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The keyboard head on against white: a black case with a bright blue control panel and 32 keys, the white ones yellowed with age. FACTORY THIRD is hand-lettered across the panel above the Kawasaki logo in red, pink, blue and green marker. Around it the original 1990s toy graphics are untouched - printed lists headed INSTRUMENT 1, INSTRUMENT 2 and RHYTHM, a column of demo song titles, five yellow drum buttons, three red transport buttons and five green SPECIAL MIX buttons. A round blue speaker grille sits at each end, and added along the top edge are two black knobs at the outer corners and three silver toggle switches.

Circuit-bent toy keyboard · One of a kind

Factory Third

Circuit-bent Available · 1 of 1

This keyboard came out of the factory with a whine already in it. Not a bend, not something I broke: a defect it was built with and sold with. So instead of fixing it I went looking for the two resistors that make it worse, put those on knobs and switches, and now the whine is the instrument. The thing that should have sent it to a landfill is the reason it sounds like this.

  • TypeCircuit-bent toy keyboard, noise and drone synth
  • BaseKawasaki 32-key, DSI Toys item 57756, late 1990s
  • BendsPitch, switchable between two photocells and a knob · Drone · Wild
  • AddedTwo knobs, three toggles, two photocells, quarter-inch line out
  • OutputQuarter-inch line out, and the original speaker still works
  • KeptEvery stock feature. Nothing was removed to make room
  • GraphicsOriginal 1990s artwork, unpainted and unhidden
  • Power3× AA
  • StatusOne of a kind. When it is gone it is gone
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The defect is the instrument

Toy keyboards of this vintage are full of corners cut to hit a price. This one shipped with an audible whine riding under everything it played, which is the kind of thing that gets a toy thrown out rather than repaired. It is also, if you go looking for it, a tone generator somebody already paid for.

Two resistors on the board decide how bad it is. Both of them are under your hands now, and what used to be a fault across the whole instrument is a voice you aim.

The bends

Three of them, on two knobs and three toggles along the top edge.

  • Pitch. Two light-dependent resistors set into the top edge, or a knob, whichever the switch is set to. On the photocells you play it by moving your hand over the case and it reads the room, so a lamp or a window changes what it does. On the knob it holds still and you can set it exactly.
  • Drone. Jumpers the factory whine up into a sustained tone that keeps going on its own. The pitch control governs the drone as well, so it tracks whatever you are doing rather than sitting underneath it as a separate note.
  • Wild. A capacitor tied into a switch, a pot and an LED, which throws the sound chip into changing its own voice about twice a second. You do not pick the patches and you cannot predict them. Hold one note and it will play it to you eight different ways.

Everything it used to do, it still does

Nothing was cut out to make room and nothing was disconnected. All eight Instrument 1 voices and all eight Instrument 2 voices are still there, along with the eight rhythms, the five drum pads, record and playback, the demo songs, and the row of green SPECIAL MIX buttons marked DISK MIX, YO, DO, HA and WOO, every one of them with three exclamation marks. The internal speaker works, so it runs on three AA cells with nothing plugged into it.

The original graphics are untouched. Nothing is painted over and nothing is covered up, because the stock artwork is funnier than anything I would have put there. The demo song list still offers you Auld Lang Syne, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and one called O COW BOY.

Demo

Sound demo coming soon.

The drone and the voice cycling are the whole point of this thing and neither one survives a photograph, so there will be a clip here shortly.

What it is not

There is no CV and no MIDI, and it is not patchable from outside. The bends are internal and they are played from the panel. It is a self-contained noise box with a line out, not a module, and the only thing you can wire it to is whatever that line out goes into.

It is also a toy from the 1990s that got played with before I got hold of it, so the case is scuffed and the white keys have gone ivory. That is the condition it is in and the price is set for it.