I’ve listed three things on ebay.

The first is a Furby that is controlled by an Atari joystick Auction Link

The second is a circuit bent speak and math Auction Link

And my personal favorite. A toy sampler with built in effects and an added looping circuit Auction Link

The video above is of my most recent bent VSS-30 that uses a 12 point switch bay using 2 way center off switches. This is my documentation on bending a Yamaha VSS-30. This ultra sampling keyboard has some really awesome capabilities on it’s own. I got this info initially from one of the bending forums, but I don’t know who to credit, so thanks whoever you are! I know some folks haven’t bent their VSS yet due to fear of frying, so hopefully this guide will help you.

*Note*When I first did this bend, I avoided the 2 red dots (power and ground). I’ve since bent another VSS-30 and used these points with no ill effect. As always, bend at your own risk */note* The blue dots in 2 rows are the points of the sampling chip. The blue dots in a straight line going up and down is where the points connect to the big chip. There are 2 pins on the sampling chip that connect to each other (yellow line), so that gives you 15 points to bend. I chose to use 12 of those points for symmetry, and I chose to use an RCA style patchbay. I found that Tablebeast did a layout on one of these that I really liked, so I did this one the same way. You can see/hear his Here. I chose to solder to the points that were up and down in a straight line for ease of bundling.

Here’s the board wired up.

Here’s the area where I chose to put the RCA connectors. I checked, double checked my measurements. The pencil lines you see are where there’s a plastic support on the inside of the case.

Here’s the installed RCA jacks. Not absolutely perfect (need a drill press for that), but lookin’ pretty good IMHO.

Here’s the front side of the sample crusher for those that don’t have one already (keep an eye out cause if you don’t have one you’ll want one!).

Now let’s test it. Record a sample, and play it to make sure it recorded decently. Now plug in a patch cable to two of the RCA jacks. You should get all manners of distortions, tremolos, and all kinds of other effects on the sample. Layer the bends on top of each other with more patch cables, and you can completely change the sample so that it sounds nothing like it originally did. I used the loop feature built into the VSS to make some really awesome loops with the bent samples.

There’s an audio sample of this on my sample page.

Disclaimer:

As always I take no responsibility if you happen to touch the wrong point on your VSS, and kill it. I found this bend to be very reliable, and not to difficult to do if you take your time.

After some major diggin’ for info I found that no one had a specific guide for bending a Yamaha PSS-270, so I decided to make one. Credit to Sean “audioid” (myspace.com/audioidbentaudio), and Paul from circuitbenders.co.uk for the info on this bend. This bend involves cutting data lines that go from the FM synth chip (YM2413) to the main chip (XC194A0). The pins on the FM chip that go to the main chip are pins 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 17, and 18. You cut the traces, and then solder wires on either side of the cut. Take the pair of wires from one cut, and solder them to a switch, and this will allow you to turn the flow of data on and off.

This is a picture of the board flipped over. I have the FM chip out-lined in red, and you can see the big chip under it.

In this picture I have the solder points from the FM chip marked in red dots, and the blue dots are where they go to the main chip. Ignore the green dots. The black line is where you *carefully* cut the data lines. I used a volt meter to check and make sure that the lines no longer had continuity.

I’ve indicated the FM chip in this picture.

Here’s all 16 wires in place. Some people recommend drilling very small holes on both sides of the trace cuts, and putting wires through them, or scraping the coating off so you can solder on it. I just soldered the wires onto the pins of the chip, which can be dangerous because you run the risk of overheating it. I used a pair of wires that are the same color for each connection to make wiring up the switches easier.

I’ve got the board back in place, and the wires bundled up nice and securely.

Now all the switches are wired up, and we are ready to button her back up.

I found the most room for the 8 switches on the right side of the keyboard. Just measure and drill carefully, and it will come out looking great.

