Custom audio greeting cards are a trifling gimmick, and a hefty investment compared to their paper-based colleagues. However, the technology inside can be twisted and hacked towards more interesting ends, as [lonesoulsurfer] demonstrates with his sound-bending build.
Rather then go to the trouble and expense of gutting a greeting card, [lonesoulsurfer] simply purchases the sound recording module off eBay which often turns out cheaper anyway. It’s hacked with a couple extra buttons and a speed control, and then wired up with a reverb module that itself gets tweaked to add an echo mode. It’s all bundled up with a speaker and microphone and installed in a case that formerly held an ignition tuning analyzer from the 1970s.
The final result is quite handsome, with a wooden panel holding the speaker and a smattering of knobs, buttons, and switches to play with. After recording an audio sample, it’s possible to speed it up, slow it down, and add echo and reverb until you’re left with something unrecognizable and weird. We’ve actually seen similar projects before, like this author’s first ever article for these hallowed pages. Video after the break.
Do you remember that episode of “Friends” when Ross found his old musical keyboard?
“The Sound”
Oh. That’s what this is.
In an alternate reality, one where Star Trek the Original Series got everything right… I imagine this is exactly what our cellphones would look like today.
Yeah, I definitely got a TOS vibe when I saw this one. Love that enclosure, makes me want to keep an eye out on eBay for more like it.
First half of the 70s tended to look like this before it all went red LEDs and plastic woodgrain.