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$2 sampler hack

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This awful figurine from the SAW movies is actually a pretty cool 30 second sample/playback module that’s easy to hack. You can buy them here for $2 a pop from allelectronics.com. It’s almost worth the $2 just for the AAA batteries that come with it.

Add audio IN and OUT jacks, a pitch control and a loop switch using the schematic shown below.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 1:42am and is filed under Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

10 Responses to “$2 sampler hack”

  • 1

    Joe said:
    October 1st, 2009 at 6:56am #

    Hi,
    nice idea.
    Any demos?
    Thanks

  • 2

    jackybraillard said:
    November 2nd, 2009 at 8:25pm #

    Thanks for the schematic man, you roxx !!!

    Got one of these but unfortunately there is an unexpected “click” sound in background… and that sounds loops in time whatever duration of recordings, soooooo anoying :(

    –> The yada yada yada toy sounds better !

  • 3

    casper said:
    November 2nd, 2009 at 8:32pm #

    Hey Jacky,
    yeah that clicking is really annoying! Not all of them do it, about 1 in 4.
    The good news is it can be fixed.
    Remove and/or replace the cap C1. It is the one that the loop switch connects to. On the drawing above, follow the wire from the left lug of the loop switch. This wire connects to C1. Removing it will get rid of the click but I vaguely remember it causing some other problem. In any case replacing it should do the trick. I think it’s just a bad cap.

  • 4

    Tommy said:
    November 4th, 2009 at 4:58pm #

    Here’s a link to Alex’s take on it. Thanks Pete…nice schematic.

    http://www.getlofi.com/?p=1152

  • 5

    jackybraillard said:
    November 4th, 2009 at 8:56pm #

    Awesome !

    I knew you would probably have a trick for that problem, thank you so much dude :)

    Cheers from France.

  • 6

    david wright said:
    January 11th, 2010 at 8:46pm #

    what a cheap and trashy good time
    thanks so much for puting this up

    www.notbreathing.com/lilsampler.jpg

  • 7

    tara said:
    March 26th, 2010 at 12:23pm #

    thanks for posting this!
    I’m giving this a go but I’m not getting the pitch shift to work. Also the loop time is very short - no matter how long I record - will replacing the cap fix that?

  • 8

    casper said:
    April 11th, 2010 at 12:52pm #

    @tara: There’s an important step missing from the drawing. Look at the two points on the board where the pitch pot is connected. Between those points is a small resistor. you have to remove that resistor! then the pitch adjustment should work.
    The loop is unfortunately a fixed length. It will be the same no matter how long you record.

  • 9

    Kimaxe said:
    May 9th, 2010 at 11:20am #

    hello

    big thank you for your explanation of this cheap sampler

    i want to know if you have found some other modification
    into this sampler (distortion ,cheap effect ,very low sampling with ltc 1799,lfo …) ?

    i have receveid two piece of this lil sampler and i want to search if is possible to found other things with it .

    good continuation

  • 10

    casper said:
    June 3rd, 2010 at 3:21pm #

    @Kimaxe:
    I haven’t modified the sampler beyond what is shown in the drawing. I imagine there is more to find with some searching.

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