Trying to FIX: 1970s Dubreq Stylophone 

I noticed your keyboard was no longer one scale in tune with the deviated resistor. The first four notes where in one key, then jumped to a slightly different key for the rest of the scale. I waited to listen with resistor restored and sure enough the entire key board was one smooth scale. So your alteration did change things, just not what was expected. Cool gadget. edit: just reached the end of the video, yep it all makes sense. Neat. I bet the key jump was exactly where you changed resistance.

I really like the look of the old electronics. And I really like to see the cleaning process; it's always my favorite part of the videos. I don't know why, haha

I remember these were so scientific when I was a child. It sounded annoying then and sounds more so now lol

"I can see how quickly I'll lose all mysubcribers" not sure why but this made me laugh far too much for far too long

The resistors are indeed in series as you mentioned. They form an LCR circuit pretty much as the buzzer circuit in your latest designer clock video. The resistors define how long the capacitor needs to charge and discharge. This creates a waveform which is amplified and directed to the speaker.

All the resistors are in series. You just tap into one of the resistors in the series of resistors. By tapping into the next resistor in the series of resistors, you just increase the total resistance in the oscillator circuit. So, by increasing one resistor on your pcb all the tones after that one resistor shift. So, you keep the same direction. Ah, I saw that you found it at the end of the video.

The only guy that is annoyed when something is not broken 🤣

I have never seen one of those before. I would have loved to have one as a kid.

David Bowie - Space Oddity Kraftwerk - Pocket Calculator Pulp - Pink Glove The White Stripes - Icky Thump Manic Street Preachers - Why So Sad Pulp - Styloroc (Nites of Suburbia) David Bowie - Slip Away Erasure - Don't Say Your Love Is Killing Me Marilyn Manson - You and Me and the Devil Makes Three They Might Be Giants have used it on several songs.

Thanks Vince

You are correct about how the pitch change works due to the series resistance. You've just had a taste of what we used to call "circuit bending" back in the day. It was mostly about changing values of components (usually on an electronic musical instrument) in order to "create" or "discover" interesting new sounds, all the while learning about electronics in the process. You could hook up your scope to it (pretty uncommon back then, as they were so expensive) and see these waveforms in action. BTW, that smaller variable potentiometer possibly changes the vibrato speed or its pitch width. If you decide to vary this from its original setting, it would be a good idea to record its original position using a marker or recording the resistance values between its contacts, in case you want to return it to its "factory spec". I saw three separate transistors on the board. My guess is one is wired as an oscillator, which creates the main waveform, one is for the vibrato (which is a second oscillator that modulates the previous waveform) and the third is probably wired as an amplifier to power the speaker. There's tons of fun to be had tinkering about these simple circuits, especially with an oscilloscope and you can learn some valuable electronics concepts this way. Good video, Vince, and happy circuit bending!

Sounded to me that you've changed the pitch of the upper half of the keyboard as the resistors are wired in series. Also that small variable resistor could be for the vibrato speed.

Good video great. I like the vibrato speed on this I changed one of my capacitors on my mine so it was a faster sounding vibrato similar to this as it was very slow

The reason that the keyboard resistors are all different values and seemingly random is because the relationship between the keyboard voltage and the oscillator frequency is not linear. In our western musical scale, the pitch of each note rises exponentially as you move up the keyboard, requiring various technical solutions to getting the scale in tune. The simplest approach, as used in the Stylophone, is to use a resistor chain where each resistor is a different value, carefully chosen to make the oscillator run at the correct frequency. The big innovation in electronic music was when Robert Moog developed the 1 volt per octave relationship which massively simplified the design of monophonic keyboards by allowing all the resistors to have the same value - the downside of this is that the oscillator has to be much more complicatedm, relegating it only to professional instruments of the era. The simplest method for DIY hobbyists like myself, was to use a preset potentiometer for each key then they could be tuned individually (starting at the highest note and working downwards). One negative of this approach was that if one key drifted out of tune, all the keys below it would also be out of tune, since the keyboard is essentially a series voltage divider. Ahh, the good old days before digital oscillators and MIDI :)

You must have a bunch of random stuff you have fixed (or not) it would be cool to see you modify some stuff. I thought one of these would be a cool Bluetooth speaker if you could turn it on and off with the old switch. I'm sure you would come up with some awesome stuff. I loved the switch XL

I remember as a kiddy Rolf Harris at Liberty's in Oxford Street promo'ing these, I only had eyes for Hamley's down the road and wasn't paying attention much as Hamley's had them awesome train set layouts and Rolf could stick his prong where the sun shineth not I was thinking back then hehe

LOL sounds like my arse of a morning :D

Wow ,however i have a question , can use this repair tip for recent device too?

