Now what?

[Enzo]

OK, so what is this, why did it show up, and what is it for? Just more feature creep? A place to do mods instead of where they are now?

[J M Fahey]

Oh, itīs just me.
I am a great Bender, circuits or anything else..

[Leo_Gnardo]

Oh, itīs just me.
I am a great Bender, circuits or anything else..

Why did I know we would be seeing the famous Futurama robot?

FWIW my high school German teacher was Frau Bender, maybe a relative?

And a member of one of my college bands, a terrific guitarist Peter Bent from Vermont. He's heard all the jokes already... maybe he had an encounter with one of the Benders.

Looks like the party's off to a good start, what's supposed to happen here anyway?

[rjb]

I just looked it up.
Circuit bending is to electronic design as spin painting is to art.
Or as cigar box guitar building is to luthiery.
Or something like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_bending

-rb

[nosaj]

I just looked it up.
Circuit bending is to electronic design as spin painting is to art.
Or as cigar box guitar building is to luthiery.
Or something like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_bending

-rb

That guy has an interesting Ebook intro to circuit bending. It taking devices that make noise and using jumper wires to make noises they weren't intended to make.

http://zhagun.ru/Circuit_Bending_Bui...nstruments.pdf
nosaj

[Leo_Gnardo]

That guy has an interesting Ebook intro to circuit bending. It taking devices that make noise and using jumper wires to make noises they weren't intended to make.

Sounds like one of our local amp goo-roos back in the early 80's. He charged a fortune to slap parts he'd liberated from junkyard TV's into perfectly good Fender amps. One day I got to tag along with one of his acolytes who ran a stereo & guitar amp repair service. While mister acolyte stepped out for a smoke, the goo-roo turned to me and said, "honestly I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I figure if nobody gets a shock, and smoke doesn't come out of the amp, then everything's OK."

My career took a jump for the better when people started bringing me their amps that goo-roo had wrecked, and begged me to put them back to stock. There was one exception, a guitar teacher who had his Twin goo-roo modified, and claimed it was the best sounding amp he'd ever played through. So I asked teacher to let me see, he got a bit bent out of shape himself. (Ah there's the bender at work already!) "Oh no I can't do that, goo-roo is worried you're gonna reverse engineer his mods, steal his ideas, and install them in amps, he doesn't like that." I calmly explained I'd already seen goo-roo's mods and undone them dozens of times, and there's no chance I'd steal his lousy ideas and install them in anybody's amps at any price. I was merely curious to hear a working model of one of the goo-roo amps played by someone who liked the mods. Not a single screw would be touched by a screwdriver - I did not need to see inside. Teacher: well I suppose, OK then. But I don't have the amp now. It's back at goo-roo's shop. For a new output transformer. For the second time. I've been waiting half a year for him to replace it. Hm, so this thing wrecks Twin Reverb OT's one after the other, but it sounds terrific. And cost you only $1800 so far. And it will be another $300 for the next new OT he says. Oh, great! - - - I never did get to hear teacher play that amp. Can only wonder what became of it.

[J M Fahey]

Oh, Iīm SICK of junk, crap and garbage being called "Art".

[SoulFetish]

Ha!
I love how someone tries to slide in a change to the forum, and it really brings out the old bastard in the old bastards.
Enzo and Fahey were the first ones here welcoming would-be circuit benders by spraying them with the hose for walking on their lawn.

[eschertron]

The first time I heard of circuit-bending, it was from folks 'bending' the speak-and-spell toys. You know the ones where you press a button and the cow goes "moo" and so on. The lucky bender might slap something in that affects the clock speed and results in a slowed-down other otherwise 'bent' sound. That was pretty much the beginning and end of it as far as I was concerned.

As long as the bender works on circuits powered by a few AA batteries, I say "Why not?"

