Why bother modding something when you could just get a better machine?

[Circuitbenders]

I've been thinking about this for a while but watching some videos of bent Yamaha PSS20's on youtube has made me wonder: why bother spending ages shoehorning mods into some crap keyboard when you can just get something better in the first place?

It seems to me that some people spend days building LFO's and LTC1799's etc etc into something like a VL1 for no other reason than its a piece of crap, when you could save a whole lot of time and effort by just buying something better in the first place! At what point do you admit to yourself that the average effects you can get from a VL1 that you've spent a week creating could be produced far more cheaply and efficiently, with a lot more scope for interesting bends, by just buying a different machine? Inevitably people on youtube will comment about how fantastic and insane your VL1 is, but if you take a step back and look at the big picture all you've got is a crappy little keyboard making noises that you could certainly equal if not better on just about any other bent toy keyboard.

I guess what i'm saying here is, why bother spending days working on something just to make it equal with something else than can do the same things effortlessly?

I get contacted by plenty of people who are perfectly willing to pay some over the top amount of money to do some complex modification on some basic analogue percussion toy or similar, and i inevitably end up telling them that for the money it'd cost to do the mod they could just buy a better bit of kit in the first place.
Modding the analogue percussion sections from some Casio MT's is a classic example. I've seen some magnificent bits of work on Casio MT's with a whole new wooden cabinet and front panels with loads of knobs etc, but i can't help thinking, with the time and money you've poured into that you could have just bought a Boss DR110, modded that easily and had a far better programmable analogue drum machine for the same money.

I guess its all about the challenge and having a unique bit of kit but it does make me wonder what the hell i'm doing sometimes, especially at 3 in the morning trying to force mods into a Yamaha RX21 that someone has sent me, when i told them about a dozen times they would do better to sell the RX21 and get an RX17 if they wanted a bent Yamaha! 

thats my rant for today! 

[Gordonjcp]

I guess it's the "quirky" factor.  "OH HEY LOOK AT US WE ONLY USE HALF-BROKEN SHITE WE FOUND IN A SKIP".

I posted audio clips and source code for getting an Arduino to play back the most ridiculously bent loops, and everyone is still banging on about fitting patch panels to crappy fragile drum machines that cost them £200 which they will then break by wiring the CPU to the mains because they didn't bother to read the millions of posts saying "stop and look carefully at what you're doing".

For 20 quid assuming you can't find anywhere cheaper and half an hour of poking some code you can make some really horrible noises, in a consistent and repeatable manner on kit that's easy to replace if you break it...

[selfpreservation]

i couldnt agree more but i guess some people just enjoy tinkering with stuff ive got a tr505 which cost £25 which is a total piece of crap but its still a pro drum machine ie its not a toy, its got proper midi , pads, sequencer , so its had a load of bends and now its absolutley amazing but its only good cause it was decent in the first place , i dont think id spend loads of time on a toy synth cause the sound quality is never gonna be up to studio standards , i mean theres lofi and theres LOFI 

[druzz]

well i guess your point makes sense for a seasoned bender wityh lots of experience and bent stuff benhind him .
for us beginners, every piece of bent gear is just so fucking cool . specially when we manage to do it ourself , we are proud to present it to people and say ''look what i did to that piece of crap casio keyboard, now it can do interresting things instead of the usual crap , no i didnt study electronics ... ''

personally i think  the process of bending electronics is gratifying by itself and i learn somthing from it.  i have gaterred a bunch of  mini keyboards and electronic toys and i purposely started with the least interresting ones to gain experience before attacking thoses ''harder to find for a decent price '' pieces . but i tottaly understand what you mean and it make lots of sense.

[Circuitbenders]

don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that modding toys and cheap keyboards is a bad thing, because it really isn't. What i'd take issue with is something that i've been guilty of many times myself i.e. a bizarrely desparate need to force mods into something that really isn't worth the effort you're expending on it. Either that or ending up adding so much new circuitry that you might as well just remove what was there originally and build yourself a synth from scratch!

I think its often difficult to take a step back and think 'why on earth am i doing this!'

[druzz]

ok i get the picture now .
you mean like adding lfo's with multiples waveshapes and tons of filters to a voice that is just a single half decent square wave in the beginning   and stuff like that .    at least , you can always count it in as experience . if you did it on that crappy thing you know you can now do it on something better . but i think i can understand the feeling you migth get when you finished a piece with tons of cool mods and added circuits and you realise that it sounds like shit because the source of the sound is shit .    at least you can then say that you did everything you can . 

