The ULTIMATE BENDING TRICKS AND TECHNIQUES thread

[kick52]

Hi, BITCHES! 
Let's start a thread discussing techniques etc. Hopefully this will become a rich resource which people will add to and hopefully it will get stickied..

Shorting
Randomly connecting points on the board. Straight solder point bending. Make sure you don't fry components by connecting them to high voltage points.

Component replacement
Example: replacing a resistor which controls pitch with a potentiometer. Doing this sort of thing with a pitch resistor will require a high resistance potentiometer, like several megaohms, to get a low pitch. Raising the pitch to high (no resistance) may cause the machine to glitch. Another thing you could replace would be an oscillator, like the coils in VTech toys. You could create a 555 timer circuit to replace the coil and make your own signals to under or over clock it. This may affect the pitch. For more information see this reference: http://www.sailormouth.org/index2.php?pg=addingosc.inc

Line cutting
Example: cutting integrated wires/lines on circuit board of keyboard between synth chip and CPU chip. Can lead to some interesting results, such as decimation of sound or video etc. A resistor may be used if the machine is analog or if this affects the machine in some way. Another example of use would be in a game console between the cartridge and the video chip, or between the rom or synth chip and CPU of a speaking toy.

Voltage drain
Placing a potentiometer or resistor between a power lead or line to a chip/machine. Can produce glitchy, strange sounds or glitches depending on the machine. May not be effective on every machine.

Touch contacts
Some machines will have sensitive points which can be touched to short. An example of this would be a pitch resistor. Simply install some screws with solder tags into the case and solder them to the points to use.

[nochtanseenspecht]

wasn't there already a treath like this ?

[nochtanseenspecht]

http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,509.0.html 

[kick52]

Nah, that's equipment. This is technique.

[Silas]

Simple tip:

Do not connect the clock (be it timing capacitor or a crystal) to +... It might spew out random noise/crash/change pitch, but it will die pretty soon..

[davinyljunky]

Could someone give me some pointers on fitting a looping switch.  I am rather new to circuit bending but have been successful with a few kids keyboards and other item.  I can change pitch, get random weird noise, but i would love to know how a loop switch is fitted...... what does it consist of......... where does it go?  Sorry pretty open question, but any pointers would be awesome.

[kick52]

You can't really get any loops (with the exception of triggers for buttons of the machine) unless you have a bend which actually makes the machine loop/hold the current sound sample.

And Silas:
Yeah, try shorting the clock instead of connecting it somewhere else. You could also try connecting to somewhere else with a resistor.

[Silas]

Yeah, try shorting the clock instead of connecting it somewhere else. You could also try connecting to somewhere else with a resistor.

Heh, yeah I know.. I had just killed my Crashio SA-35, when I posted that tip.. Found a really good bend, extreme randomness crashing and all, and then it died.. So I followed the circuit strip, and lo and behold, my 5 v. had found it's way through a mace, and back to the clock.. D'OH...

[AttDestroyers]

I like to just add components instead of replacing them. I especially like adding capacitors. I've got some cool stuff that way. I would say adding random cool capacitors is my favorite bending technique.