second hand synth and let you be the judge.

mini-keys2 015

The paint job and design

First off, I am really excited about the paint job. It’s not what I envisioned when I first thought of the design but it definitely is the best thing I have made to date.

mini-keys2 017

It was inspired by the way the synth sounds when it’s oscillators are kicked on. It’s what I think insects sound like when they communicate with one another. Lot’s of super sonic chirps and squeaks.

mini-keys2 021

Anyway, this paint job was tough to do too because I kept screwing up. I must have repainted it 3 or 4 times. Doing the stencils was increadably difficult. I found the images I wanted and printed them onto paper. Then I cut out the silhouette with an exact-o knife. Because the paint kept sparaying under the stencil and screwing up the whole thing, I finally decided that tape wasn’t enough to hold it down. I mixed some Elemer’s glue and water and coated the back of the stencil. That did the trick.

mini-keyboard 019

After the painting was finished, I made a couple of images in photoshop to label the keyboard and to put “SECOND HAND SYNTH” on the back of the keyboard. I cut them out from the plain white printer paper they were printed on and glued them to the keyboard. I tried t be cool and write 2010 on the back. I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea but I did it.

I really liked the synth identifying decal. “Insect-A-Tron”. Howerever, as soon as I had done it I realized that it should have been Insect-O-Tron. Oh well.

I finished the paint job with two coats of clear gloss. I used a polyurethane which I think had a little stain in it (it is for wood projects). It turned the white paint a little yellow. Not a lot. But enough so that it doesn’t have the cool, cold white feel to it. I’m gonna use real clear coat next time.

Synth Controls

These are the controls on the left hand side. The top switch engages the oscillators. The bottom on is a bend that I found on my own circuit. It smooths out the warble of the oscillators. The Joystick in the center of the black panel controls the frequency of the oscillators. The black knob at the top of the picture controls the bottom switch’s saturation. I don’t exactly know what it is doing but is a bit like a depth knob on a flanger pedal.

mini-keys2 020

This is the pitch knob. It is a washer glued to a little 1M potentiometer. It worked out quite nice. I just wish it was black. Maybe I will paint it someday.

mini-keys2 026

This is the push botton switch that activates the custom dual oscillator chip that I added to the keyboard. I should have made it turn on the actual keyboards chip too.

mini-keys2 024

The problems with this synth

The main problem so far is that there is no volume control. I am gonna have to get the output resistance right and solder it in there. The signal comes out quite hit and clips a lot of the sound. I had to rig a little pot in series with the keyboard just to make the video. For the life of me, I have no idea why that wasn’t part of the design.

The second problem is that there is a switch on the right hand side that activates the oscillator chips. The circuit board is powered by a 9v battery but the keyboard is powered by two AA batteries. You have to open up the entire case to get the 9v out. I guess it’s a good thing that there is a on/off switch for the 9v but I don’t like how it’s impossible to get the 9v out without taking it apart.

mini-keys2 012

The third thing that I don’t like about this second hand synth is that some of the settings don’t make any sound. I wanted the most variety of sound so I didn’t dial in the resistances of the joystick very much. Because it’s not properly calibrated, when the timing resistance it too low, you get nothing.

Oh well.

Another problem is that the keyboard is a little filled up. There is so much packed into such a small case. Next time I will definitely map out where the wires will go before I get into that phase of construction.

mini-keys2 014

The last thing that I should have done is to label the controls. I originally intended to have interesting insectoid names for all the switches and knobs. I was a little impatient and went on with out doing it. Again, oh well. Maybe I will bust out a sharpie and write it all on.

Oh! And, I forgot to put in the LED’s too. There is one for each LFO. Oh well.

I don’t even know how many hours I put into it. Many. Too many. Not enough. I don’t know. Just to get it all glued into the case it took me 3-4 hours.

Here is the first video.

Also, please click on any of the pictures and check them out on Flickr.com. There are tons more pics and you can view the larger resolutions too.

Happy Bending!!!

Mini-Keys — A little keyboard circuit bend (part 1)

I have been working on a small but complicated project for the last week or so. Basiclly it’s a continuation of the last mini-keyboard circuit that I fried. I posted some pics in an earlier post.

