Circuitbenders Forum
Circuitbenders Forum => Circuitbending discussion => Synths & Samplers => Topic started by: Gleix on January 09, 2009, 03:27:15 AM
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Since my last big post I've been doing a lot of bending, half for myself and half to sell (to keep from getting an actual job, I'm still in high school) and I hadn't made a post dedicated about any of them, but I feel like sharing this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl4b_WJIzMQ <- Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HyVwK6iP5U <- Part 2
(http://cheezer999.googlepages.com/HingHonLED9.jpg)
I've been fooling with these Hing Hon's a lot and this is by far the best I've done. Hope you guys like it, I'd love some feedback.
It's got
3 Modulation knobs
Pitch down knob
Modulation/Distortion opto-theremin [with on/off]
Low pass filter switch
Blippy switch
Fuzzy switch
Crazy glitch switch
Acts as a distortion/modulation box [through the mic input]
1/4" Audio output jack
Sound pulsing blue and green LEDs lining the front of the keyboard (makes this keyboard what it is!!)
If anyone's interested all my other videos are located here: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=frostedminipete&view=videos
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holy F***!! ;D
That is an amazing set of mods. its inspired me to open my Hing Hon back up again.
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Do you have any hints and tips? As when i first opened up my Hing Hon i didn't find much.
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There's tons of different versions of these keyboards. I've had 5 or 6 different types in the past, the most common being one with 3 notches on the volume sliders (some have 5) and the innards being comprised of a ton of tiny wires and different segmented circuit boards, with one closest to the speaker being component side down (the rest are component side up). Then, that little board will be based on a chip or two transistors. Both of those keyboard versions contain the kinds of bends, IMO, but the one based on a chip will allow for LEDs. The transistor based version has two points that'll let LEDs react to the sound, but are very dim.
If you know which kind you have, or post a picture maybe I could help.
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Currently, my camera is attached to the phone that went swimming, so no pictures for me.
But, i do know i have the 3 notch version full of wires and and the small board full of components
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I'll shoot you my schematics if you have the chip based version, just unscrew that tiny little board and see if there's an IC on it.
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Right, i had a look and its the chip version i have.
The workmanship in side these keyboards is shoddy! Do they not teach whoever made them how to solder?
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bloody ell :)
thats def. the best bend i've seen of this KB.
love the hinghon - its just awesome - even if u dont bend it! lol
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Quick question man, could you shoot me those schematics ? i really wanna have a new look ant it.
;D
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Hi, I'd love some help on this EK-001 too! I destroyed the speaker on mine while bending (only the external output works now) and now I got a little scared of breaking it. I searched long and hard to track one down, I don't want to kill it now by being stupid. I found a very nice bend that makes every second note you play scream (so one normal, one bend, one normal, one bend) and it screws the internal "green sleeves" melody up (but in a good way).
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Based on what I posted earlier, if you let me know what version you've got I might be able to provide you with schematics.
I'd also be curious about that bend you found... I hadn't found that one!
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The bend I found is on a resistor on the left-end side of the back of the board. It's marked "4149" in white printing. Connecting it to different points gave different results, but the best one for me was to connect it to either of the "microphone in" ends. Try it and play the organ. It becomes a very very phat synth.
My EK seems to be a "black blob" type, no bare chip.
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Conglaturations comrad I wish I could get my hands on 1 of those but for some reaon I have never got my hands on one I have been searching for upto 5 years and to no avail. The only things I have been able to get hold of in that time period is
A Steepletone Keyboard
A Byronic electronics co Solid state talking typewriter
and a wierd russian calculator/typewriter/talkindg aid for the deaf made by a company caled Soviet Microsystems inc.
If anyone has any info please tell me .I know it is from 1972 and hs over 8 linear predictive coding chips(like a neandethalic speak and spell only with over 2000 words stored instead of 200)
I once got so close to getting two of these extremely rare gems..well......extremely rare where I come from ...Darnall but this kid I was with at 6 form dragged me off just to show me this stupid thunderbirds talking alarm clock and when I got back it had gone.hte ek-01s and the sk-2,that goddam S.O.B!!!!!
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Right, i had a look and its the chip version i have.
The workmanship in side these keyboards is shoddy! Do they not teach whoever made them how to solder?
I know, I can't count how many times one of those tiny barely soldered on wires has come off and I've had to poke around trying to find where it went. Just now I finished mounting all of the controls and wired up a modulation... nothing? What's going on? I check on the underside of one of the boards and there's a 3.9k resistor making contact with another resistor. No problem right? I move it over a tad bit and it breaks off right at the end so there's no metal exposed. And who the hell has a 3.9k resistor with them... off the radioshack tomorrow.
