HISTORY / INFO:
I got this for $5.00 at Odd Lots. It plays a tape, has a microphone jack so you can be the DJ and has four sound effect buttons. When you turn on the unit, 'On The Air - LIVE' lights up.
When I first attempted bending this, I was still pretty much a novice. I hadn't even mastered the art of finding the pitch resistor or the proper way of wiring an audio out jack. The pitch resistor is no longer a problem and I can find them pretty fast. And I think I have the wiring for the audio out correct (at least I think I do, though I have said that before).
Oh yeah, so after I attempted to mod this the first time, I was not very happy at all. The second time through, I decided that I would find the pitch resistor for the 4 sound effects and then would wire into the tape play head in order to make a "walkman distortion" that they talk about all the time on the benders newgroups. I accomplished that and a little more. I am more happy with it now that I was with it then. There still seems to be some problems if I speed up the samples too high and the only way to fix it is to take out the batteries, which usually works. Another oddity is if I plug the guitar into the input jack by itself, it plays like a charm on the internal speaker. However, if I try to use both the input (ala guitar) and the output (ala the computer) I am getting some bad feedback which seems to be affected by the volume pot I added for the samples. I'm sure there is something electronically that I don't understand that is going on there, but alas, I do not know what the problem is. Therefore I have accepted that flaw of my thirteenth bend and now state that this gizmo has 'feedback character'. :-)
PRE-MODIFICATION PICTURES:
This is what the already modded DJ Studio looked before I took a second crack at modding it.
MODIFICATIONS: (completed: May 2005)
1) (old bend) Slight speed up - Throw a switch on the side and the pitch of the cassette music goes up.
2) Pitch mod for the sound effects - Used a pot and a on/off/on switch. In one on position, it uses the original resistor. In the other on position, it uses the potentiometer. In the off position, the effects do not work, which is usually a good thing since they are pretty annoying.
3) Volume mod for the sound effects - The sound effects literally are wired directly to the speaker. So in order to chill them out a little bit, I threw a 100k pot between the sound board and the speaker. Not sure if this was such a good idea or not. Since it seems to have some sort of affect on how much feedback is being generated when both the input and output are being used, I have a feeling that something is not quite right. *shrug* Oh well.
4) 1/4" input jack - Wired an input jack in parallel to the tape head. Good for plugging in a guitar. I can't remember if the guitar needs to be run through another pedal before running it through this 'walkman distortion', but I believe that it does. I thought it would be good to leave the playback head in place since that could allow me to layer in a noise tape or even backing tracks of some sort. Another cool thing is that the volume knob for the tape player affects the output volume.
5) Effect #1 - I wrote up this description about 2 months after completing it. I think this one adds more distortion to whatever is plugged into the input (or the tape). At least that's what I think it does.
6) Effect #2 - Again, it's been a while since I built it to when I am writing this. I think this one adds some feedback. Or something.
POST-MODIFICATION PICTURES:
 front view |
SOUNDS:
dj-studio-v2-selfnoise.mp3 - Just a sample of the DJ Studio v2.0 making noise all on its own (with me tweaking knobs and switches and stuff.
FUTURE MODIFICATIONS PLANNED:
1) Wire in another 1/4" input - This little gizmo actually has a 1/8" input for a mic which would probably not distort as much as the input that goes through the tape playback head. I could either take out the 1/8" or just wire the 1/4" in parallel. If I wanted to get fancy I could use a 1/4" with a switch that would disable the 1/8" when something is plugged into it. But what fun is that. The more input the merrier.
2) Figure out the input / output feedback. I really like the sound of the distortion when it is being played back through the internal speaker and it pisses me off a bit that just plugging in something to the output (which I swear to goodness is wired correctly) causes it to feedback to no end.
3) Tape speed mod - I never did figure out how to modify the tape playback speed (which is desperately needed since it seems to change the playback speed every time it is turned off and on. Plus, it would be cool to be able to put in a tape and play it back at a crawl to add some really weird background to the blistering guitar that I would be laying down. Okay, maybe not me, 'cause my guitar skillz are not so great... but a man is allowed to dream, isn't he?
Last Modified: April 25, 2006