The original project had a dual LFO powered by a 9V battery. I was using the 556 dual timer chip to accomplish this.

Long story shore; I fried the little guy and the 556 timer while trying to adapt the keyboard for wall power.

The new keyboard and circuit design

I was lucky in the fact that I had found almost the exact same keyboard the weekend before I fried it.

joystickStuff 005

I could just substitute it in for the old one and none would be the wiser.

The only problem was that I had fried the 556 chip and didn’t have another one. I could have gone to Radio Shack or bought some online. I didn’t really want to do either. The Shack is too expensive and ordering online takes too long. I had to come up with something else.

joystickStuff 006

I decided to practice what I preach and give the lm386 a go. So I followed the schematic on the datasheet and wired a square wave. And wouldn’t you know it… It worked.

The “square wave” seemed to act a little differently than the 555 timer square wave. It seemed to have more slope on the beginning and end of the square wave shape. I know this because I had it running an LED. The LED seemed to dim as the capacitor discharged.

Anyway, I wired up two of those lm386 oscillators and played around with them. Crossed a wire here, added a capacitor there. You know how it goes.

mini-keyboard 002

Mostly, the two LFO’s are effecting the pitch (vibrato if you will). One is directly effecting the pitch and the other one is modulating the first LFO and also operating a transistor gate which is almost acting like a tremolo.

All in all I came out with a pretty good design. One that I’m sure could be patched into just about anything with a timing resistor.

The fun stuff

The best part is the joystick. It operates the both LFO’s frequencies at the same time. LFO1 is the X-axis and LFO2 is the Y-axis.

mini-keyboard 003

The really cool thing is the second LFO. As I said, it operates a transistor gate for the first LFO. These different combinations make some really interesting modulation to the sound of the keyboard. But, it also is patched into the pitch resistor array at a different place than LFO1. So, when all is said and done, the sounds that you get are really quite diverse.

I have a switch that activates the second pitch controlling LFO2 (but not the transistor gate of LFO2) which basically gives the keyboard a super alien/insect sound. When I blast that sucker, I feel like I’m hearing ants communicate.

Painting

I have only just begun to paint this beast but so far it’s turning out pretty good.

mini-keyboard 019

IT’S REALLY COOL!!!

mini-keyboard 013

-videos and schematics coming soon in part 2

Potentiometers from an X-Box controller joystick! – a how to guide

In this entry I will show you how to take apart an x-box controller and then how to extract the joystick. I will also show you how to remove the spring from the joystick so that you don’t have the “return to center” action that the controllers come with.

But first…

The story

I was at my favorite place, a thrift store. While making my rounds, looking for second hand synths, I came across an old X-Box controller. I have seen other people use joy sticks in their circuit bending projects but I have never seen them for sale (mostly because I never though to look).
x-box controller - potentiometer

I know that the controllers have a lot of control and accuracy. So, I figured that there must be two potentiometers for each joystick. Otherwise, you couldn’t camp out in a tower, aim your gun at your opponent’s head and snipe him in the head. You would be able to do it if there were four buttons behind the joystick.

Naturally, I bought it.
Naturally, I took it apart.

inside an x-box controller - see the two potentiometers?

(note: in the above two pictures the controllers are different… this is because I didn’t take them. I stole them from somebody on the web. Sorry. I won’t do it again… in this post… )

There isn’t really much worth taking, besides the joystick potentiometers. The rest is just simple contact push buttons. Too bad really. For what they cost, I thought there would be much more inside.

The Joystick

The X-Box joysticks are just two potentiometers. Obviously, one is for the x-axis and one is for the y-axis.

joystickStuff 008

The pots measure at about 10k when they are fully pressed in one direction. They rest at about 5k with a small amount of resistance opposite the 10k side.

The best way to get the joystick out is to use some wire cutters and just cut the PCB around the joystick. Make sure not to get to close to the joystick housing because you can crack the PCB too close to the pots. When this happens it separates the potentiometer from the joystick housing and breaks it a little. You can glue it back on but it’s annoying.

