Last Weekend, my lady and I were combing the local flea market here in Hadley, Mass looking for this and that, enjoying the extreme people watching, and praying for some cheap circuit bending fodder. I got a cheap little toy keyboard for a buck, but wasn’t too excited about it. We were nearly done visiting all the various piles of old junk and cheap crap, when I spied something that had some serious potential. After an intense bargaining back and forth with an old lady in a mumu which culminated in her nearly taking out her teeth and throwing them at me, I threw her a few bucks and left with a mint condition Vtech Talking Whiz Kid Plus. Awesome! Here it is after my mayhem:
The Whiz Kid is great for the variety of sonic blurgles, rhythmic chunks, quasi verbal spews, and stream of (un)conscious rants. I added a quarter inch output and a switch to turn the speaker off (sometimes helpful when recording).
Then I put in a sample and hold “freeze” circuit. This switch grabs a split second of sound and puts it into a loop. There’s a push button to “sample” the sound and a toggle to lock it in place.
There are four various glitch switches that create the sonic waterfalls of alien gobbledy gook we all find so pleasing.
And lastly a “feedback” circuit that can be controlled via a large black knob or optical (light sensitive) theremin. This starts off as a gentle overdrive, but quickly pushes into a rising pure tone and drowns out the original sounds.
Add a hot “fireball” paint job and you’ve got a hell of a machine.
See it in action:
Well, this one I bought with the intention to sell, so if you likey, peep my ebay listing.