Saxxy synth kazoo

[petey twofinger]

 i got my hands on one of these at salvation army for 3.50 . i imediately thought "guitar synth" , got home googled and came up with this

here is a guy playing a stock saxxy

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3r9v3_captain-kazoo-sad-saxxy_music

here is a guy who did a duck tape mod

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/archive/index.php/t-320992.html

i would like to do a guit line in to eliminate the mic , i am guessing i will need a boost or something , then rehouse it . i am going to need 10 or so push buttons for the controls , anyone know a cheep but good quality (not radio shack momentary type junk) push buttons ?

anyone mess with one of these before .

the stock unit is pretty fun on its own , i almost dont want to mod it , but ... would love to find another one , or KNOW that its possible before hacking it .

it runs on 4 aa's for 6 volts , now if i build a 9 volt boost can i use a single 9 volt power supply and then splice in a 6 volt voltage regulator for the saxxy ? like 9 v goes to the boost , 6v goes to the saxxy ? is that the way to do this or do i need a circuit . i have a few ideas like this , 2 devices , different volts , i was hoping to just use a lil 7506 , do i need more than that ?

thanks .

[markeebee]

You might want to message TopTop:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=88371.0

[joelindsey]

Oh I'm so jealous! I've been craving one of those ever since I saw the video of TopTop's Saxxy in action. I'm a big fan of his work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP-GMNY_yMI

[chi_boy]

I wonder if that would work for "Lowrider" if you didn't have an actual sax player.

[Earthscum]

I wonder if that would work for "Lowrider" if you didn't have an actual sax player.

You don't need no stinkin' saxes! (lol... name what movie inspired THAT one!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYsW9aWxa6E

[deadastronaut]

^treasure of sierra madre....excellent film!...

we don't need no stinking badges!..

[sundgist]

^treasure of sierra madre....excellent film!...

we don't need no stinking badges!..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ

Blazing Saddles....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=-lj056ao6GE

[deadastronaut]

lol, forgot about saddles....

[sundgist]

Or Badgers...... UHF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx6TBrfCW54&feature=related

[Mark Hammer]

^treasure of sierra madre....excellent film!...

we don't need no stinking badges!..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ

Blazing Saddles....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=-lj056ao6GE

Good call by all parties here.  I can't begin to count the number of ties each year I refer to that line.

[wavley]

Or Badgers...... UHF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx6TBrfCW54&feature=related

Crap, beat me to it!!

UHF is one of cinema's finest moments.

[Earthscum]

^treasure of sierra madre....excellent film!...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ

Blazing Saddles....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=-lj056ao6GE

Or Badgers...... UHF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx6TBrfCW54&feature=related

LOL! In chronological order, even! Mel brooks used it, as many of his scenes, as a parody of the classic film. UHF did an excellent play on it! (nice add with UHF, btw... forgot that one)

So, you get that Saxxy open yet? I think I saw one at the thrift store here (one of the 35 or so). I'm definitely keeping my eyes peeled for stupid kid instruments, now. Get 6 of those, hexophonic pickup, router a larger hole, and squeeze it all in, and have the funkiest stringed instrument ever (I can imagine voicing each string different, having a lo-fi orchestra at your fingertips!). Yeah, a little off the wall, but the thought is pretty kewl.

[joelindsey]

well what are the chances, I just picked one up too. I've opened it up, but I've yet to start modifying it. Here are some photos of the boards if anybody is interested:


from left to right- mic input/power switch board, volume+pitch buttons, instrument+"backbeats" selection buttons, main board (don't know what else to call it)


other side of the switch boards


Close-up of the main board

It's going to be tedious tracing all the wires on that ribbon cable to their respective switches. TopTop used an LM386 to drive the mic input, however he had some "wiggly" pitch tracking. I have a Super Hard On board already populated so I was thinking of driving it with that. I'll document further progress here. Have you made any progress, Petey?