[Simon Vactrol]

No Matter what you bend if you get a sound you will use for what you need...cheap or expensive..what matter is taste!

[electoyd]

I've seen myself cracking open huge karaoke machines to make them "echo boxes", and ridiculous sized keyboards that i have no actual place to put once manipulated this is how it starts you dont care that you will be living in an electronics skip, you just want to twist noise.  To see if you could coax some noise out of something "normal" and make it sound mental and it gets obsessional how "many mods" you can stick on that barbie phone. 

Though i do think some machines are worth the effort it just usually takes a while to find out which ones, ideally anything which helps you hone your electronics skills has to be worthwhile.  Most folk start off working their way up the electronic evolutionary ladder, adding pitches to kids keyboards and basic jabbing jewellers screw drivers in and hoping for the best right, through to reconstruction and rehousing of professional equipment.  I think it all needs to be there, the kids keyboards serve a purpose in that they get people with no electronics experience used to looking at circuit boards and they can start to identify what is what on the board, and because there is not much on there its kinda easier to work out what you should or shouldn't be touching and if you break it, it's only a few pounds as opposed to a hundred for a dr110.

At one point when i started circuit bending i fried almost everything i touched down to being too "adventurous" and not having a clue what i was doing, but it was mainly cheap equipment so it served it's purpose cause i very rarely break anything now, and actually repair more than i break.

[Circuitbenders]

But don't you find that a lot of the time, simply because you do know what you're doing a lot better than when you started, you find yourself trying to force overly complex mods into something that really doesn't need it.

When i first started out i would have been really excited to have fitted a pitch control to a toy, as i still would be if it was one of those really well built V-techs where the audio stays completely intact as you pitch it down. The point is that these days if i bent the same toy i'd end up spending ages wasting time trying to force in a load of other mods if they are really applicable or not. I wouldn't be able to stop myself!

True, everything is a learning experience, but just because you've learnt how to do something doesn't mean you have to do it. 

[jamiewoody]

isn't supply and demand a factor?
these sk1s are getting more expensive and harder to find. 

you learn something each time you start tinkering with  electronics, especially when you are new at it, like i am.

in thrifting, i sometimes find keyboards DIRT cheap. i found a kawasaki for $2 a few months ago.

there are parts in cheak KBs that can be useful, keysets, etc.

[Simon Vactrol]

@Paul

When i first started out i would have been really excited to have fitted a pitch control to a toy, as i still would be if it was one of those really well built V-techs where the audio stays completely intact as you pitch it down. 

what could be a great Vtech to bend..i like a lot their sounds?

[Circuitbenders]

The Talking Alfie bear never breaks up or starts squealing no matter how low you pitch it, and if i recall correctly the Baby Chit-Chat is much the same, and that has sampling as well. I think its called something different outside of the UK.

[Simon Vactrol]

...Great!! Gonna Ebay it and see if i found one.
I live in Uk fortunately..i'm sure there is not trace of Alfie in Italy...Have you never given a go to the Ebay.it  No choices and very ridiculous prices...Blah!
...Gonna Ebay now, i'm very curious!! i guess i will understand better about those "worth to bend" Thanks!

It is now inevitable think of how i can reconize a toy or a cheap device worth to bend though..mmm
On my "experience"(lol) i'm  judging my buying by the sound and the way they re-trigger but is impossible(at least for me) Xray-scan them like proper Cbenders.

Thanks again i really appreciate. 


S. 

[electoyd]

yeah i defo used to try to jam as much as i could in to a machine, i had about 50mods on my 505 then i realised that even the mods couldn't save it from being a pretty mediocre drum machine that was pretty difficult to write any decent music with, so i built a drum synth and thats way better.  Quantity is often confused with quality when it comes to circuit bent stuff, and these machines that frequent ebay that sport 30 amazing mods on a vl tone can only disappoint, and the people that build them prob have either too much time on their hands or just wanna make some bucks (there are a couple of peeps that spring to mind....).

think it all depends what type of music you wanna write as well, i would say circuit bent stuff is only suitable in certain circumstances usually noisey or whacky music.  I am selective about what circuit bent stuff ends up in my studio these days and its always in conjunction with unmodded or home built stuff.  I gave up trying to have a fully circuit bent set up as its so limiting but it can be very enjoyable also, but i'm not as easily amused as i once was by a twin barbie karaoke machine with 20 mods!

[Simon Vactrol]

A.I.Project-Circuit bent Alfie my alphabet friend-

Thanks for the suggestion...enjoy!