My New Bends

[imaguitargod]

Well, I’ve just finished up my new instruments, aptly named “High on Speed” and “Distorted-o-board”, for my noise shows. Here’s me as the Mad Scientist getting ready to go to work.



This is the High On Speed opened at the start of the project.


I ended up crossing two areas of the circuit board on a children’s electronic book strip and connecting them to an on/off mini toggle switch. One switch causes the thing to cycle through all of it’s sound effects. The other switch causes the thing to play the sound at 4x faster than normal which really gives it more of a cartoony sound than usual. Here it is all built with an output.



Now here’s where I discovered a problem that I don’t understand why it’s doing what it’s doing. It’ll only play through the on board speak if there’s a input going into the output jack that I wired on. When I connect the output jack to a small, 9v battery operated speaker, it plays through that speaker. If I connect it to a larger amp (my Spider Line 6 60watt amp) it won’t play through that….any ideas? Could I have wired it incorrectly from the speaker to the output jack?

My next toy was a children’s keyboard. I found one bend for it (in which I connected two resistors and then threw an on/off mini toggle switch onto). It makes the sound really distorted. On certain settings, once a key is pressed it’ll go on forever and with the distortion turned on, it really sounds drony.



I need to paint this one (or parts of it) and put an output jack on it. I may still fiddle with it for a day or two and see if I can’t get any more bends out of it or I may save it until after my next gig on Wednesday…

[stolenfat]

did you ground the output jack correctly?
Maybe it needs a preamp cause of a quiet signal? Try some out of disto pedal or something in a chain before the amp and see if it works.

Also, sometimes i've found theres often a connection which will boost the volume output, maybe you just need to find this connection which might increase the output level enough that you wouldnt need a preamp.
Not exactly sure if this is your problem but maybe it will help.

[imaguitargod]

[stolenfat]

hmmm.... perhaps try bypassing the speaker all together?
I dont know exactly, but maybe extra power that could be used to boost the signal is being sucked up by powering the speaker....

Or, forget about the line out, leave the speaker there and try a peizo contact mic. Or a regular mic just next to the speaker.

You could always try searching for a small peramp circuit schematic and install it into the toy... but that may be a bit above your head (its above mine), and might require a bunch of extra non bending electronic work to get it working. But you never know, after some research it might seem like just the thing for you.

You do have a surprising problem though, it seems odd to me that a line out wouldnt work even after trying to preamp it. Maybe, try a different quarter inch jack? maybe its broken some how?