SK-5

Like most would-be circuit benders of that time, I randomly stumbled across the "escapist sample shuttle" Article by Reed Ghazala in the early 2000's while casually wandering around this exciting and then still new-ish (well, for me anyways) internet. I'm pretty sure that I am not the only one who would claim that this text changed his life.

It was a sort-of tutorial how to circuit bend a Casio SK-1. After I'd read it, I neeeded to have one immediately!

Only trouble was: I couldn't find one around. Or at least not for the right price. Although ebay was a far cry from the all-encompassing behemoth of used things it is today, there already were people speculating on the vintage and retro aspects of certain things. I have no idea how lucrative it is to deal the vintage card by calling something "rare" of which several million units exist worldwide, it always makes me wonder who falls for that kind of crap...

So there was no SK-1 around, I did find a SK-5, though. Being the newer, slightly more advanced instrument (4 Samples instead of one, some more advanced options for looping, etc), I decided that it would do just as well.

Which it didn't. It was a big old pain in the arse. It crashed all the time. Luckily enough, I didn't know that this kind of behavior wasn't the norm. The sounds I got out of it were unlike anything I'd heard before, which again, is not really surprising for the first bend. Anyhow, it seemed worth the effort. Otherwise, I probably would have never finished it. Or bent anything else, for that matter.

While being unpredictably unstable and therefore at times hard to deal with, I used it A Lot, especially during my Noise Lounges in the Rotari in Offenbach.

I don't really remember what exactly I did with it, other than randomly connect some stuff on the circuit board with switches.

I made quite a few songs on my first CD with it.

Blablabla....