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I wish i had my camera so i could show you the inside of mine. there are scratches all over the trace side of the chip board, nothing is soldered neatly PLUS there's a cap. soldered across two points on the trace side, and the legs are bare, nothing protecting them from shorting :-\
And who ever built it must have been having a whale of a time with the soldering iron because there's solder blobs all over the inside of the case. Shoddy work.
oh, and thanks for the diagrams man. trouble is my board must be a different version to yours as alot of it is different inside, but its still quite handy ;)
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No problem! Yeah, the last Hing Hon I did before this... apparently they needed to add some components after everything was in place, so coming off of the solder side of the board were two wires which went to a capacitor and a resistor, held down by tape on top of the plastic near the speaker.
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Wow, nice work. Have any hints or schematics for the 2 transistor, 3 stage volume, black blob version?
Also, this may be of interest to some here... While looking on the net, I found a manual complete with schematic for the Stereophonic 900 kit version:
http://www.grandpastudios.com/pdf/ak-900.pdf (http://www.grandpastudios.com/pdf/ak-900.pdf)
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ive opened up my hing and it the funny thing is, most if not all the keys are not playing. when i opened it back up
looked around, then powered on whilst being opened, it played fine. screwed the back on, and it did the same thing.
any ideas breakbeat?? could you send diagrams of the hing hon to me as well. looks like a fun bend for sure
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ive opened up my hing and it the funny thing is, most if not all the keys are not playing. when i opened it back up
looked around, then powered on whilst being opened, it played fine. screwed the back on, and it did the same thing.
any ideas breakbeat?? could you send diagrams of the hing hon to me as well. looks like a fun bend for sure
You're lucky I've dealt with these things for so long... I had that exact problem, took me forever to realize what was going on. Assuming you have the model where there's a bunch of little wires and the boards are segmented, the problem probably lies between two of the boards (the one with the key button matrix and the center board).
The thing is, these things are put together so that where there SHOULD be traces, they simply soldered between two circuit boards on tiny traces...very unstable when it comes to actually moving/pressing on parts of the keyboard. You'll need to unscrew every circuit board, lift them up and find where all of the keys have a little solder joint going to the "middle" circuit board. There should be a ton, and if they've been bent too much the gold traces may have been ripped up and it'd be very hard to fix... Try resoldering every point carefully and then adding hot glue over all the solder joints after testing if it works again.
If you close it and something is pressing on that part of the circuit board it'll lose the connection... maybe try moving some wires out of the way as well so nothing is squeezed in there.
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ive opened up my hing and it the funny thing is, most if not all the keys are not playing. when i opened it back up
looked around, then powered on whilst being opened, it played fine. screwed the back on, and it did the same thing.
any ideas breakbeat?? could you send diagrams of the hing hon to me as well. looks like a fun bend for sure
You're lucky I've dealt with these things for so long... I had that exact problem, took me forever to realize what was going on. Assuming you have the model where there's a bunch of little wires and the boards are segmented, the problem probably lies between two of the boards (the one with the key button matrix and the center board).
The thing is, these things are put together so that where there SHOULD be traces, they simply soldered between two circuit boards on tiny traces...very unstable when it comes to actually moving/pressing on parts of the keyboard. You'll need to unscrew every circuit board, lift them up and find where all of the keys have a little solder joint going to the "middle" circuit board. There should be a ton, and if they've been bent too much the gold traces may have been ripped up and it'd be very hard to fix... Try resoldering every point carefully and then adding hot glue over all the solder joints after testing if it works again.
If you close it and something is pressing on that part of the circuit board it'll lose the connection... maybe try moving some wires out of the way as well so nothing is squeezed in there.
thanks. i'll check it again to see about the soldering points. it might be worth it to put in the extra effort and resolder everything.
your right, its definitely one of my favourite sounding keys for sure. although, for being such a killer sounding little toy, the craftsmanship is horrendous. but the bends youve displayed truly brings new life to it. a friend has the chip version but i have the transistor version (i'm going to bend his as well) there has to be a way around the low led output in the transistor version...we'll see :o
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If you figure something out regarding the LED brightness on the transistor version let me know ;)
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for sure. super cool project man. cheers
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HELLO ME AGAIN....I GOT SO CLOSE TO GETTING ONE OF THESE AGAIN ,WHEN WE WENT OUT TO A KIDS BIRTHDAY AND THERE WAS A MARKET ON AND I WNET TO IT AND SAW A HIN GONG THING AND A SPEAK AND SPELL COMPAC (THE BLUE ONE) ANYWAYS I WAS ABOUT TO GAT IT WHEN I GOT A CALL FROM ANOTHER KID AT SIX FORM AND I HAD TO GO.....YET AGAIN I CAME TO WITHIN A WITH OF AN INCH TO HAVING THAT KEYBOARD BUT NO!!!!!!!.. SIGH.......IF ONLY MY WALKING MATE/LUCKY CHARM WAS THERE AT THE SALE,WHENEVER HE IS ETHERE I FIND GOOD THINGS...OH WELL,HE HAD TO STAY AT SIXFORM COS HED BEEN ACTIN KINDA IMMATURE AND STUPID ...STUPIDER THAN ME BUT ALAS HE CANT HELPIT. MORAL IS I SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT OL RICKY Bshaw with me
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For gods sake man turn off your CAPS LOCK!
