Speak and Spell Circuit Bend

This evening I finished off my latest circuit bend, a Speak and Spell. These toys were great back in the day, I even had one when I was a kid, although I don't think I ever learnt much from it. The Speak and Spell is a classic circuit bend with lots of noise making potential. Finding the bends on this device is quite easy, but soldering on the cables was a lot harder than the other bends I have performed. Normally you can hook the wire around resistor legs etc, but for this one you have to solder directly onto the legs of chips.



The circuit board is quite well layed out on this device and it didn't take me long to identify my first bend, a kind of glitchy loop.



I cocked up the first chip leg I tried to solder onto. I applied way to much solder, so had to try and reverse my mistake using the soldering iron and a solder sucker. But on my 2nd attempt I was much more successful.



In the end I added 3 push button switches and 2 body contact points. These contact points let you use your own body as an electrical resister. I'm happy with the bends I done on this machine. There are probably loads more, but I dont want to add them to this machine, I will try and source another speak and spell for that.

Click this link for a short example of this circuit bend that I recorded.