CASIO MT-205

[DocBlasto]

so, does anybody know anything about these keyboards? it looks like there are 4 drum pad inputs. do they have to be "casio", or can they be a homemade trigger?

I don't know if this was covered elsewhere, but I thought I'd put in my .02.  I just picked one of these up in Philly for under four dollars, and have been poking at the board all evening.

The drum jacks each accept a stereo minijack, which usually has three leads (Left audio, Right audio, Common).  All you have to do to trigger the drum sound is to cross the Left with Common or Right with Common.  The easiest way to do this would be to wire each minijack to two momentary-contact switches, for 8 in all.  You can install these switches right in the case (easy if you remove the right-hand speaker) or build an external board with 8 pushbutton switches.

[jamiewoody]

if you scored one  of these under $4, you truly scored!!! my niece gave me hers. i can't wait until she comes in april so i can show her the cowbell! lol!

everytime i open this thing up, there is more to discover. like i said, i think it was overengineered, and there are a lot of features which were decided later not to be included! like the envelopes, etc.

[jamiewoody]

i'm going to take mine apart again soon. i may try the oscillator mod on it like i did the sk1...on the pitch, i can get a sub-octave, but no  real variance for some reason. i may try it as a body contact as well and see what happens.

i took this out and played around with it last night. one of the bends i discovered months ago is a LOOPER! when i have this patched, i can play one note, it will repeat. then play another note and it will repeat and i can just layer tones!

this keyboard has some pretty fat tones (factory) and lots of possibilities. there do not seem to be a lot of places to just stick potentiometers, like on other casios. but, it is it's own animal. next time i get inside this baby, i'll shoot some pics!

[jamiewoody]

i opened this up again today. i honestly think they overengineered this keyborard. i mean, there are so many thing, envelopes, sustain, dampen, tremolo, distortions, etc which seem to have been meant to be there, but are hidden easter eggs!

so, today i discovered 2 tremolos. i tried to make a pitch pot, but had no luck, i tried 500k, 100k and 1k,(these were the pots i had in stock) and i could not get enough variance. hmmm....and advice?

i breadboarded a vco, and found a couple of sweet spots for oscillation. i am going to take my time on this mod. i have a feeling i could be doing so much more than i am!

i'll take pics of the circuit board. i need to make a bending guide for this one. i have some good bends, and i'd love to share them.

[casioboi]

so, does anybody know anything about these keyboards? it looks like there are 4 drum pad inputs. do they have to be "casio", or can they be a homemade trigger?

this thing is amazing! i can set sound loops by using the patchbay!!! i think i feel an ambient music project coming on! 

I've got the drum pads - they are like drumsticks with the rubbery "Pad" at the tip of the stick - when you hit them off a surface (or even just wang them hard through the air) they trigger the drums. reasonably sensitive, you can do drum rolls with them.

I've been looking for an alternative way to trigger them, as the trigger inputs are on 3.5mm I wondered if audio signals would work... tried playing noise down each channel but so far no luck. I might try recording the output from the drumsticks and see if that will trigger the drums when played back from an external source. If it works I'll post the sound files, it shouldn't be too hard to sequence your own beats if you have a four track or sonething!

I picked up three of the SS-1 drumsticks the other day but haven't played with them much beyond testing to make sure they work.

I think any kind of momentary switch would work as a trigger for the Super Drums keyboards. That's all the DP-1 drum pads are.

[Timodon]

On the subject of the MT-205 drums - can't remember if I mentioned this before but if you put in switches for the sustain envelope and looping mods that jamie mentioned you'll find that they affect the drum patterns too, which, combined with the sliders makes for jamming with the preset drum patterns quite interesting.

If you repeatedly flick the switches on and off and move several sliders you can eventually make it crash and start spewing superfast random streams of drum noise. For an audio example of the sort of thing you can get up to with these switches installed check out the track "Casio MT-205" here:-
http://www.myspace.com/music/9081449/songs/63736831

[jamiewoody]

i did a sort of patch bay for the "envelopes". i hooked them all up to rca jacks, and one rca plug, hardwired connects to the envelope bends. there are some good ones...sustain, dampen, looper, etc!

[Timodon]

Have you tried them with the drum patterns playing Jamie?

[jamiewoody]

time, i need to mess around with it more really. it is apart again. i ran out of components and money...i did find a cool tremolo bend with a 1k pot.

one downside i'm noticing on this keyboard is there are a lot of bends, but there is not a lot of variance...a switch works better than a potentiometer. i've tried a variety...1k. 1m, 100k, 500k....but there ar e a lot of hidden sounds! the sub octave is just nasty! lol