From the Community: Vtech Little Smart First Words

From the Community: Mystery Box

Something fun is hiding in there ...

From the Community: Casio PT-10

From the Community: Roland Tr-626

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From the Community: SIG's Theremin Watch

Performance: Pikachu Orchestra

From the Community: Dod Fx-747

From the Community: Yamaha Rx-17

Octatone's Bends: Wiggles Toy Accordion

The Wiggles toy accordion actually makes use of accordion-like movement to trigger sounds. Pulling and pushing the accordion in and out pulls a string that is attached to a sprocket that bumps against a switch as it winds and unwinds. So this ends up being a very hands intensive bend.



This side of the accordion houses the main board as well as the sprocket that triggers the accordion sounds. Modifications seen here are pitch bend body contacts and pitch bend photoresistor on momentary push toggles.



On this side you can see the photoresitors that are activated by the push toggles on the opposite side of the accordion as well as three toggles for max pitch up, max pitch down, and a distortion + pitch down bend.



Inside the photoresistor side.



Top side of the main board. The three bends on the photo resistor only work with resistance in the path to the common point. Hence the sloppy add-on resistor pictured above.


Bend points:



Yellow is the common point. Red circles are distortion, pitch up, and pitch down + random note toggle - there must be resistance of about 5k between these points and common for them to work. Blue are body contact pitch bend points.

Octatone's Bends: Vtech Talking Whiz Kid Plus Documented

The Vtech Talking Whiz Kid Plus is a fairly stable benders playground. there are more than a dozen bends that will yield similar results of the toy crashing and spewing out random bits and pieces of words. The tough part is finding bends that do not sound too much the same.

From the top of the piece, you can see I paid a paltry $1.99. The toggles trigger bends from left to right as follows: random spew A, rhythmic loop slow, rhythmic loop medium, rhythmic loop fast, "tremolo" warble slow, "tremolo" warble fast, sample freeze, random spew B.



From inside, you can see the cavernous amount of unused space where the main board resides. There is more than enough room for 20 or more toggle switches if one so dared.





To get to the main board you must detach the keyboard by either unscrewing the connection between to the main logic board and keyboard, or breaking off the excess plastic holding the keyboard in place (the three red dots in the lower area of the above photo).



Now for the bend points:

Random spew A: brown with white stripe to red with white stripe
Rhythmic loop slow: pink to light green with white stripe
Rhythmic loop medium: red to light green with white stripe
Rhythmic loop fast: green to light green with white stripe
"Tremolo" warble slow: pink to gray with black stripe
"Tremolo" warble fast: yellow to red
Sample freeze: yellow to pink with black sripe
Random spew B: blue with white stripe to red with white stripe

From the Community: Yamaha DD-9

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From the Community: Pikachu Orchestra

From the Community: NES Zapper + DIY Oscillator

From the Community: Modified DR-110

George Lazenbleep's highly modified Boss DR-110.

From the Community: Modular SK-1

Sound As Art: Modified WSG and Hand-Etched PCB

Installation by the boys over at Batt Trees Wreck Wired

From the Community: Circuit Bendind @ Madison Pop Fest '07

Features Alex from GetLoFi showing how to use a 555 IC to replace crystal CPU clocks.

From the Community: Bent Whoopee Cusion

From the Community: Toy Guitar

Love the lab coat.

From the Community: ABC Elmo

Elmo never sounded more angry.

Octatone's Bends: Vtech Talking Whiz-Kid Plus

Performance: James Anderson and Nick Holbrook

From the Community: Sound Gloves

From the Community: Musini by Youtuber KillaB777

Peformance: Modified Toy Orchestra at the Octopus Festival

Performance: Live Bending Yamaha PSS-570 by Ketchupok

From the Community: Speak and Math

From the Community: Toy Gun

Octatone's Bends: Wiggles Toy Accordion

Instructional photos to come.

Performance: Crank Sturgeon

There is a running theme of masks and costumes being used by performers of noise/glitch/bent music. crank Sturgeon is no exception.

From the Community: Bent Toy Keyboard

Random noise generator.

From the Community: Toy Guitar bent To Hell

Beautiful sounds are emanating from this beast.

From the Community: Speak and Math

Most of the switches look to be encased in a nice project box.

From the Community: Casio SA9

Nice portable keyboard I must acquire. Lots of noisy bends and nice use of filters.

From the Community: Vocabulary Toy

Lovely rhythmic pops and squelchy hiss from a toy made by Chicco.

From the Community: Speak and Math

From the Community: Casio SK-1 + Tape mod

A wicked bend/combo by AttDestroyers on Experimentalists Anonymous.

Link

Octatone's Bends: Vtech First Words Toy

I bought this the same day I grabbed the 99 cent geetar. This past Wednesday I finally bent it. I found pitch up and pitch down bend points as well as a jump that only works when the pitch up/down bends are active. The final result is a fairly simple noise making toy. For playability I added jumps to the pitch up/down bends to max them out instantly.


Inside you can see the signal flow of the bends. The pot I used has a built in switch which is handy. I placed the down bend pot and the body contacts next to each other because they work best together - the body contacts don't work as consistently with the pitch up bend. Placing the up bend toggle and photocell above the down bend makes it easy for me to remember what they do. The pushbuttons short the pitch bend signal path for instant max high/low. There is a 250k resistor on the signal from the speaker to the 1/4 out tip to tame the way too hot signal for use in a mixer/amp.

From the Community: Circuit Bent Toy

Tiny but gets some nice low noise going:

From the Community: Bent Train Toy

Simple pitch bending:

From the Community: DIY Square Wave "Theremin"

Has a modular input for pitch control (mentions DIY ribbon controller out of VHS tape) as well as a photocell for pitch control.

From the Community: DIY Oscilliscope

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Octatone's Bends: Toy Electronic Drumsticks

Simplistic pitch bend of one out of a pair of electronic drumsticks.

From the Community: Casio PT-87

Exploring bend points on a 2-buck board.

From the Community: Hex inverter in a box

From the Community: Casio DM-100

Bent to hell.

From the Community: Speak and Math in Black and White

A very beautiful bent speak and math in simplistic monochrome.

From the Community: Circuitbent Cats

From the Community: Echo Curio Gallery

Much noise emanating from the Echo Curio Gallery in LA.

From the Community: Casio PT-22

This Casio PT-22 was circuitbent into a lovely noise maker by salamanderanagram. More info including how to and schematics at http://circuitbent.wikispaces.com/Casio+PT-22.