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[zoomtheline]

Hello
I'm new here, and quite new to bending.... I have just finished bending a casio SA-8 and its awesome!
its great as a random noise generator. I have put a glitch switch with pot/two body contacts/reset switch and fitted an output jack with a pot aswell so its good to wack strait on to minidisc ready for sampling......
last week I bought the reed ghazala book and it had an SA-2 in it and it had similar bends to what I had used, so you guys will probably be aware of these bends aswell.....
anyway to the point.. I have started a Yamaha PSS190 and for a while I could'nt find anything of interest just some variations on the sound but nothing worth bothering with, I have searched various places on the net for info with no luck...but while lurking around places like these I am slowly picking up info which is helping....
This yamy has no FM chip only the larger one IC? CPU?.........I recently found a few more interesting bends but still nothing that compares to the SA-8....I have put in two body contacts = crazy distortion pitch drop thingy/ and a two way unlocking switch = pitch-noise variations (if I find more points like these I guess I could incorporate a patch bay...maybe
Ok..........so here is the obligatory newbie question - Has anybody had any experience with bending one of these and can shed a little light on what to look for on an FMless board? or have I just aquired a donkey?
any info will be greatly appreciated.....thanks

[iqoruvuc]

Hi - there is some information here
 http://users.informatik.haw-hamburg.de/~windle_c/TableHooters/Yamaha_PSS-16.html

according to this the PSS-190/PSS-16 is an fm synth with pcm percussion.  If this is the case then it may be quite a hard one to manipulate.  Several people here have done mods on fm synths (I am still an fm vigin) but on different models (see pss-140).  I have bent a few PSS keyboards that had 2 fm chips and a pcm chip for percussion and the percussion chip produces quite a few bends.  I don't know if the set up is anyway similar with what you have though.   
let us know how you get on though :-)

[zoomtheline]

Hello thanks for the reply!

I may get chance to get back on the case tonight to try a bit more, but I'm pretty sure the time spent on it I have tried nearly every combination haha (probably not though).

Im suprised that it is FM based because it only has one large chip. (i am a complete novice and know next to nothing about electronics) so does this mean that it could be FM based even though (what I thought anyway) there is no FM chip visible on the board?.........maybe I should actually read some of these topics instead of skimming them and picking up false info haha..EDIT: I mean false info due to me not reading properly not false info from you guys - sorry

thanks again........and I will let you know how I get on..

[iqoruvuc]

I have not had loads of experience with Yamaha keyboards but from what I have seen, and from what I have read here there has always been two fm chips.  Perhaps the site is wrong or it has some intergrated fm chip?!!?!

[Orangery]

zoom, I have a PSS-30 but never found anything interesting with it but...  I too bent a SA-8 and have recorded lots of chance compositions and loops.  By the way, if you get bored with the two demo tunes there are another three hidden away (tablehooters site).

[zoomtheline]

Yes I know about those, its quite cool that it was secret for such a long time though!
Cheers

[zoomtheline]

oh well.... I have decided to give up on the PSS190......Still can't find anything worth doing to it.

But........ I went to relatives house yesterday and saw they had a VSS - 30 (I think) stuck in an old toy/junk box....
Its an old built in vocoder thingy, a bit like a cheap SK1 I guess.

Does anybody know how bendable these things are? before I approach the question of them giving it to me
while looking puzzled as to the reasons why I want it.......

Cheers.

[Circuitbenders]

In my opinion the VSS-30 is the best sounding 8 bit toy sampler ever made, you can also do some excellent sample grinding stuff by bending the RAM chip.

[Orangery]

I still have mine from new although its now riddled with holes at the back of the machine ready for the patchbay (or boltbay) I never got round to doing.  I heard somewhere that for every Yamaha VSS-30, there are 200 Casio SK-1s'

Apart from the sample grinding from the main chip there doesn't seem much else you can do with this machine although it's pretty good without any mods.