Drum Buddy!

Ok obviously many of you out there have seen this already but it has now hit classic status in my book so if you have seen it go ahead and check it out again. If you have not had the pleasure let me introduce you to the drum buddy. It's a magnificent five oscillator synth with light sensors and a turntable/light combo that makes for the most simplistically genius blend of form and function I have seen since the pistol! Functional folk-art. Whatever you want to call it, it inspired me so much when I saw it around 2008! It blew my mind. I paid homage to it with a turntable wah I made but I can't touch the craftsmanship that goes into the drum buddy. Like I said, It's just an homage. Quintron is the great genius behind the drum buddy. If you haven't heard his music yet check it out. Q and miss pussycat just came through Eureka and played the shanty, it was amazing!

Rogue "analog" delay pedal

pretty nifty box it came in

I was in the market for a new delay pedal when this one came along. The rogue "analog" delay pedal. This one I swooped on for $30 bux shipping included! We cannot compete with the Chinese! I can't make a delay pedal for parts alone for that cheap. Slaves probably made this pedal and I'm a dick for buying this but I needed a new one and the good ones like the boss or line6 delays are just a little bit out of my budget. I digress, I got this "analog" delay pedal for ridiculously cheap and I am putting analog in quotes like that because It's a digital delay, when I opened it up it had the same pt2399  chip that is in all these cheap digital delays. I had a danelectro spring reverb pedal and a rocktron short timer and they both used this IC chip and I easily modded those so they worked the way I wanted to. This time I took pictures. Right away when I got it out of the very cool looking box it came in I noticed two things that sucked about it: one was that the shortest delay you could get from it was not very short at all, and the second was that it would not self oscillate no matter how high the repeats. These aspects especially the  latter would be semi-desirable traits of a delay for some people but I like to have a really short delay so I can get a room sound and I like a lot of feedback from a delay it reminds me of skinny puppy vocals. Also bauhaus used delays alot.  If you just google search pt2399 there's a plethora of good stuff on modding this chip and making your own delay pedal.

Pin 6 resistance to ground controls delay time. I took out a 10k resistor = quicker delays. I read that you want to have at least a 1k resistor here. It's true I just removed it and put a glob of solder there so now I just try not to have the delay time all the way up during start up or else it needs to be reset.

The 10k resistor I took out is right there it says 103

glob=after

this is the example circuit on the datasheet. Inside this pedal there's pretty similar stuff going on. The feedback or repeats knob is the pot in between pins 14 and 16. This pedal had a fixed 33k resistor that I took out that was limiting self oscillation.

it's the third one down, the row on the right, the one that says 333 on it

and after no resistor = massive self oscillation
and the final product!

The green monster

I've always had the most trouble with names, I don't like to name songs, I have lots of ideas for bands but i would hate to have to choose just one, I even hate naming pets! I usually just let someone else suggest a nickname that becomes a title or I just describe the thing I'm naming and that's the name. In this case both happened. My friend mike called this thing the green monster before I had a name for it and it is just a big green monster. it has three oscillators and a filter. The knobs are authentic de-commishined aircraft knobs from the inside of an airplane cockpit.

plastic nostalgia

I vaguely remember shirt tales from when I was a kid. I think my older sister may have watched it. This plastic lunchbox has printed on art, which is pretty nice since the older ones with sticker art are peeling and/or faded. It's copyright date is 1981 which makes it pretty old and it's in great shape for it's age. It also says made in USA. Thermos and Aladdin products were proudly made here until about the mid nineties I think. I made another amp just like this one in blue with a Flintstones scene on it. I didn't take a pic before binging them down to Arcata to sell. They sound great! Go and check them out if you are in town this nine volt amp and many more like it are for sale at
wildwood Music

