(as of March 18, 2006)
In 2002 I was investigating what I call "Sculpting Sounds" and while browsing about the web discovered Reed Ghazala's site on circuit bending. Looking further I found several other related sites, picked up some noise toys at Goodwill and Salvation Army and started poking around inside them. Neat noises resulted! I have continued to do this ever since. In January of 2006 as the pile of circuit bent toys piled up I started to list them on ebay. To my pleasant surprise they sold and I then used the sales to buy more toys to bend.
Will admit for me the main interest is in the process of bending and then spending a short time playing and sampling the sounds. The wife and cat (who flattens her ears in disgust) tolerate my play and the parakeet Taz bounces about chirps in excitement when I find a particularly obnoxious noise.
Tend to have several approaches to bending a given circuit depending on my mood and the circuit itself. I generally start looking for body contact points with a couple of metal probes I made up (3/32 copper coated steel welding rod with points ground on them). If I find any of interest I will immediately solder some wires on to keep track of them (not big on note taking but am good with the iron). Will next check to see if putting a potentiometer on the power supply causes any neat effects. Only then will I carefully start making contacts between points with the probes wired together. Real easy to toast a circuit doing this (sometimes will put a potentiometer in the line) and is especially so with drum machines.
On all devices I add some type of output for the sound -- either a 1/4" or 1/8" jack depending on the amount of space available and install an on/off switch/reset if the device does not have one (find it particularly irratating if a device sitting on my crowded desk keeps getting turned on when stuff is piled on it (see the bottom of the workshop page).
Yes I play with caps including the air gap type (picked up a full box of them at a junk sale), potentiometers, and other odd stuff between bend points. Including the entire circuits. Take the wires from a couple of bend points and start probing a second circuit with them to see if any good noise results.
Tend to clump the bends into the following categories:
Basic Buzz & Squawk Box -- Makes drones, squawks, chirps and tics. Old radios, cassette decks, amp circuits and some keyboards.
Keyboard Modified -- A bend or series of bends that changes the output of the keyboard. The musical scale is preserved but the expected output sound is changed.
Warped Noise Toy -- To somehow pervert the output of one of the many noise toys available. They are pretty bad to begin with and it seems only appropriate to make them even worse!
Random Sequence Generator -- Some point you hit (generally a momentary touch/connection) that causes the device to go into a long sequence of random or semi-random notes and sounds. I have a Talk 'n Learn Numbers that has a contact point that causes this. An additional potentiometer on the power source adds even more neatness.
Sound Sculpture -- I have several of these in process. Basically pull the circuit from something, do one of the above to it and put it in a completely new container/form.
And I continue. Am particularly looking forward to working more on the Sound Sculptures. Will see what more I can come up with.