Finger Drums

[the_zombiest]

Has anyone tried to bend these before?
It's the finger drums that are shaped like a mini drum kit.
I cracked mine open yesterday and boy are they badly made!
The one thing that astounds me most is that the drum sounds are triggered from one wire only.
Now that's a little odd in my book. Also, you don't need to touch the exposed wire to trigger, oh no, you can touch the insulated covering to trigger too. It seems to ground itself via our lovely, meaty bodies.

So if you do have some of these and are wanting to bend them but have left them on the shelf due to much more interesting toys... maybe, just leave em there....

[PolyPhuckin]

our lovely, meaty bodies.

[Gordonjcp]

Very high impedance input, picks up the hum from your finger.

[the_zombiest]

Is there a way around this or should I just get with the testing?

I held the wire with insulated pliers to test it and they seem to trigger from ground too.
I guess fully plastic push buttons would be a work-around.

I'll give it a right good probing after I've finished working on something far more interesting... It might be some time

[Tyler1144]

try shorting out resistors with a wet finger, and if it has a black IC chip, short the pins to each other

[the_zombiest]

try shorting out resistors with a wet finger, and if it has a black IC chip, short the pins to each other

How to circuit bend in a nutshell

[S-CAT]

Has anyone tried to bend these before?

We have managed to get some excellent results on this little toy, there are some excellent feedback points on it and the drum sounds seem to react to all sorts of distortion bends. The only problem we have at the moment is on how to bypass the auto power off function.

[the_zombiest]

s-cat, i think the answer to auto-off is to keep on drumming

I've had a poke around, and there's some nice fuzzy distortions but i never got past the initial probing. too many other things to open up that don't need recasing.

[S-CAT]

There is some excellent potential with those little circuits, i picked up 3 of the drum & 2 studio. The end result from this little project should be good.