Circuit bending my Casio SK1

I was over at a friend's house last year (whaddup Shanthi) and he showed me something that I thought was really cool. He had an old Speak and Spell. Remember those things...." A...E...I...O....U......" even if you are too young to remember them I'm sure you have heard Dane Cook talk about them, If not just Google it. Anyway, this was not just any old Speak and Spell. It had extra knobs and switches all over it and had an Atari paddle controller hooked to it? ? ?

I stared at it for and while and then I just had to ask. What the heck is that? He got all excited and turned it on to show me what it did. "this is my circuit bent Speak and Spell" he said and turned it on and started hitting the buttons. At first it sounded just like a regular one pronouncing the letters of the alphabet just like normal but then.......(drum roll).......then he switched one of the toggles on it and started turning the Atari paddle and it started making some crazy, demonic sounds right out of a Crystal method or Prodigy album. I was blown away, I played with it for 30 minutes or so.

He said his wife found a guy on the Internet that circuit bends toys and little keyboards and she bought it from him. At the time I had never even heard of circuit bending but I bet you can guess the topic I googled when I got home. I spent night after night reading on the topic. I found that the instruments/toys of choice for a lot of people to "bend" are Casio keyboards. The one that is considered the Holy Grail of them to bend was the Casio SK1 sampling keyboard from the early 1990's. I was stoked to read that because, guess what yours truly had in his basement? That's right, I had a Casio SK1 from way back in the day. (brb, my bagel bites are done)

Alrighty, as I was saying I had an SK1. I had to build up my nerve to rip this thing open and start soldering on the board especially since I had done almost no soldering before. I got on eBay to make sure I could get another one if i fried this one. I found that there were a lot of them on eBay but The prices were pretty high and they all had titles like "ready to bend" in them so there is obviously a lot of people doing this. I tossed caution to the wind and dug in.

I found many sites about circuit bending and one dedicated to bending the SK1 with exact directions on how this guy did his. It gave step by step instructions so I pretty much followed them to the t (or tee, or tea ???)

I worked on it for about a week, a little here and a little there and got it all wired up. I added toggles and pots at a lot of bend points and got it making some pretty crazy sounds. The only thing left I have to do is make a case for it now. Here is a pic of a stock SK1. Here is a totally tricked out bent one. Pretty cool huh?

I'll post a pic and some links to some of the sounds when I'm done with it. It's a lot of fun and you can start with any 2 dollar toy from a thrift store and work your way up from there. Give it a try.