Found Friday 39

Beauty Pageant, Vermont. c.1950's

Found Friday 38

Fountain, Vatican City

Circuit Bent Casiotone CT-460

So my latest circuit bending foray is a ca.1987 Casiotone CT-460 keyboard that I picked up at the local Goodwill for 15 dollars. A quick Google search led me to a pdf of the user's manual, and a couple of circuit bending sites and youtube videos. After verifying that the thing still worked (via slightly balky 9v adapter plug; I rewired the battery connection to accommodate a 9v battery & added a kill switch) I pulled the back panel to take a look at the circuit boards. I poked around a bit & found tons of bend points associated with the chip just to the right of the main cpu (blue box in picture below).

I found that most folks who bend Casiotones put together a box of banana jacks (one jack for each bend point) that can be connected by a lead wire with two banana plugs that are also connected to a potentiometer. Next step, though, is to identify all of the bend points and solder wire leads to each - I found 42 points, plus an upper-pitch point (the two red wires in the second photo below).


Wires are then threaded to box attached to side of Casiotone and soldered to the banana jacks. Solder solder solder:


Finished box with everything soldered in place, and two sets of lead wires. Bend points are linked to the grid of 42 plugs at the top, and the two connecting plugs to the 100k pot are at the bottom.


Here's a clip of the finished keyboard demonstrating the rhythm function using the "16 Beat 1" setting - I also made a temporary 100k pot connector out of an old tuna fish can so I could play around with a second set of lead wires:



Next up is a Yamaha PSS-270 keyboard. Stay tuned...

Found Friday 37

Mexico