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.