Carmen & I are moving here:


Here's a pic from the big back yard. (Looking up at our house):

We have 6 fruit trees!


The dining room...(We'll be painting almost every room)



The 3 bedrooms/ office space upstairs:




Our living room:


Wash room & plenty of storage space:


Yay! A basement workshop area!


And basement studio space!

How's this for a powerful drive. The ball was put here about 2 years ago & the tree has since grown around it.

This wasn't a very satisfying piece to mod. I found very few worthwhile glitches, mostly "static-y" types of blips using feedback from it's own mic. Before finding the ones I could remove without disrupting the circuit I wanted to keep, there were so many wires inside that I wasn't able to get to the board without burning shit on the soldering iron.There wasn't much I could figure out to do with the whole tape mechanism, which takes up a lot of the insides. BUT again, I am just starting & someone with more experience coulda probably done better...
As a starting bend, I'd go for the toys that have voice chips, or music chips instead...

Here's where it is now- in limbo, wired together with another dud of a bend. I was thinking I could hybrid the 2, but still no results worth keeping. BAH!


AND in unrelated news, here's me & a few friends playing on the frozen creek in my yard. First time it's ever been like this.

I look like I'm striking a very feminine pose. Well, I guess I really am. I was pushing the cart-canoe dammit.

Here's the new guy all painted & done. We'll call him "Slobbo". Here's a sound sample...
http://thesoundofmachines.com/Robot_Learns_by_Doing.mp3 (I'm not sure how long i'll leave it there)

The voice in the background is the guy below. The "Drink & Learn"...

The process...


A few pics of the "Drink & Learn". Not as cool as ol' Slobbo, but has some interesting features.




I'll have to post a sample of this guy. I taped a homemade piezo contact mic to the side of a hobby motor & stuffed it into this pepper bottle. The pot up top controls the motor speed. The effect, through a reverb box, is that of a chainsaw in the distance.


A shot of my learning center...

First return on a bending project! I opened this guy up & 2 pennies came out! That's gunna knock me up into a higher tax bracket.


A beautiful tangle of wires. Like a puzzle...

I love the bendy reflection of my funky mug in this one. I was excited about this alien ship, but it turned out to be a bust. Mostly motors. I learned a valuable lesson in "bending 101" which is "don't put more juice through a circuit than the circuit was made to handle". Derp. I really liked the sound difference when I stepped up from 2 AAs to 4AAs, but needless to say I fried the thing in about an hour.

This is part of what I fried.First time with one of these voice chip triggers. More than anything, I liked this shot.


I'm sure this is no new thing to the benders out there, but I thought it was cool. Depending on which leads were connected, different voice samples were activated. The samples were all Japanese, too! How aggrivating that I burned it up.

Artsy-Fartsy.


I made these body contacts out of wire end caps & push pins. I had to make a pilot hole first, but small enough so the pin was really jammed in. I soldered the wire up inside.


Here are the 2 contacts in their place. I really liked this one. It stopped working yesterday. I'm beginning to think my soldering skills need improving or something.


Another bust. This guy was also mostly motors. His voice samples were meant to be triggered by remote, which wasn't in the salvation army toy bin where I found him. I only found 2 physical trigger points which were kinda dull & yeilded mediocre glitches.


I put the one decent bend into this tin. The board mounted pot controls voice pitch, and the "L" brackets are contacts that warble the voice. Each button triggered a different sample. Not very impressive sounding, but looked cool.


OK. One major turn-off about picking up toys from thrift shops. Kids are germ-spreading little parasites and I handle their toys the same as I would a used rat trap full of fecal matter. Needless to say, I bathe what I can in bleach before putting it back together. To think, one day I'll have to make one of those little things. A kid.

My first successful bend! It's more fun when processed through the cigar-effect-orama box, buit you get the general idea...



Here's a good intro to the art of bending. I guess like with every other "artform", there will be people that try to validate it by explaining the spirituality behind it. People are bullshit.

I plan to destroy this alien craft for the sake of circuit bending. Details will follow, as well as some pics of the Engrish that was all over the box for it.

Here's how I solved my button issue.... (For Tempelton)


And my next idea which I understand will be a bit over my skill level. One in, multiple outs for multiple amps....


In balloon news, I'm VERY exited about a purchase my brother's about to make.....Expect great things.
http://www.herbach.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv Screen=PROD&Store_Code=HAR&Product_Code=TM91MIS1939&Category_Code=BW

The second amp in a growing series. I like this one better than the previous. It was much more planned out, and required more chop & solder work. It's the first thing I've messed with that requires a power source, so I was pleasntly surprised that nothing blew up when I plugged it in for the first time.

This is what I made the other day with a couple'a shit pedals & a cigar box I got free from a wine store...


The gutted reverb & chorus pedals. They both crackled & hissed terribly during normal use. After taking them apart, I found that the wires from their batteries were barely connected to their boards. I did my best to solder them on a bit stronger.


Then made sure both pedals still worked together. So far, so good. Cleaner, too.


After measuring to the best of my impatient abilities, these are the holes I sloppily tore into the box. I really need to measure twice - the holes are always a bit off.


This won't come off. Oh well. I'll take it into account next time I feel like suckin on a cigar. George Carlin has a funny joke about his disdain for cigar smokers. which I'll botch - "Freud said 'Sometimes a cigar is JUST a cigar'. Yeah? Well sometimes it's also a big brown dick..."


It was tricky figuring out where exactly the holes needed to be drilled to make sure the LEDs poked through OK.


I'm still workin on a way to trigger the pedal-button mechanism. The button that gets depressed is this tiny guy...


I thought I could interrupt the circuit, therefore acting like a effect on/off trigger. I learned that doesn't work. Interrupting the power source is just like removing the battery. When you put it back in, the effect defaults to the "off" position. I kept the switch anyhow as a "panic" button. Also it looked cool.


So my next thought was one of these guys, but I'm not advanced enough to remove the tiny stomp botton from the board, and wire this guy into the circuit. I thought of using the physical mechanism inside to push down on the tiny button, but when taken apart, the pieces are useless.


"You got RUSTIC in my ATOMIC AGE!" "No! You Got ATOMIC AGE in my RUSTIC!"
I wish I was nerdier.


Here's the inside, minus the 2nd toggle I eventually wired to the reverb pedal's power source.


These washers I had in my nut & bolt collection did a nice job of sharpening up the drill hole edges, and holding the box shut tight. Also holds the line in/out firmly in place.


First trial & all works. It's a perfect compliment to the cigar box amp. The 2 open holes on the top are where I need to put a button of some sort for the on/off mechanism. While a pencil does the job, it's not the way I do things around here. Anyone have suggestions? Anyone read this thing?


And into my lil' recording area for some field testing. I wound up really liking the test recording & plan to include it on "Crickets in the Whiskey"