Circuit bent Josh Ruff

Hello, I didn't see you standing there you scared me. In 2007 I was working as a day janitor at an elementary school in southern California when I had an accident at work that caused me to be off work for a while, six weeks. I was moving a 300 lb cart full of textbooks by pulling it behind me down a slight hill, (smart move) and I looked up for a second to wave hello to a teacher (safety first)and the cart smashed against my right foot like my foot was a door stopper. Or, like when you are skateboarding and the wheel on your skateboard hits a little rock or a date pit and you go flying.  Well, the wheel hit my foot anyways and the sudden impact fractured two different little bones in my foot. It also hurt like eight bitches on a fuckin' bitch boat! I never told anyone the exact details of what happened. That I was waving at someone when I had that little accident. Only me and that teacher knew until now. I kinda feel like she always felt bad about that after it happened because her greetings in passing were always especially awkward after that, after I had returned to work. If you like noise you like circuit bending. I like noise. I always have ever since I was a kid. I'm not sure what exactly led me down the rabbit hole to circuit bending but time off work is kind of what started it all. Also, thank the maker for the Internet, because it gave me circuit bending and that definitely changed my life. Within days of discovering the comparatively few circuit bent videos there were on YouTube back then I was digging old keyboards out of my grandmother's garage and circuit bending them and putting it on youtube.

These are all re-posts on my secondary YT channel that were originally posted on the puff handy YT channel from '08-'09. This one is over six minutes long! I love keyboards like this one with a little digital brain that just responds to power starve by performing all these wonderfully unpredictable glitches. I did the paint job on that one with a bunch of leftover ironlak colors I had in the backyard from my painting days, (see "graff" archive). After that, all I did was add a power starve knob and a little LFO circuit with a 555 timer. It just keeps going and I sold it on eBay but while I had it I played with it every night and it never did the same thing twice it was amazing! The guy I sold it to said that he had an autistic son that loved it so that's something to feel all warm and fuzzy about. This project sent me into a frenzy out at the yard sales and thrift shops looking for all the electronic instruments to bend that I could find.

And here's another cool little power starve one:


Here's another really early one, a Casio MT-240. A circuit bending dream come true. so many bends. I actually still have this one it has about a million more switches now. I should make a new video of it; like a before and after. at the end you can see one of my first pedals, LFo/filter. I only made one of those and I don't know why it was awesome.



This one is my favorite. This is a mish mash of this Casio ML-1 I circuit bent. It's like highlights; a best of. Very short and sweet. As you can see I started getting really fancy with my demo videos at this point.



This next video is my piece de resistance. It's a circuit bent star trek communicator replica, re-housed in a radio shack project box, married to a circuit I built using a 4066 switch and a LFO so it pushes the button over and over again and the other knob adjusts pitch. Please don't ask me to build another one of these because I never will again but it was so amazing it still remains in my heart even though I sold it years ago. I hope you have enjoyed this brief, probably incomplete and possibly incoherent history of me and circuit bending. I have.

cherry sours synth in the lobby

Here's a demo of both my kermit lunchbox amp, (sold) and my cherry sours synth which is currently on ebay right now. This was shot in that really shiny lobby in between the golden harvest and the Kushite. The acoustics are great in there, and all the GH employees had gone home so I had free reign to do this while Jam closed up the shop. Enjoy!

Altoids low pass filter

Here's some more of my wonderful altoids tin modular low pass filter. After about four years of doing demo videos of the uniquely vexing atari punk console I've developed a style of playing it that has just evolved from trying my hardest to convey through youtube just how cool and musical the APC is. My routine goes as follows: I put a spool of thread on top of my head and make sure it balances there the whole time; this step is very important! Then I set the right knob all the way to low and then sweep through all the stepped tones, done. Next, I move the range knob up a notch and then sweep through all the tones from low to high again, check. Guess what I do next? You guessed it! I repeat that over and over again until my head explodes like that guy on scanners. Doing this whole routing with puffhandy's dandy modular altoids low pass filter has changed my life! It's made me grow a little taller and my greasey skin cleared up. My teeth are whiter and my lawn looks better, in fact, I am pretty sure that puffhandy's dandy modular altoids low pass filter saved my marriage!

I shot this In Arcata at the Kushite and at the end you can see G street out the window when baby Olive pulled the plug on the whole thing .