What the Bends do:

Each switch now controls the flow of data from the FM chip to the main chip. Turn the PSS on and select a patch (let’s pull up #89 “ghost”), I usually play some keys(don’t know if you have to do this or not), then turn some switches off , now select a different patch, and turn the switches back on. Now try playing the new patch. If it went well some of the data from the all patch got held up, and then inserted into the new patch making a totally different sound. Sometimes leaving the connections off will change the sounds also. I’ve noticed them some of the bent up patches will only work when multiple keys are played. I’ve heard that this will effect the drums as well, but I haven’t gotten it to do much with them as of yet.

Getting some good sounds out of this takes some tinkering, but it’s worth it. The only downer is that it’s hard to reproduce the sounds that you get, so if you have a good one be sure to grab a sample while you can. Using the keyboard this way can corrupt the data to the point where the chip crashes in a noisy mess, but all you have to do is turn all the data connections back on, and turn the keyboard off, then back on. All the data connection switches have to be on for the keyboard to work “normally”.

John from Bentpedals sent me these photos of a PSS-140 that he did up using this same mod. The main chip is colored in red, the FM chip in blue, ignore the yellow.

I did the mod on a PSS-140 for Mjm using the info that John gave me. This is what he had to say about it “endless amounts of fun. endless unpredictable possibilities. i don’t want to stop messing with it”. Here’s some photos of that.

Wesley did the same mod to a PSS-170, but his link seems to be dead.

 I’ve successfully done this on a Yamaha SHS-10 Keytar , along with some other circuit bends. Tinsoldier sent me a diagram of his circuit bent SHS-10 which I will post here. I can’t comment on it at yet because I haven’t had the chance to try them myself.

Disclaimer:

As always I won’t be held responsible if you try this bend and your Yamaha get’s hurt. I’ve done a lot of playing with this keyboard, and it seems real solid to me. This bend works on some of the other PSS series keyboards (like the 140) with a similar chip setup, but since I’ve only done a 270 and 140 so far I can’t gurantee it will work on all of them.

Over the past few years I’ve built a wide variety of instruments. Some are toys/keyboards/whatever that I re-purposed through circuit bending and modification, some are oscillator based instruments that I built from scratch, and more and more I’ve been dabbling in make effects pedals. I’ve built more things then I could ever possibly list here, but I will try and cover some of the more interesting things. If you want a better idea of what all I’ve done you can got to my Soundclick page. I also have a Youtube Page where you can “see” my instruments in action.

I have two effects pedals that I regularly build. One is the “Mutator” which is a heavily modified toy voice changer re-purposed for guitar/whatever. See those here. The other is a modified Fab Echo. I take this rather tame Echo pedal, and modify it into a fully function delay with lots of features. See those here. I’ve also tried my hand at making more traditional pedals, which you can see here.

Keyboards
I’ve modified lots of keyboards, mostly lower end Casios and Yamahas, but also some toy keyboards as well. The mods have been anywhere from a simple pitch control or glitch push button, all the way to an out board RCA patch (Modular Synth Style) with hundreds of possibilites.

Casio SK-1
One of the holy grails of bending. Most benders want one, have done one, or have done many. The first few a did were based on the “Tablebeast” mods (16 point patch bay with on/off switches). Now that I have some experience with them I’ve undertaken some more complex mods.

This is the first SK-1 I’ve modified. It has the “Tablebeast” Patch bay setup with Pitch Knob, Drum Kill, and Poly Kill Switches. This SK-1 is sold

This SK-1 has pretty much the same mods as the above one, but with the addition of body contacts. This SK-1 is sold.

This just the patchbay for my “Glitchstation” SK-1. The keyboard itself only had a 25 pin connector, pitch knob+body contact, drum kill switch, and 1/4 inch output. The patchbay itself contained all the controls. Housed in an old PS2 case (hence the name) it contained a 26 point patchbay (2 points to ground), 8 point switching patchbay, 3 knobs of different values, and sample and hold section, 3 momentary joystics, and an LFO that can be patched with everything else. This project was complicated and difficult, I don’t know if I would ever take it on again. This keyboard/monster has been sold.

Yamaha VSS-30

By far one of my favorite bends. This sampling keyboard does great on it’s own, but with the addition of some bends becomes a sample crushing machine. See my tutorial for pics, and of course how to make your own. If you have one you would like me to modify just send me a line through the contact page