HISTORY / INFO:
Got this one for 90 cents. I thought I had seen the picture of this on some other benders pages. I was right, but everone else had painted it, so I wasn't so sure until I compared the pictures after I bought it. There are four drum samples. The demo is just one of the samples repeated over and over again. If you press one of the drum pads, it will, amazingly, wait for the current sample to finish and then play the sample that you hit. None of that choppy interuption sound.
With this toy, I really started poking around using different values of caps and diodes and resistors. I had about a page of notes for this one before weeding it down to a few modifications. There was one cap that I had yanked out of a non-working phone that I used in this project. It didn't seem to effect anything else that I had tested it with, so when it made the slightest bit of clipping, I flagged it and said 'I'm going to use that friggin' thing!'. This was also the first time I managed to have one pot do both pitch up and pitch down. Makes sense now that I've done it, but prior to this bend, I was really struggling to figure it out.
PRE-MODIFICATION PICTURES:
 front view |
 back view |
MODIFICATIONS:
1) Pitch up / down - Nuff said. Flick the toggle switch, turn the knob and your in Pitch Bend City!
2) DJ spin down - This has to be the most unique bend that I have found. When I put a 1uf cap between two points, I got this sound like the DJ has spun the living crap out of a record. This is operated with two toggle switches. The one is for turing the bend arming mechanism on and off. The other is an arm / fire (the toggle with the red cap). In one position it arms / loads up the cap from one point on the board, the other 'fires' the acutal 'spin-down' effect.
3) Slight clip / distortion - This is the mod using the green cap that had been useless until this project. It causes a slight clipping of the sound.
4) Heavier clip / distortion - This is a stronger version of the clip / distortion mod. It basically uses a larger value cap.
5) 1/8" audio out - The space was limited in this one. The 1/4" jacks that I had were too big by only a few mm, but I just couldn't make it fit, so I had to go buy some 1/8" jacks especially for this one. And I am glad I did. I would have been disappointed if I would have butchered it like I did the Kawasaki keyboard.
POST-MODIFICATION PICTURES:
 front view |
SOUNDS:
merm.mp3 - Just a sample of me running through some of the mods. fun fun fun. The DJ Spin Down mod still kills me.
FUTURE MODIFICATIONS PLANNED:
None at the moment. I am very happy with the outcome of this one. I could possibly add a photo-resistor like everyone else, but, well, I'm not everyone else. So there. :P
Last Modified: February 13, 2005