These things are great! I put one in the second hand synth project I am currently working on. My synth project has dual LFO’s producing two square waves. One square waves modulate the pitch and the other modulates the volume. It’s kinda like vibrato and tremelo together. There is also some cross modulation of the two square waves. The joystick is the perfect control for the rate/frequency of each individual oscillator. Thus, creating some really awesome sounds.

x-box joystick taken out

The one problem with the joysticks is that they always return to center. This is cool but then you always have to keep one hand on the stick if you want to keep the potentiometer settings that you have going.

As I said, my current second hand synth project has two LFO’s. The combination of the two produces some really interesting modulation of the original synth sound. With the joystick, I had to have it be able to stick to the setting I had set it too and not immediately return to center every time I wanted to adjust something else.

What was a boy to do? …

How take the springs out of the joystick

So, I took each individual joystick apart too!

This was no easy task. The main problem is that you have to get the PCB away from the joystick housing. You have to melt the solder points and pry it with a screwdriver at the same time.

The housing itself has four contacts which are soldered to the PCB and then there are tree pegs on each of the potentiometers. To make matters even worse, there is the push button switch (you push in on the joystick and it clicks the push button) that has four solder points.

In the end I did have to clip away at the PCB. BUT BE CAREFUL! As stated earlier, you can mess up the joystick and seperate the pots from the rest of the joystick. I did this on one of them and it was no fun task to get it super glued (and hot glued) back on.

joystickStuff 009

Once the PCB is off you can pull the little metal tabs (part of the housing) that are holding to plastic bottom on. Once the four tabs are pulled away from the base you can pop the base off and pull the guts out.

the joystick of an x-box controller all taken apart - it's in pieces!

joystickStuff 010

Take the spring out and re-asemble the hole unit. You can even add a bit of perforated circuit board to the bottom to strengthen the whole unit.

Kinda cool really. The device itself is ingenious… if you ask me.

And there you have it. You can keep the button or not. I couldn’t think of what to do with it on the project I have going right now (TONS of Ideas came to mind but nothing would work with the space availible). But, you can bet that I will include it in the future.

Happy Bending!!!

Mini Keyboard – vaporized

I found a little keyboard attached to a book. I tore it off of the book, threw the book away and started in on the keyboard.
circuit bending this little keyboard from a thirft store

The construction of the keyboard was very simple. Not too many points for bends. That doesn’t stop me though.

The first thing I do on any project is find the timing resistor that manages the timing for the primary circuit. I found it with no problem at all and replaced it with a potentiometer and about 1M more resistance. I love the low end synth sounds more than the high end. That’s just me.

circuit bending a mini keyboard

The next thing I did was to created a square wave generator to act as an LFO using half of a 556 chip. The output goes through two capacitors placed + to +. It gives the oscillator a better rise and fall off. A sort of envelope if you will.

I was playing around with this for a while. The problem I was having was that the keyboard runs off of 3 volts (two AA bats) and the square wave was running off of a 9v battery. I really wanted to have it all run off the same power source. I decided to try to hook up a 9v adapter input. That way I could just run it off of wall power and use the battery compartment for other things.

After much research and plauging questions on http://www.electro-tech-online.com/ I got most of the information I needed to feel confident that I could just hook it up without a problem.

The batteries were substituted with the wall adapter. Everything was working fine (there was definitely and audible difference. Most likely the cause was much more current.). I was trying to create a voltage divider to give me the 3V I needed to power the keyboard.

I couldn’t seem to get a good balance between the resistors heating up (around 100 ohms) and not enough current to power the keyboard (anything over about 400 ohms). In the proscess of experimenting with the different values I fried both the keybaord circuit and the 556 ic.

This really pissed me off. Now, I’m out of 556’s (until I get my order in) and I just fried 15-20 hours of fiddling around. Thankfully I had made my usual run of the thrift shops and found another keyboard that was almost identical. Not as pretty though. Not that that matters because I was going to paint it anyway.
fried circuit of this mini keyboard circuit bend project

Another one bites the dust. I did however get a lot of useful information (for the most part) about wall adapters and using them instead of batteries.

