The bitch that bites... And ruins audio signals.
Features:
- Mic and Line inputs
- On/Off Toggle Switch
- Two controls: !? and >:( allowing for completely nonsensical audio manipulation
- Line out
The Vice Hag is my first ever complete circuit bent project, and as such is a little bit rough around the edges. The origins of this project are simple: a voice changing toy megaphone with three sound options: Robot, Kid and Normal. Normal is just a simple amplifier: it takes the sound and amplifies it, meaning that as well as a mental audio smasher, the Hag can function as a simple lo-fi amp.
The other two modes are where things get interesting however: These modes effect shift the pitch of the signal and distort it as well, and to be honest it's an interesting little thing to play with before the hacking. However, I wanted to use the Hag as a general audio processor instead of just a handheld unit, and as such things needed to be changed.
Step one was fitting a jack socket on the output instead of the speaker:- As well as needing it for chaining audio together, it was also necessary to stop She Who Must Not Be Annoyed from... well, being annoyed. This was a simple job, that just involved desoldering the speaker and sticking a mono socket in it's place.
A similar thing was done for the input; I simply tacked a jack socket onto the board at the same place the mic joins, and luckily for me due to sheer luck the switching socket worked perfectly, cutting the mic off when the line is plugged in. On testing, it seems that the effects also add a pretty aggressive gate to the chain as well, as only the hardest played notes from my otherwise unamplified guitar came through - I'm sure if I were clever enough I could amplify it internally, but I've been interested in building a little amp anyway, so it's no biggy for now.
What else? Ah, the power. Gone is the trigger mechanism (The actual lever glued into place), and in it's place is a toggle switch - once again, it's going to be a signal processor, not really a megaphone, and as such it doesn't need the momentary on. Also added are two pots which affect two different controls: !? and >:(. !? Alters the pitch of part of the signal, and >:( does.... Well, I'm not really sure, but combined with !? it can pull out some pretty hellish sounds - You're probably starting to see why I gave the controls pretty vague names. >:( only actually has two settings, and as such a pot was probably the wrong control to fit, I suppose fitting an SPDT at some point can be something to add to the Vice Hag v2, should such a horrible slag ever be born (Which is likely, as I've got the board of another voice changer upstairs), as well as a few other things.
I think that's about it as far as electronics goes: A liberal amount of correction fluid was used to decorate the unit, including 'amusing' names for all the controls - The three effect modes are now known as 'Hag', 'Bag' and 'Slag', for example.
Potential to-do list:
- Build a speaker that can be plugged in to the unit
- Work out a feedback loop (Any suggestions would be handy)EDIT: I've got an idea.
- Make the soldering better - my iron died half way through, and I'm still learning!
- Find a way to decrease the aggressiveness of/bypass the gate on the effected channel
Images:
Sounds:
Human Voice
