Casio Voiceman V-10 Circuitbent Sampling Keyboard

Circuitbent Casio V-10 Sampling Keyboard for sale.

These are new to us, but we picked a couple up to see what the potential was for messing about with the circuitry. They’re uncommon so you’ll not seemany elsewhere and certainly not like this one. Classic cheap Casio toy-like keyboard – the shot of the underside looks half finished (but it’s not), however “cheap” in this case meant that we knew it’d probably sound amazing with the right interference with the circuit from Circuitbenders…

Even untouched, this is a lot of (odd) fun: with onboard intruments and a range of vocal sounds, you can channel your inner Swingle Singer and scat along to an assortment of vanilla songs/rhythms. So far, so weird, but the bending takes it to another level. While it’s not able to accept the same levels of modification as the Casio SK-1 , it now sports a useful line in and out, but the most exciting development is being able to massively ramp up the crunchy weirdness with addition of a clock rate control, pushing the sample time far beyond what is sensible. The resulting ultra-lofi bitcrushed mayhem is just wonderful and opens up this as a unique effect unit as well as a bonkers instrument.

It also has numerous rhythms and accompaniments, plus various features connected to the sampling including reverse and loop. Almost all the controls are in Japanese so there will be bit of trial and error to find out what it does (Google Translate on your phone is key here), but you’ll have fun working it out 🙂

DETAILS OF MODS:

Originally this has no line in or out but these are now added, with a switch to change between the mic or line in.

In addition it has an added switch to turn off the internal speaker if you are using the line out.

You’ll also see the clock source switch and reclocking knob on the righthand side of the keyboard. This allows you to switch from the internal fixed clock to an added variable one. This will change the pitch of the keyboard, but also controls the sample rate and length when sampling. With the clock set higher than normal sampling time will be shorter, but better quality. With the clock running slower the sample time can be massively extended at the “expense” of becoming ridiculously lofi.

Note that if you change clock source while the keyboard is switched on – it will crash and you’ll need to restart it.

POWER:

Takes 5x AA batteries or a 7.5v power supply (not included). Probably runs fine with a lot of 9v supplies, but you do so at your own risk.