circuit bending an old crappy Radio Shack pedal
I picked this up at a yard sale thinking it was maybe an actual reverb pedal, but when I tried it at home it was just a very short delay pedal, which I already had. So it sat on my shelf for a bit before I remembered that I have the tools to alter electronics, sometimes for the better.
The first step was to desolder the sliders on the board and replace them with pots. I also sacrificed the battery bay (because 6 AAs??). Then I had plenty of room for knobs and switches.
Bending this was pretty straight forward, in that if I found a bend I'd usually incorporate it. Bends on somewhat simple hardware have a way of interacting that's impossible to discover without soldering.
Here's the plate once I drilled (too many) holes:
And here's the board once I soldered it:
Designing the face plate on a computer and gluing the printout to the metal was a first for me. In retrospect, since there are many ways bends interact, I'd make the face plate without labels to make it a little more exploratory and experiential. I'd also use thicker paper.
The original sliders live on as the bottom row of knobs. I found two distortions and an actual reverb (two other kinds of pedals!!) as well as a couple sometimes-useless others. Have a listen! (The initial sound is the dry signal.)