Hi Vince i love all your videos , ive just bought a stylophone thats not working , i just wondered can you clean the contacts with a fibre pen or will that damage it many thanks Darryl

With those Maths, you've tripled the value of the Stylophone!!! It's a definite keeper.

David Bowie's Space Oddity was played on a Stylophone, why not have a go at it

sure that tune was a bit of rhubarb & custard the cartoon at 23:07 now that shows my age lol

I'm pretty sure the plastic is ABS, which is usually very durable. But after about 50 years it can become quite brittle. In the very long term it will breakdown completely and turn to dust.

maybe the resisters are accumulative so moving one from one position to the other does not change the pitch. it just changes where the tones start.

"Trying to fix a 1970's Stylophone, or, Vince tries his hand at circuit-bending". Narrator: "It doesn't go well."

***ADDENDUM*** I suspect a few Caps may need replacing as the sound is a little on the harsh side, also I suspect that variable resistor "The one you stated you wouldn't touch" may have been messed with as I feel the tone is a little off, ergo the notes are rather harsh.. Just note the setting and move it a little and see if the notes sweeten up..

Need to find some Deoxit spray for those hard to reach components.

Careful that tune you played at 22:45 sounded like the theme from Inspector Gadget.

Remember my Mam bought my Dad one for his birthday, he took 30 minutes and could play any tune after that lol

You could gold plate these pads. Its gonna be nice :D

There is a difference. You've changed the note, just not how you thought you had. It seems have just upped the pitch slightly on that one note.

LOL 2 in a day good sir! why thank you ! I have a game gear and 2 gameboys im debating doin some restore vids on.... seems like so much fun !

It's important to keep the tip clean. Sorry, I couldn't help it.

i used to own one of these

Vintage Korg Volca

If you post high quality photos of both sides of the board I could reverse engineer it in falstad.com so you can play with it online.

Oooh so that's how you change the battery lol

Great vintage item Vince.

I can’t open the lid

Their is a newer one

And in 2008

Wow, a bit annoying (not you, the actual output from the device). It's like a crude without a single melodic sound xylophone.

Stylophone, Rolf, nope. 😂😂😂 Keep up the good work fella but be careful, operation yewtree will be knocking on your door ☺️🤣 Edit: don’t say ‘fiddle with it’. 😂😂😂😂

I can't believe it still got mine !!!!! 😂

Close enough to a hour

Think that's a 1968-69 model

Who here has actually been to Mymatevince.com?

Poor choice of item to repair given the history of this item and the individual who promoted it...

I name that tune in one..................RUBBISH HaHa

Shhhhhhh! Don't mention Rolf Harris!

the resistor you soldered DID something. it changed the key "F" and all following keys. listen again, you can hear it in the video ;) maybe check with a digital guitar tuner if you dont hear it

OMG, the first xmas present I remember getting. Promoted by Rolf Harris. Nuff said.

"It says tuning, what's this do?" It makes it go from sounding like a dying cow to sounding like an incontinent cow, Vince.

In school our music teacher had a classroom sized batch of these, used as a low cost option to teach the basics. We'd all have to check the pitch was correct first, and then at some point in the lesson we'd all be trying to play the same tune in sync! Great fun once, very annoying after a while :-). Commonest problem was a flat battery, quite a few had that split in the cable. I found a schematic on the web, it's very simple - just a single transistor oscillator fed by that stack of series resistors and a single transistor amp. I'd keep the power switch off while changing the battery, it looks like the amp would be damaged if you accidentally reversed the connections.

Vince: I could do this as my music so I don't get copyrighted Me: oh no please no Vince: I could see how quick I could lose my subscribers Me: hahahaha That was so funny just the way you said it. Thanks mate

I'm not an expert, but in my experience bakelite is usually associated with older pieces ('10s-'40s), but by the '70s bakelite was largely being phased out (by phenolics) unless in smaller components.

Rolf will be playing with his didgery doo after watching this !

Fascinating to see that old Stylophone! The perfect gift to annoy people nearby!

"Wait a minute this thing works just fine, That eBay seller lied to me."

That thing sounds like Wall-E

hi vince the brass bit on the end of the sylus is just glued in and can be pulled out letting you change the wire ps enjoyed the video.

A little cool trivia for you. The metal grill on the front was used on the ANH Darth Vader’s belt boxes.

The resistors are all in series and the keys connect between resistors. Each note adds an additional resistor, so adding one more in the middle just shifts all the later notes up a bit.

