Casio DH-100 Electric sax? Pre bent by jesus?

[Many_boomers]

I picked up this strange bastard for $2 at a church sale. It's pretty sweet, it has headphone and midi out already, 6 variable tones, and a button for changing intonation in half steps. Oh yeah, breath controlled and you can turn breath contoll off and play it like a monophonic synth. Well, you could if it WORKED. It definitely generates sound, it makes almost the same gawd awful high pitched tone no matter what key combo you press, but there is slight modulation when go from one fingering to another. the tone doesn't change even when another "instrument" is selected. I'm pretty sure that's why it was two bucks.


Most of the circuitry surrounding the (what I think is the) main chip is surface mounted, which makes me nervous. I'm hoping there's a short somewhere, and not the damn firmware that I'm pretty sure is on said chip. That would suck.
Anyone ever play with one of these monstrosities?

[manmachine]

try this link, hope it helps

http://www.btinternet.com/~dorian.rose/

stu

[Many_boomers]

Excellent. That is exactly the sound it's making. Heh. I guess my first "Bend" would be to return this thing to factory specs. One thing I kind of want to do is remove that 12MHz crystal (cleverly disguised as a capacitor) with a 5.something or a six and see if I can drop it an octave, then I'll see if I can make it sound like a trash compactor. Found out it still works great as a breath controlled MIDI controller too. Thanks!

[kb]

I'm a big fan of the DH.  I've done a couple of things to it:

http://home.earthlink.net/~kerrybradley/index.html

- octave drop the voices (this thing can get low...)

- added resonance control over the VCF inside

- switchable on/off vibrato
(one warning:  there's a few versions of the PCB, so you might only be able to do this if you have the correct version...or not, it might be doable on all versions, but I can only vouch for doing it on the version I have).


Also, Reed Ghazala's book has DH100 bends, but I didn't do them...

[Many_boomers]

well, other than fixing this thing I don't think I'm gonna bend it any time soon. The cost's on Ebay are insane (I don't remember it coming out, but I doubt it retailed for $150 american) And yeah... So... I was thinking use a DPST and having an array of the standard and a 6 MHz crystals, but... F-that, I'm just gonna fix the squeal and use it to control something else that sounds like hell. Untill I am of the skill to get your non midi killing octave drop, which may take some time.