It's certainly safer than the witless noobs who wander in here and want to work on HV circuits. And yes, I'm pointing a finger at myself

[Mark Hammer]

My first introduction to circuit bending was the Casiotone M-10 keyboard I bought in 1981 or so. Robin Whittle, in Australia, produced a pamphlet outlining all the mods that could be done to it. A big part of the impetus for that was Casio's tendency to use the same core tone-generator chips for their product line, and tap a few more functions out of the same chips for another fancier higher-priced model. This prompted an urge in many to explore what else might lie inside cheaper keyboards that wasn't being exploited. In some cases, it was just weird novel noises, while in other cases it might be a useful function that the manufacturer deemed insufficiently marketable, or appealing, or simply easy-to-exlain, to include. In a great many cases, it simply involved jumpering cotrol pins that hadn't been jumpered. At least part of what kept it alive was the perverse delight some took in producing disturbing and dissonant sounds from digital children's toys. In more recent years, things like the miniature synths that Korg has produced have been subject to both mods and bending. I will distinguish those two on the basis of the counter-intuitiveness of their outcomes. If I want something to be linked to VCF corner frequency, that's a mod. If I don't know what the hell it's going to do, that's bending.

Bending is probably not in keeping with a great deal of what goes on in this forum (repairs, mods, design analysis), and more likely consonant with stuff at the electro-music forum. But what the hey, sometimes you stumble onto interesting stuff, right? Serendipity is your friend.

[J M Fahey]

Ha!
I love how someone tries to slide in a change to the forum, and it really brings out the old bastard in the old bastards.
Enzo and Fahey were the first ones here welcoming would-be circuit benders by spraying them with the hose for walking on their lawn.

So now somebody who randomly short circuits different points in a PCB, 1% of the time making it squeal, mute or buzz and 99% burning something, from a transistor to making the house catch fire is a "designer"?

Now that you mention it, yes, often the hose is necessary ..... to put the fire down.

Please be consistent with your idea, next time somebody posts "fuck!!!! , I had already repaired the amp, the meter tip slipped and I burnt 6 EXPENSIVE transistors !!!!!!" (plus assorted components, maybe half the supply and a few tracks to make it "interesting") you answer him: "Congratulations!!!!!! You are now a CIRCUIT BENDER!!!!!"

Suggest next time you try to repair speakers, AGAIN do it the "Circuit Bender Way"
Very creative

As a side note, I LOVED the "is that on fire?" question .... very circuitbenderish

[Leo_Gnardo]

Bending is probably not in keeping with a great deal of what goes on in this forum (repairs, mods, design analysis), and more likely consonant with stuff at the electro-music forum. But what the hey, sometimes you stumble onto interesting stuff, right? Serendipity is your friend.

I s'pose I've done a little of that then. It was a long time ago. One customer brought in the first cheap/affordable Yamaha digital reverb, an R1000. Four buttons on the panel allowed a selection of four reverb types. Customer heard there was a mod where one could select four "hidden" reverb programs and wanted me to mount a toggle switch on the back so he could access them. I figured out what's what and did it. Then I did the same to my own R1000. It's all lost in the dust of time, since than much more powerful and better sounding digital reverbs appeared on the market, and now built into every digital mixer.

As far as blindly snipping parts out & slapping parts & wires in, I guess some people want to find their inner Jackson Pollock. Or Marcel Duchamp. Heck my friends and I in second grade used to get a lot of amusement drawing mustaches on the portraits on dollar bills, stamps, magazines and in our history textbooks. Hey, that's ART! Don't knock it!

[Mick Bailey]

I used to watch a stranger who regularly took the same bus to work. I found her to be mysterious and erotic. One day I gave her a gift - a sculpture I made of her from my own faeces and some teeth I got from round the back of a dental clinic. She freaked out and I never saw her again. It just goes to show some people don't appreciate art in any form whatsoever.

[Enzo]

Perhaps is you had used HER feces...


One of my "familiars" at the old shop was always taking apart toys and trying to figure how to get the sound parts into a pedal or something. I helped him many times on this. I got no beef with screwing around with the parts from a Speak and Spell or whatever. I just don;t see why we need a whole new subsection for it. We already have Music Electronics section.


I had a microwave in my kitchen erupt in smoke the other day. We all have home appliances that occasionally need work, should we have a home appliance repair section too? MAybe split the repair section into separate sections for each brand: Fender, Marshall, Peavey, Randall, etc... CAr stereo?

[eschertron]

Since we're talking about what's new, has anyone but me lost the 'like' button?