[Paul] Wrote in to tell us about a quick project that might be useful to others out there. He was having some problems with the DC jack on his Yamaha DD35 portable drum kit. Naturally, he did what most of us would do and just broke out the soldering iron and prepared to solder it back in place(hot glue it afterwards, that always helps too). That part isn’t a big deal, we’ve all seen it a million times. However, while inspecting the DC jack, he noticed something silk screened on the board right next to it. As it turns out, that was a kick pedal jack. After a few minutes hunting for a victim around the house that would be sacrificed for its plug, he got his hands on one. A few moments later he was jamming away with a kick pedal.
We absolutely love these super quick upgrades. [Paul] thought maybe this feature was left out at the last minute, and we’ve seen this type of thing for a number of reasons. Maybe that was a feature kept aside for a more expensive model, maybe there was some other reason it was left off. Frankly, we don’t care, we just think it is awesome that it works!
Stay with us to see a quick video demonstration.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXgQPAsuk98&w=470]
This type of thing is fairly common. With early VCRs you could enable features that were on the higher priced model just by throwing DIP switches, or cutting traces.
I considered getting a drum machine years ago (I forget the Model # now), and in doing research I found that you could add a Foot Pedal exactly as you described here to the lower priced model.
happpy zombie jesus day!
Nice :) and great timing as I literally picked one of these up at the thrift for 2 bux this morning lol. Was gonna bend it anyway this rainy weekend, but now have a fun “warm up” project :) Thanks all!
As others have said, this is fairly common amongst manufacturers. It seems silly to us to “dumb it down” but that is manufacturing and prohibitive? component cost to offer “variety” in models and pricing levels. -end captain obvious rant lol
http://weltenschule.de/TableHooters/instruments.html
this fella has some wonderful info on all of those dinky lil circuit bender’s boards that are neato in their own right. He’s really got a fairly complete understanding of the incestuous manufacturing of them and chipsets that carry across lines and brands even :) It makes some insanely fun rainy day reading (and reminiscing of those dinky lil tunes) and provides great info on those chips for circuitbending.
I’m currently working on finishing up an old Casio HT700. I need to get a new selector knob var resistor and plan on doing the filter/res mods and doing some LED/lighting stuff for wow factor. Currently, it is still having some power issues but I feel that is related to the VR i need to replace. Anyhoo, happy soldering all!