For some reason I've repaired a few of these over the years. Always pretty much the same problem. You've got an earlier model there with the black keys and separate resistors, later ones used resistor arrays instead.........I'm boring myself here. 😂 Either way of it's the originals of the modern ones, they sound bloody awful. 😂

I mum has 2 of these. I took one and restored it. Pity, the pen separated from the wire so soldering it back on is kind of ugly. Works though.

v-eye-bra-toe

If you learn what the resistor colour codes mean, then when you test them with a multimeter you can see if the actual value is the same as the intended one. This will help reduce guesswork.

Top bloke, I've just found the instructions along with a 1970 star trek sweet cigarette box in the same place. I think the sweet box is worth a lot more than my stylophone 😄👍

Well if you are short of a fix it video, pre-load ones children with cheap Lidl's cola, when children are suitably pinging off the walls, let them loose at a device with tools and hey presto, you will have a full on fix it video worthy of the name ;) Just think of the possibilities and all that for 15p for a 2 litre bottle of fun :D

All the resistors are in series and have outputs from different points to keys, imagine this as potentiometer and stylus is the wiper of it so when you change one resistor you change total resistance of it (all keys are misaligned and shifted on octave) and the stylus is in parallel on them. If the stylus was in series with resistors it would make a difference. You can desolder one resistor of each end and solder two ends of potentiometer there and its wiper to stylus and it will work as smoothly adjustable tone generator ;)

David Bowie. 2001 Space Oddity. Nuff said.

Good to learn oscillator circuits

Think you mean Octave vince

Bloody hell he can play rhubarb and custard on it 😂😂😂

A little disappointed that the wire couldn't be replaced.

im 41 and that toy is before my time. id say they would be early to mid 50's

Great video Vince. Great to see you doing older electronics again. I much prefer these type of videos and old toys rather than modern electronics!

Hi, this is a good learning electronic’s circuit for you. Try to draw the circuit and learn from it, It’s a simple oscillator with voltage dividers.

Throw it in a a bucket of water it will break then you will have to fix it!

Sounds like a wet fart vince 😂😂😂

You're right that the resistors are what determine the pitch, but rather than each key going through one individual resistor, it goes through the whole stack of them down to one end, so when you change one resistor you change all of the keys to one side of it.

Trying to... figure out how things work?

I mentioned placing a protection diode in between one of the a battery leads and the PCB Err-"somewhere else in response to someone else's Comment" I remember having a similar one of these, but the one I had was even smaller, it had Gold plated keys as well a the Probe or Tip was also gold plated which had worn away causing all sorts of grief..

try and fix the wire vince with some new silicone wire

You should get you some spray electronics lubrication for switches and knobs it helps with that crackling noise when turning knobs and switches.

Give it to Rolf Harris he will sort it out😳

What a horrible device!

I found the schematic at www.waitingforfriday.com/?p=334 The active components are 2 diodes, a PUT transistor, and 2 generic NPN transistors. the stylus is directly connected to the battery and the keys are a simple voltage divider circuit.

Look at this old hand soldered board.. a true beauty :)

Enjoyed that

First

Hey Vince, for the break, you could just desolder the wire from the board, feed some shrink tubing down and heat that over the break, since the stylus can't be opened.

That would make a great doorbell for your brother if his breaks again. Lol.

I love the inside of it. So simple and pretty.

I have 2 of them, both work great. Edit: Paid £5 for the two.

Your "coil" is a potentiometer, like a volume knob or temp control on a soldering iron...

Did we all shout "octave"?

Vince, you may not have noticed, but where you added a resistor, a note in the musical scale was missed out. It appears that every note to the right of your resistor was pitched-shifted up by exactly one semitone. After you removed the resistor, the musical scale was restored and the missing note was back to its usual place. As a musician, I noticed the missing note immediately.

Didn't even attempt to play Silent Night. It is not copyright and can't be DMCA. Son, I am disappoint! Please thumbs up to get Vince to show of his musical ability with the stylophone ;)

@27:32 this really rings a bell with me, as had a stylophone as a kid. and the ink smudges says that it is a left handed person which I am. 1979 would have been too early for me though, as I was 3 back then. but might have had it 2nd hand about early to mid 80's off the back of a lorry as my grandfather always used to say!! when it was actually off his company partners kids as they grew up. and I know my parents are having a bit of a de-clutter, so might have gone to a charity shop and then been sold on, I wouldn't know without talking to my parents, but be interesting to find out, not that I played with it that much if it was mine, due to the annoying sound that it made.