Yamaha PSR-11

[3rdness]

I just did my first data cut to a PSR-11 and it came out great.

I also did the fab echo mod, and highly recommend it.  For under $20 and less than an hour of work, you can have a fully functional delay.

here are some videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE5K84VVl5k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ_a7fuWMTA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmpS52wVnbI

[computer at sea]

sounds great!

[3rdness]

In addition to the data line cut, I've added 12 more traditional point to point bends.  These do a wide variety of modulations, variations, and crazy sonic garbling.

Yamaha was nice enough to number all the chips. Here are my notes on the point to point bends:

Thats from the inside of the keyboard.  The same colored points are connected together.

With all 20 switches to play with you can have a lot of fun.

[druzz]

it sounds beautyfull !! and guess what , i own one of these since i was 5 year old in the 80's , but a friend has it at the moment.  i'm very happy to see it bends gracefully .

[Timodon]

Good job! some lovely wonky rhythymic stuff here I'll be keeping my eyes peeled!

[davelybob]

PSR-11 was the second model I did the data lines on (PSS-270 being the first), it was super rad, then I went back in to try to fit it with an LTC1799 and fried the damn thing.  Not sure if it's just a bad target for the LTC or if I did something dumb like reversing the power supply.  Whatever it was, I ended up with visible smoke coming from the regulator heatsink.  It was such a sweet board though I had to go on ebay and replace it immediately, although I haven't had a chance to crack open the replacement yet. I'll give trying to mod the clock a pass this time, but super stoked to try out the other bends here, and the buzzer mod mentioned in the PSS thread.  Cool beans.

[General-Calisti]

Continuing my newfound role as Herbert West the Thread Reanimator:

I'm doing the data-line mod on my PSR-11 right now and it hit me that theres no need to cut the traces and solder to the IC-pins, the data line connections on the one i have passes through a row of resistors, i've just desoldered them and rigged the switches there.

Seems to work ok.
#famouslastwords

EDIT-

So the data line resoldering went well, replaced the resistors and/or jumper wires with wired switches with matching resistors and it works. The awesome randomness that comes out of this machine is very fun, but completely haphazard, i'm a boring man with ambitions of using bent stuff for ordinary music so i'm thinking about ways to make it more playable. The result however is highly usable for sampling and editing individual sounds. Messy but worth it i think.

I've also found that something (perhaps the ribbon that goes from the speaker/phone pcb to the power and volume switch pcb) is making a high pitched whine in there. I managed to shield that cable a little and switched the polarity of the built in speaker, took it down a bit, it's just barley audible at low volume... maybe a noise gate pedal would make it a non problem.

If anyone has some input on how to solve the whine issue please do tell!

EDIT II-

Yeah the whine i was whining about, turns out its ground hum, about 12 resonant freqs of 50hz. I can notch away the most horrible ones when sampling this randomizer.
I've gotten hooked on this chips sound now, i'd like a madness thing that sounds equally disturbing but cleaner. In the signal i mean.