Further adventures in Aliexpress listings #156: ....erm ... .

"Condition - Fair (second-hand) Fair-condition gear should function but will show noticeable cosmetic damage or other issues..." reverb.com/uk/item/8538...

For the connoisseur of Chinese chip fakery: the most blatant CA3080 we've ever seen! Note how absurdly shallow the orientation dimple is, and the strange semicircular mark under the C where they've obviously ground off the original surface, but didn't go far enough, leaving a circular indentation.

RAM shortage? What RAM shortage? Some of the most obvious recycling and reprinting we've seen in a while. Every chip has the same batch code, but with either 1 or 2 very shallow indentations where the surface has been ground down, some with 1 in a corner, some with none, all with solder on the pins.

Yeah, that thing! 😄 @sibegg.bsky.social @lagowski.com

That thing you're about to tag us in or message about. You know the one. Yes, we already know. 😉

From the 1976 build guide for the PAIA 4730 VCF module. You just don't get enough sections going off on a bizarre tangent on using synth modules to create oscilloscope art in modern eurorack build guides!

I'm wondering if it would be possible to de-radicalise IT people, so they actually become capable of answering the specific question you ask them...

🚨🚨🚨!!BREAKING NEWS!!🚨🚨🚨 We've run out of stupid stickers! Until this situation can be rectified all orders will be shipped with a small, but very real element of disappointment at no extra charge. Please bear with us at this difficult time. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Further adventures in Aliexpress listings #435: An existential dread that maybe you missed that day at school, and everyone else has a full set of saliva pliers at home...

The easiest and most fun way of discovering if you are prone to epileptic seizures. Probably best to not watch it if you've been drinking either... You have been warned. 😉

Left we have a genuine Rubycon 10000uF 25v cap. On the right we have five 10000uF 25v caps made by that well known brand 'ChongX' who have somehow managed to defy the laws of physics and make them half the size of the Rubycon! Now taking bets on what voltage they explode. Im guessing around 18v.

We're massive fans of businesses shoehorning themselves into events in a torturously contrived and completely inappropriate manner. This astonishingly on the nose bit of work from Mouser last year is one of the best!

no, no, NO! This is NOT packaging! It defies reason that anybody could possibly think this was packaging!

PCB poetry #275: More wise council worthy of Confucius himself, from the ever intriguing circuitbenders PCB 'Life Tips' department* *Life Tips are very much like "lifehacks", only 64% less likely to result in your intelligence melting due to the tragic banality of existence.

Savagely distorted industrial breakcore jungle amen workout fighting music. I'm just off to repeatedly slam my head in the fridge door...

Just thought it'd be a good idea to clean up some of the cutoff component legs littering the workbench... Like an instant Jackson Pollock!

Nice job paypal. Thats certainly secure...

YES! Even you could make noises as stupid as these stupid noises! A Roland U110 with one of our audio destruction patch boxes that plug in via a ROM card slot. Originally designed for the R8 drum machine, it also works with the U110, U220, U20, MV30 and R8M. circuitbenders.etsy.com/listing/1357...

Dammit! We've run out of stupid stickers...AGAIN! Might just have to get some more of these made, to fill in until we can come up with something new. #eurorack

Someone arranged for Fedex to pick up a package from here tomorrow. Fedex sent an email to confirm it would be tomorrow, and the Fedex guy turned up here literally an hour later. We hadn't even packed the box yet... Given the opportunity to fuck things up and they're suddenly terrifyingly efficient!

If theres any one thing that will completely destroy any illusion of there being even the slightest trace of showbiz involved in synth electronics, its putting together DIY kits. I didn't take loads of drugs in the 90's and 00's so i could sit here bagging individual resistors, and yet here we are.🤔

Well is it or isn't it?

Out of idle curiosity I thought I'd look up how many 1201 FX racks Zoom made. The Google search AI confidentiality informs me it was hundreds of thousands of units, and the source for that information... our website which casually comments it 'must of been made in the hundreds of thousands of units'

Weird how if companies supply additional services i don't really want or care about, when they inevitably don't work it makes me more annoyed than if it was something i asked for I don't need Royal Mail giving updates on the delivery van position, but the fact it just doesn't work makes me furious!

One of our Chip Riser™ boards on a Kawai R50. The chip riser is installed between the PCB and the socketed ROM, allowing you to access the ROM pins on breakout pads without routing a big bundle of wiring from under the board, or dangerously soldering directly to the chip pins on the component side.

We were blocked by a lot of Oregon Grandfathers, Life Loving Labour Supporters, Lifelong Dem's, Vets Against Fascism and accounts Committed to Protecting Democracy a few days back because... checks posts... we voiced an opinion that many machines that use 808 and 909 circuits sound the same. What?

Assistant #2 would like to draw your attention to several of these items.

