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Well, my very good friend has just bestowed upon me his very nice laptop, and I am grateful. He was able to procure another laptop through means I apparently am not at liberty to discuss.
I now am able to compute like never before, In my well lit living room, sitting in my relatively uncomfortable reclining chair.
In relevant news, I am waiting on parts to arrive so that I may begin work on my sk-1. Unfortunately I somehow forgot to order switches, so it looks like my work with the sk-1 will be somewhat basic. That is unless I can find some way to get radio shack to give me some free parts. Well I already have a way, the question is can I receive them in a timely manner.
Sorry for the no video on #13, but my friend had to go to work today(he has a camera with a mic inside it!). I will probably post some sound samples for it on the morrow, or if it happens to be the morrow now (I have no clock)I will post them in many hours.
I need to get better at posting what I am working on, but I generally can only do one thing at a time. I can't even clean my office/workshop while I'm building something.
My buddy gave me a 500mhz comp, and it works something fierce, compared to the old 300mhz one. It is a dang shame I am so desperately poor.
Here is the manual for the assembly and operation of my eleventh instrument.
In the picture below, we can see the brackets on the back of the ca-110 to which the smaller keyboard will be attached
Here the ca-110 is preparing it self to recieve the smaller keyboard.
Unfortunately the camera didn't focus the way I hoped it would, but here are the bolts which will be placed inside the brackets, on the back of the ca-110.
When the ca-110 brackets are fitted over the smaller keyboards bolts, there will be no room to place your nut onto the smaller keyboards bolt. For that reason you can see I am holding the ca-110 up while I place, and turn the nut a few times.
Below is the hole which will receive the bolt for the control box. With the ca-110 held upside-down, it will be to the right of the smaller keyboard.
The bracket on the control box:
First connect the control box to the smaller keyboard; it should be obvious how to do so.
Place the bolt through the hole, form the back, so the nut will be tightened against the control box bracket.
Nextly, find the wire which ought to be protruding from the underside of the ca-110, and attach it to the connector closest to the yellow portion of the control box, like so:
Finally attach the voice changer to the only available connector. It will only go in one way.
Next I will explain the control box:
First the color scheme. The green controls belong to the smaller keyboard. The black belong to the voice changer, and the yellow controls the ca-110.
Knobs, such as greens 1a, correspond to a switch, so to use knob 1a you must flip switch 1.
The toggle switches are on/off/(on), which means one side of the switch is momentary. Flip any switch down and it will stay on, flip it up and it will momentarily stay on. This will not matter though, as no bends were attached to the up position of any switch, or no important bends that is.
The yellow controls are momentary push buttons, ad are not meant to be held down, though holding them down may garner results.
Now for what they actually do.
Green:
1:
Activates pitch and distortion bends which are controlled by the knobs 1a, and 1b simultaneously. Unfortunately these bends work best when not amplified, that is to say, when fed through the smaller keyboards speaker. The bends can be random, and two knobs are necessary to fine tune, and control them.
(If you don't want to amplify this bend, but still want to use the voice changer to add distortion, you could mic the smaller keyboard's speaker, and then feed the output of your computer/amp, into the voice changer, and out again)
2:
Distortion
3:
Activates a sustained tone. You can change the tone by pressing a key twice. Different bends from the voice box, and the smaller keyboard can be layered on top to create pretty interesting effects.
4:Distortion
Black:
Black controls correspond to the voice box, as stated earlier. The voice box itself has three settings, alien, monster, and amplify. The three black controls will work with the voice box set to any of its own settings.
1:
I believe this activates a tone, just as green 3 does.
2:
Pitch, to be controlled by knob 2a
3:
Distortion
Yellow:
1,2,3:
Random glitches. Use demo mode or select a beat, and then press a button quickly. They can easily crash the ca-110, but pressing repeatedly can bring it back to life. If not turn the ca-110 off, and then back on. Using these buttons will be trial and error.
Now to explain the wiring:
The outputs, and inputs, are marked on the ca-110, and the smaller keyboard, but not on the voice box. The left side, as pictured above, has two inputs, 1, an 1/8" inch, and 2, a 1/4". The right side has two out puts, 3, 1/8", and 4, 1/4".
