Circuit Bent Casio MT-500

A few years ago acquired a Casio MT-500 it is a pretty unique and great sounding casio synth.   It has really nice sounding key tones and amazing lofi drum sounds with assign able pads so you can play with your fingers.   Unlike most 80s Casios it actually has stereo line outputs for recording that.  Unlike most of the MT series Casios the MT-500 is actually pretty obscure and it is difficult to find any info on the intent about them with how cool they sound I am amazed that more people are not talking about them or circuit bending them.  So I decided to hack mine (very carefully) and I have come up with some really cool and stable bends.  First I went after drum mods I added (7) switches that glitch out the drums:

1) Glitchy Delay Sound

2) Glitchy Distorted Delay Sound

3) Sample and Hold 1

4) Sample and Hold 2

5) Ring Mod Type Sound 1

6) Ring Mod Type Sound 2

7) Ring Mod Type Sound 3

The delay mods sound pretty cool and glitchy both can be used at the same time to really obliterate the drums.  The sample and hold switches make the drum loop go in to an indefinite loop #1 is a little bit longer than #2 only one of these can be used at a time or it crashes the drums and the unit must be reset.  The ring mod sounding switches can all be used in any various combo to create a range of cool glitches.  All of the mods can all be used at the same time with the exception of the sample and hold mods. 

MT500 Drum Bends

Next I wanted to go after glitching out the key sound.  I found a spot on the board that just completely destroyed the keys.  I can not even describe what it does but it is different on each different key setting. There were a few spots that did this (each in different ways) but the problem was finding one the kept the volume level the same after some experimentation i was able to get one to work that didn't drastically raise the volume level compared to the un modded sound.

MT500 Key Bend