Random circuitbenderscouk 1970's duck puppet t-shirts exist, and you can exchange money for them for some reason. I've got one, and it draws many an admiring enquiry from random esoteric music guys wearing flat caps at wibbly noise gigs. So if that's your kind of thing, you know what to do...

We've been secretly using these in guitar pedals for years. I can't wait until all those OCD guitar dicks on Facebook groups find out they've been listening to ladies capacitors all this time. It's going to be hilarious! 🤣

What has happened to ebay and Reverb prices recently? Its gone from normally insane to absolutely psychotic. We have a load of alerts set up and every day we get sent a dozen listings, every single one of which there isn't a hope in hell of anyone buying because the prices are just mad!

I assume other people buy from Tayda in Thailand? Is it just us or does shipping get increasingly cheap the more you buy? We just bought around $170 of switches and pots, and 3-4 day shipping via DHL from Thailand to the UK was $1. 🤔 Any more in our cart and they'd be paying us to take it away!

Norway customs keep charging import VAT even though its already paid. We contact Royal Mail to ask whats going on and they say they need an example shipped within the last 7 days to investigate. It takes over 7 days for a package to get to Norway, get through customs and for a buyer to complain....

Some magnificently unnerving talkbox work from Pete Drake & his talking steel guitar! Everyone involved looks weirdly like the uncanny valley of AI generated humans, even though it was recorded in the mid 60's.

ok, it looks like we're going to have to stick a note on the contact page of the site saying 'If you're going to insist on asking chatGPT about this first, then the reason you're now having to ask us is because what chatGPT has told you is complete horseshit. Please don't send it to us as well'

Gosh. Has someone else released a 'new take' on the classic 808 and 909 circuits...? How exciting. I can't wait to find out exactly how identical it sounds to 100 other 'new takes' on the classic 808 and 909 circuits... 😐

Realistically i think we all know that if you absolutely had to change your name to that of a piece of audio kit, then Ensoniq Fizmo would be the way to go... Thats Mr Ensoniq Fizmo to you.

Can't we build a better world? A world where people can live together regardless of race, creed or culture, and with a fundamental understanding that putting fragile audio kit on the bottom of a big box and then filling the box with packaging on top of it achieves absolutely nothing? Dare we dream?

Who would of thought that working in electronic music would be so rock'n'roll that when someone emails to say "i've just bought a Yamaha R100 can you mod it for me", you know exactly which one they've bought because you're tracking them all on ebay and Reverb. This wasn't how it was meant to be.. 🤔

Showbiz electronics question #726: Why is it that guitar people apparently need extra special potentiometers that cost £10 each, when DIY synth builders whose pots are arguably used an order of magnitude more often, usually use ones costing around £1 or less? 🤔

We sell replacement Alesis LCD screens. They come with a plastic film stuck to the front to protect the screen, but we had a couple of complaints the screen was messed up from people who didn't realise they had to take it off, so we started doing a red cross on the film in paint pen, and guess what?

This is the keyboard from an iRig Keys37 PRO midi controller, and that PRO is doing a LOT of heavy lifting! They aren't even separate keys. Each octave of white and black keys are injection molded in one piece called a keyboard tree, with flexible plastic as hinges. This is how crappy toys are made!

Once you've built the same pedal by hand over 100 times the only remaining interesting bit is the increasingly daft colour schemes. I can't imagine how dull it must be to have a corporate identity... Matt textured acid yellow Hate Echo. Get it here! circuitbenders.etsy.com/listing/1173...

What...me? Spending time baiting an ebay seller who I know is lying to me and watching him tie himself in increasingly complex knots trying to explain something that absolutely wouldn't of been a problem had he not decided to pointlessly lie about it? It passes the time... 😉

You'd think we have more important things to be doing, but tax returns don't just avoid completing themselves you know. It takes real dedication to find literally anything else to be fiddling with. Why not open up the Kawai R100 operating system in a hex editor and add your name to the boot screen?

The Acetone FR2L, one of what we like to call 'a lovely piece of furniture' drum machines from the 70's. An absolute nightmare to work on, not least because of ludicrous levels of hum / tones leaking from the LC tank percussion circuits, but also a very wobbly -24v positive ground power arrangement.

The sound of an apocalyptic space war, courtesy of an Alesis HR16 drum machine with an absolutely fried irreplaceable ASIC gate array that controls the sample playback.

I'm wondering if the Germans have a word for that feeling of slightly icky discomfort and sad exhaustion you get from an eBay listing where the seller has very obviously used the AI for the description, and the reams of soulless marketing bullshit just make you never want to buy from them, ever.

PCB Poetry #69: Welcome to another exciting episode of PCB based 'name that 90's industrial track'.

Just remembered years ago arguing with eBay customer service regarding the fact that you're not allowed the username circuitbenderscouk, because the couk bit might tempt people off eBay to a website. They then said with a straight face that for that same reason discoukraine wasn't allowed either. 🤔