To use the keyboards with the voice box (anything that has an output which is, or can be adapted to, 1/8" or 1/4" can be used with the voice box; this includes guitar, and microphone.) simply plug the outputs from both into the inputs of the voice box, and then choose which voice box output you'd like to use, and plug that into your computer, or amp, or whatever.
I have been working on this project for a long time, and because of that I tend to worry about how good it is, but soon Dylan will share with us all how well it works.
I added a navigation at the top of the blog there. Hope it is useful to the one million visitors I get a day.
Soon I will be shipping off my custom project, #11, and I can't wait to hear how poor a job I did. Nah, I'm sure it won't be as bad as that, but I can't help but to worry. I took some pictures of the finished product in all sorts of positions, and states of disassembly, so I could write a manual of sorts, which I will probably post up here.
In other news I came across a casio sk-1 a couple of weeks ago, and have been waiting for a less busy time, and some cash, to bend it. Exciting times, y'all.
Here the sk-1 is, underneath the teddy bear.
A picture of #11, all finished up. I suppose my carpet wasn't the best background.
Unfortunately, my computer went to sleep and didn't wake up a few days ago. I am now using one of the few computers I didn't sell from when I was a vintage electronics/computer salesman. It is a 300mhz piece of garbage running puppy linux, and is capable of virtually nothing, so no videos until the new motherboard and processor I ordered comes in.
I know, it's been a while, but I have no excuse. So anyways, to update those loyal readers, who DO exist, I spent all of a day last week, can't remember which one, trying to bend up the casio ca-110. I failed rather miserably, and so turned to the internet, who didn't have much to say, though I did find this reference to the ca-110:
"I just bought 2 of the CA110. I was kind of disappointed when I opened them up. Just 2 chips. One synth and one amp. I have not bent very much on this kbd yet, but I found that there is a good but very random glitch on the middle top pin of the synth ic. shorting it to one of the other pins. It is random, so you have to sample rather than live perform. I think this is like what one guy calls "shitshot". I found the bossa nova rhythms hilarious and fun to jam with though."
I was able to find more bends than that guy, but I'm generally better than most people. Even so, they weren't extremely satisfying bends. But then I had an idea.
Then another idea hit me. Why don't I feed this stuff through one of those toy voice changers? Wire the output of both keyboards as the input of the voice changer. I have seen a casio filtered through a voice changer, and It did some stuff, let me tell you! So I bought one.
Whatever service Dylan used to ship me his casio finally came through, and it got here. It's an awful shame it didn't work. As you can see in the attached picture, there is a small, but destructive, gap between where the battery terminal is, and where it wants to be. But I plugged that hole with some aluminum foil, and everything works great now. Watch out, cause I'll be bending it with ferocity, tempered with my professional restraint, as always.
Sorry I haven't posted, but I had to go to the movies yesterday, and get some sleeping done, and have just generally been lazy. I've been working on something, and I'll post it tonight I hope.
Howdy,
I'm back from the thrift store with what is hopefully the makings for a weeks worth of bending.
I kept it simple this week, opting for voice boxes over keyboards. take a look at my haul.
I seem to remember a few things that didn't make it into the picture as well. The tape player in the top right is for the potentiometers. I can't be bothered to buy them separately.
I ought to have at least one or two things to post by the end of today, so keep watching.
Got my first custom job from a very special young man named Dylan. We conversed briefly via the dying art of letter writing (through a digital intermediary, aka the internet), before he insisted on having me participate in the antiquated practice of telephoning.
I jest! In all seriousness his soothing voice put me at ease, and lulled me away from whatever qualms I had, convincing me to agree to his proposition; bending his casio tonebank. (I actually had no qualms, I was pretty much on board from the get go)
It ought to be fun, and I plan to really pull out some insanity on this, though it will most likely be user friendly insanity, as per Dylan's instructions.
I think I will post a more in depth piece about my efforts, and will hopefully get some video too.
In other news, I'm goin' to the thrift store tomorrow. I have a notion that I need to buy more non-musical, sound generating toys. We'll see how it turns out.
P.S.
I'll try to fit more parenthetical statements in next time.