[joelindsey]

So I played around with it last night. Using alligator clips I hooked a 1/4" jack to the mic input terminals, with a cap for blocking DC as suggested by TopTop. Plugging the guitar directly into the jack gave no results, as expected. So I put an LPB-1 between the Saxxy and my guitar, and I was rewarded with the most amazing cheesy fake tuba sound that I have been craving. I don't think the Saxxy tracks distortion well, because when I added a second booster the tracking got a little sputtery like what you hear in TopTop's video clip. Using the neck pickup with the tone rolled off gave much more stable tracking. Rich harmonic content = bad tracking.

I'm unsure about the best way to drop the speaker or headphone output down to guitar level. Any suggestions? If I were to use the headphone output, could I simply disconnect the speaker without causing any harm, or should I put a "dummy load" across the speaker leads? (the two grey wires in the bottom picture)

[jasperoosthoek]

Does anyone know where to get one of these?

I saw they appear on ebay every once and a while.

[petey twofinger]

no i haven't messed with it yet . i have a pretty large fuzz circuit on my breadboard , i need to order some parts . also i am converting my room into a "lab" . i extended my desktop , putting in 2 homemade shelving / cabint storage units . lighting , plenty of outlets and a "sound system" .

i have to admit it may be a lil while but i am defiantly going to get this thing going .

thanks for the pictures ! i will also have some pics and a video or two eventually .

[petey twofinger]

i was thinking i may have a mix on it , like a second channel for the clean guitar sound with a mix control . at that poit it might be nice to come up with a filter to put on the input side for the saxxy circuit that simulates the tone rolled back . that way the straight gutar sound would be "normal" .

no idea how to do that but i am thinking its just a cap ?

[nexekho]

It reads like the thing is doing very crude thresholding and time counting if distortion (which usually amplifies everything, crushing the first harmonic to make clipping and thus making the second harmonic appear more prevalent) causes the tracking to fail and a tone cap rolls off the higher frequencies thus rolling off every harmonic more than the fundamental...

Yeah been having fun implementing this kind of thing using DSP ;]

[joelindsey]

i was thinking i may have a mix on it , like a second channel for the clean guitar sound with a mix control . at that poit it might be nice to come up with a filter to put on the input side for the saxxy circuit that simulates the tone rolled back . that way the straight gutar sound would be "normal" .

no idea how to do that but i am thinking its just a cap ?

That's a good point, having the dry sound available without the rolled off highs would be a plus. I'm just going to spew out my ideas here whether it makes sense or not. Here is my rather crude block diagram/schematic of how I was thinking of doing it:

Obviously I'm leaving out a lot of circuitry; this is just a sketch for the basic idea. The "SHO Boost" doesn't have to be an SHO of course, I just happen to have a populated board kicking around. Note that the signal is split before the low pass filter. The mix pot set in the middle should give equal amounts of guitar and Saxxy, rotating to the right or left adjusts the balance. Once we have this part figured out, maybe the basic layout could be applied to other voice changing toys and such.

what I'm thinking about now:
-Simply splitting the signal in two after the booster stage may be problematic
-getting an even balance of Saxxy and dry signal with the mix knob in the middle may be difficult
-output buffer?

I'd love to get some advice on any of this. I'll try to get the pinout of the ribbon cable on the main board figured out soon.

[Earthscum]

In case anyone wants to give it a shot, this works great for me... it's what I've been using to condition signals for square wave, PWM, Oct. downs, etc.

I actually use 27k instead of 22k for bass. If you still have tracking problems, try a 22nF cap for extra signal "dampening". I have had great success using this in front of Escebedo's  PWM with a 27k/22n with bass. Guitar worked ok with 22k/22n, so maybe 15n would've been good if I had one.

Anyways, have fun. Hope I can find one of these things... it's just too ugly and cool of a sound not to stomp on one!



ETA: You could pull a nice 10x boosted signal from the output of U1 C, and use one of the extra inverters as a buffer like the U1 A stage. Then you have buffered and boosted clean guitar signal to mix with. Want a nice "dub" sound? Pull a signal from the U1 B stage output and buffer it. There's your "Sine".