You can read the conversations here.

Hannah Montana Electric Guitar – circuit bending

I went thrift shopping the other day and I found a pretty cool toy that looked like it would be great for circuit bending. It didn’t have batteries when I found it so I didn’t test it out at the thrift store. I should really bring batteries with me or have the attendants test them at the store but hey… I can always use another toy for my circuit bending collection.
Hanna Montana Circuit Bent Guitar

The thing that caught my eye about this Hanna Montana electric guitar is that it had an echo knob. This could only mean that there was some kind of ic chip that handles the delay. I had to have it.

I went strait home, powered her up and started pushing her buttons. She sucks. The main problem is that all the buttons on the “fret board” are sound effects. Now, this would be awesome if you could just use the sound effects in a circuit. But you can’t. When no sound is being played and you push one of the sound effects buttons, the first press triggers one of 3 Hanna Montana songs to start playing. This is bad. Really bad.

I don’t know what the name of the three songs that are programmed into the circuit but I now know the words. I figured it was odd that the sound effects triggered the songs. So, I youtubed the guitar and found a video where it seemed (to me anyway) that the sound effects could be played independently. This sparked me to spend the next two days trying to find a crossed wire or short circuit somewhere that could be fixed.

I found nothing.

I still think that there is a bad connection somewhere but I can’t for the life of me figure out where it is. So the circuit will forever play one of Hanna’s crap songs.

There is a silver lining to the purchase of this piece though. The circuit has an independent circuit that controls the volume (via an lm386 of course) and a chip that does in fact create the echo effect.

That chip is my dear old friend, the pt2399.

pt2399 chip inside the Hanna Montana Circuit Bent Guitar

It has some different identifying letters but it’s the same one. You can see that the circuit design is much like one of the schematics in the 2399’s datasheet. It’d has only a potentiometer controlling the amount of echo but that could be changed with little effort.

The point that I wanted to make was that you could easily get one of these Hannnas and strip out the echo circuit and use it on any project you like. The circuit must be very similar to the one found in the Barbie Karaoke machine. You might be able to use the schematics and diagrams found at http://casperelectronics.com/finished-pieces/barbie-karaoke/.

If you are interested in playing around with the circuit, I mapped out some of the main controls for the primary voice chip inside the guitar. That and the lm386 amplifier circuit. As seen below.
Hanna Montana Circuit bent guitar - schematic
click on the image to enlarge.

Happy Bending!

First post, first second hand keyboard, first burnt circuit

I have been experimenting with electronics recently and I really wanted to write about it and share it with people. So that is exactly what I’m gonna do. This blog will be dedicated to my little hobbies and projects and interests. I’m gonna start with electronics and see if I can stay focused on that long enough to keep writing about it. I tend to bounce around a lot so bare with me.

Second Hand Space Keyboard with animal sounds!

Yesterday, I sat down to work on a new project (as if I don’t already have too many). I wanted to take the first crappy second hand keyboard that I found at Value Village (I think) and mod it out.
Space Keyboard from Good Will

I was hoping I could shrink it down into a smaller package and maybe add some cool effects or whatever. Just the excuse I need to learn some more about electronics basics and audio processing and LFO’s and VCF’s and 555’s and 4017’s and… bla bla bla.
Inside the Space Keyboard

I poked and prodded the main chip for a while and found some interesting things. I found the timing resistor which is what I always look for first. Then I found that if I touch two contacts together, the output audio/sound would get all distorted and cool. I don’t know if it was connecting two parts of the circuit in a way as to amplify it or what… all I know is that it sounded really cool.
The motherboard ic to the Space Keyboard
And then it started smoking.

I only got to play with the damn thing for 5 minutes. I didn’t even get to see what the built in potentiometer was for. It was connected directly to the motherboard circuit. Oh well.

It’s too bad too because the keyboard, although really annoying, had some real potential. It’s a space keyboard that plays animal sounds. I have seen similar models on the internet that played almost the same with some different sound. I was thinking that the chip inside would have some cool “Easter Egg” sounds that I could discover.

Oh well, on to the next project I guess.