Saturday, December 2, 2023

SUZUKI PK-37


Shortly after finishing the NTSH and NT05, I decided to start this project. I was looking for something to do that I could just slowly chip away at over the summer. I had been doing some reverse-engineering of some of my toy keyboards for fun. I started with a Casio MT-40, then moved on to the Casio SK-1 using Kicad to draw the schematics cleanly. After those, I needed a bigger challenge. I had been hanging on to this pair of Suzuki PK-37's for several years. The first one I found at the Goodwill bins probably ten or fifteen years ago. It was dirt cheap and was pretty busted up. The main-board inside was badly corroded, but I was able to get it to turn on and make some sounds. Aside from all of the hiss and noise that keyboards of this era tend to have, I really like the warm lo-fi quality of the sound and the classic home-organ features. It has some nice punchy analogue drums and a cheesy arpeggio

Thursday, November 30, 2023

NTSH BACK IN STOCK

New batch of NTSH mini noise boxes for sale at my FOR SALE page. 
Get them while you can!


Sunday, March 5, 2023

GLITCH CAMERAS AND HOW

 


Circuit bending digital cameras has been a love of mine over the past decade or so. I recently picked up a new camera at the thrift store, and it reminded me that I really need to do a write up on it. 
In the mid 2000's, about the same time I started circuit bending my first Casio SK-1, I was really obsessed with this key chain camera I had. It had extremely low resolution and frame rate, and no display, but it could take video clips, and if you really abused the auto white balance, you could get the camera to glitch a few frames. At the time I thought this was the greatest thing I had ever seen! A few years later, my circuit bending skills had come a long way. I was the proud owner of a pocket oscilloscope, and I was using it on just about everything I could get my hands on. My little key chain

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

NT05

The NT05 is a "LoFi RhythmBox"

It consists of;

-Two voices; "Sine" and "Noise"

-Two 128 step pattern banks

-Eight selectable rhythms

-Two "Pad" envelopes

-One LFO

Saturday, January 28, 2023

NTSH

 

The NTSH is a mini joystick noise synth.

It consists of; 

- one white noise generator

-one square wave oscillator

-one 12db resonant LP filter

-one Sample&Hold/envelope generator

Saturday, July 2, 2022

MATATRON!!!


My old buddy Matt Wright contacted me recently and asked if he could buy my FUNKY GLITCH BUDDY. I don't know why, but it is hard for me to sell things to good friends... Do you give them a discount?.. Or just give it away?.. Either way, I didn't want to give up my funky buddy just yet, so instead, I would build him something unique as a friendly gift. Matt is a master guitar tech/luthier, so I wanted to make him something guitar shaped that he could hang in his shop and maybe be a conversation piece. 

Sunday, June 5, 2022

EHX 16 SECOND DELAY MOD




A friend of a friend contacted me in the summer of 2020 to have his EHX 16 Second Delay reissue modified. I had done some pedal mods for him in the past, so I was willing to give it a go, even though I was pretty bogged down with remodeling projects in my house. I was happy to be in my shop again and working with something other than drywall.. I didn't end up finishing the mod until the winter of 2021, but the owner didn't seem to mind the wait. Thanks Joe!

FUNKY GLITCH BUDDY-REVISED



While cleaning shop, I came across an old friend. I built this little keyboard monster back in 2013. The FUNKY GLITCH BUDDY was an interesting concept, but it suffered from some pretty challenging design flaws that I had always wanted to fix, but never had the time. For one, the keyboard would draw so much current due to the fact that the keys were all infrared proximity sensors. There were a lot of 7400 series chips and opto-isolators in the design too, so overall this thing was pretty inefficient and noisy. Two of the voices were 8-bit LFSR noise generators which didn't particularly sound like noise. The third oscillator was a basic two transistor oscillator that I ripped out of a cheap organ toy, and had died some time ago. At the time of this build, I had just started using my CNC to engrave and cut my own circuit boards. This was my first project using the CNC, and the design and orientation was pretty sloppy. Everything was jammed together, and I never even took the time to draw out my schematics, so finding and fixing problems years later was difficult to do. Instead I thought it would be quicker and more fun to just completely redesign the circuit.

Saturday, June 4, 2022

WADDINGTONS COMPUTE-A-TUNE



Hello!?...
I have been clearing out my workshop and getting rid of things I don't want or have time for, in the hopes of someday getting back to circuit bending and blogging again, but just for my own amusement.
I am making a lot of progress, and my workshop is looking great, but I have run into some things that are too precious to throw out but not worthy of selling in the condition they are in. I had been holding onto this Waddingtons Compute-A-Tune for at least a decade, and I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. It had some major issues and was not worth even trying to sell for $20...
The Compute-A-Tune is a very old toy keyboard that i think was only sold in the UK in the early 80's. The synthesizer is based around the TMS1000, which if I am not mistaken-was the first microcontroller!

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

"UH YEAR" REVISITED



Got a friendly message from none other than Mike Walters of Mystery Circuits. He had been tasked with repairing an odd-looking synth that resembled something I would make. Sure enough, it was the heavily modified Yamaha PSS-30 I had built on commission some 8 years ago. I let him know that the keyboard was probably a total mess inside, being that it was one of my earlier mods, and that it would be easier for me to have a go at it since I built it. The owner was OK with it, so he sent it my way. I always love seeing my old creations years later. I sometimes wish i could go back in time and help my former self with advice or some basic knowledge I've learned through experience. Needless to say, the PSS-30 was a total mess that not even I could decipher... the keyboard was still pretty much functional,