If you don't start turning off your caps lock i'm going to start deleting your posts >:(
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I really really like the video with the ek-001 being used as a video distorter! That is very impressive, the closing few seconds of that video are awesome!
is this sort of bend specifically for this keyboard or would do you recon similar things could be achieved with others?
any tips on achieving something like this would be awesome.
Cheers!
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Maybe its just me but i can never seem to get the hing hon with the ic in it ..instead i keep getting the ones with the black blob thing,i think i keep getting the wrong ones Is there any way to differentiate the ones with a microchip in them from the ones that dont i have over eight now I moaned that i couldnt get hold of one and now i cant stop seeing them...that is all handy but blackblob is no good
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Yeah whats up with the video mod? How do you do that? I heard it was the audio out with a resistor.
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A schematic for a hing hon:
(http://img237.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=97988_CircuitBentHingHonMINE_122_452lo.jpg)
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Isn't the Hing Hon a product of asian sweatshops?
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probably. so are your shoes :P
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ive opened up my hing and it the funny thing is, most if not all the keys are not playing. when i opened it back up
looked around, then powered on whilst being opened, it played fine. screwed the back on, and it did the same thing.
any ideas breakbeat?? could you send diagrams of the hing hon to me as well. looks like a fun bend for sure
i had the same problem, here was my remedy:
make sure everything is in place.
make sure the screws which "bolt down" the circuit board are in place and tight.
make sure screws to chasis are tight and in place.
these things effect how the keys play. it has to be tight like a sardine can for the keys to hit the sensers.
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probably. so are your shoes :P
You're right! LOL :D ... I think half the clothes we wear, is.
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Hey BreakBeat or Zenith could you please send me schematics for the transistor version?
Thanks
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i feel there is so much more i could do with this than i have been doing! i looked inside mine again, and looked at the "brain"...no IC! this thing really is analog! ;-) a small bouquet of transistors, resisistors and caps, with a couple of diodes.
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ya know, i am not sure which one of these i have anymore....
i was looking at a download manual for the elenco version, and it is different! it has a 9037 ic for the keyset (there is a black blob for the keyset on mine, so i'm not sure what is there..._). and there is a lm 386 before the speaker in the elenco schematic...there is no opamp in mine.
just a handful of caps, resistors and a couple of diodes. there are 2 transistors (not shown in the elenco schematic!). not sure if they are pnp or npn.
i'll see if i can snap a pic or two of the inside of mine...so far does mine seem more primative?
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already posted in the other hinghon thread, so i'll post photos of it in here
can anyone identify what this one is and if i can bend this as much as the others?
i can take more photos if that helps....
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already posted in the other hinghon thread, so i'll post photos of it in here
can anyone identify what this one is and if i can bend this as much as the others?
i can take more photos if that helps....
okay, cool...THAT is the one i have!
it seems, that small circuit on the upper right of the photo, is the main synth circuit. the tiny black blob seems to control the keyset.
i keep on poking around, this time around, i found 3 more bends:
one bend is another pitch bend, which is more precise. it sounds like a record slowing down or speeding up!
another bend makes the sound more glitchy, and eventually squelchy and distorted.
i added a body contact to the new pitch bend pot.
it seems there is another bend i found, but i cannot remember...lol!
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hey jamiewoody, i found some more bends tonight, one is a kind of hardcore distortion and the other is a hold last note played
the blue dots and green dots are for the hold note, got that on a switch
the pink dots are for the distortion, i used a 5k pot and 3.3k resistor (like the Osica bend but didnt have a 4k7 pot)
i also had to change the wiring slightly, his grey outside wire on the pot goes to resistor and grey middle wire goes to opamp, mine went grey outside to opamp and middle to resistor - might be different for you too...
have you got any photos of your bends? would be cool to compare notes...
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i'll try tp take some soon, before i put it all back together.
for some reason, 2 notes on the keyset are not working. it has something to do with the sensors i think. grr!