unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets

electoyd · January 31, 2011, 07:25:09 PM

just wondering what unusual 'artifacts' people have disturbed on their circuit bending journeys, heres a pic of a strange couple of ghouls that i cracked open, 2 very unusual geordie accented bingo callers, i bunged a pitch up and a pitch way down (demonic bingo calling, what the fuck!!) and a line out and speaker off switch. Pretty basic but they kinda made me laugh, thats what i used to love about circuit bending was the unknown of wondering what the hell i was gonna come home with next!

Dylan · January 31, 2011, 09:52:08 PM

I bent an old Elvis phone. Had this wild pitch/glitch bend. It was one of my early bend that died really quickly though.

electoyd · February 01, 2011, 04:26:17 PM

my bingo callers are still goin strong

is that a good thing, i dont know...........

electoyd · February 03, 2011, 09:42:31 PM

heres a pic of parrobot as well its kinda difficult to make out on the other photo.

Circuitbenders · February 04, 2011, 12:09:45 AM

At the risk of showing my age, it looks like something from Starfleet or TerraHawks.

electoyd · February 04, 2011, 12:48:39 PM

yeah maybe zelda from terrahawks pet! I think most of us are in that age bracket so dont worry Paul . Parrobot is abit of a dude and he can sound pretty damn grungy will try and bung a sound sample up, he's just hard to control like any good parrot. I used to seek out the most bizarre toys i could find and have got a rather odd collection, alot are still unbent. Probably not really much use for much to do with music making, but my circuit bent lives sets were quite visual as well and they used to give people a laugh. Paul you must have seen/opened some strange electronic items in your time? nobody ever asked you to mod a geordie bingo caller before.............

Circuitbenders · February 04, 2011, 02:23:06 PM

These were a winner. I think i did 4 or 5 for the same guy. Apparently he used to set them all up on a perch onstage and have some kind of satanic dawn chorus going on.

electoyd · February 06, 2011, 07:22:43 PM

they are classic!, maybe they could be teamed up with parrobot for an devilish audio frenzy! Would like to see some more pics from people on this subject, much is written about the mainstream stuff but not the really whacky stuff. I'm gonna put some things up when i get the chance.

electoyd · February 28, 2011, 09:02:31 PM

okay i've gathered up a selection of my artifacts (i.e electronic rubbish) and took a pic this will probably give folk an idea of what kind of hoarder i am. When i came back from work today this cardboard box with all this stuff in it was right where i stand in my workroom, woman doing spring clean goddammit! but it gave me a chance to take a photo. This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my collection, this is mainly the one touch sound things off books and the likes. There is a really crazy one with 10 dogs on it all wearing different hats! I used to rehouse these things and dreamt off making a huge consol with all these circuits in and loads off buttons to push, but laziness got in the way.

Simon Vactrol · March 02, 2011, 06:17:07 PM

very interesting toys...

electoyd · March 03, 2011, 11:44:41 AM

i think the long black button things at the front of the photo are the best, they have about half hour recordings of Stan Lee (*creator of Spider Man) answering various questions on Spider Man. This is split into about 20 questions (which you can flick through using a push button), they came with books, you read the questions out of the book and listen to the answers. Think i will post a photo of the push button thing with the dogs with hats it is quite comical.

electoyd · March 03, 2011, 09:58:40 PM

here is the dogs with hats, cant even remeber what it was attached to something ridiculous, the black thing is the one with stan lee recorded on it. The other photo is circuit bent Zoltar the fortune teller who gives out crazy predictions.

Simon Vactrol · March 05, 2011, 04:53:56 PM

hhh!!! Zoltar!! scary!!!

Bogus Noise · March 11, 2011, 03:28:59 AM

Not quite the same as the other things in this thread, but I have a fibre optic lamp with a gear mechanism inside that clunks a little bit. It wasn't horrendously loud, but enough to get annoying while writing tunes. So last year I opened it up, soldered a toggle switch on the motor's + wire, and presto, made it disableable!

electoyd · March 11, 2011, 11:33:32 AM

so did the lamp make noises or was it just for circuit bent decor? Always good to be able to disable any annoying clunking sounds. I always like the animated toys, like zoltar and parrobot but yeah they do clunk abit when the animated bits move, i never thought about disabling the motors though. I quite like their spastic movement when you crank the pitch up.