Recently got a couple backorders of MAKE and saw the very informative article on circuit bending in Vol. 04.

I’ve been wanting to try this out for awhile, but never got around to really learning much about it. In fact, I’ve been saving this Staples Easy Button for just this kind of project.

I cracked open the case before I realized that it conveniently unscrews under the little rubber feet on the bottom. I was able to get a couple odd noises from it, but nothing too exciting. I decided to take the sounds it did generate and make a little song. Click here to listen.

It has a red LED above the word “easy” and it lights when a sound is played. The red button replaces the normal button push and plays the sound as normal. The black button is designed to play the sound at a lower pitch, but it also buzzes the first time you play it after hitting the red one. Sweet!

I also wired a 1/4 phone plug jack on the side for convenient studio recording. Probably won’t have much use to use this live. Good skill building exercise, though. Feel free to comment.