Electri-fire's Site

I found two of these rack cases at the side of the road.  

Originally contained old industrial precision weighing components. With Nixie tube numeric display. That was a perfect size for the sk-1 pushbutton assembly.  Upper right the  soft reset, power on, on/off LED.  I removed the volume slider. Volume will be a 10K linear pot at the old "calibrate" (+ <---> -) spot.

 I wanted to make a quicky as a tryout. So this controller section has the Reed Ghazala bends ( exchangeable as I have another of these aluminium front plates). Joystick from Bent-tronics.com . So much possible with these in the sk-1 , I havn't decided what to do with it yet.

Cutting up this rebuilt too many times casio with a knife

I collect loads of electronic junk. Aren't these electronic part size standardisations convenient? This Akai tuner frontplate on top has just the right size to put in the other rackcase I have. The sk-1 pushbuttons fit exactly where the Nixi tube display was.

No sample/loop and pitch yet. It will be hardwired to default to chord mode. Record and trigger omitted. It's MIDI after all.

I bought the MIDI interface kit at  http://highlyliquid.com/kits/index.html  . 

I got a pristene little board with components, well packed, fair price. Easy build, clear instructions at the Highly Liquid site. Very fast delivery.

Electri-fire comments:

Everybody wants this, but honestly it has turned out a hassle to use. Why?

The original keys are used to switch functions like envelope options and rhytm select. The MIDI keyboard lacks the markings of the original, nescessitating the use of stickers.

I do not play that many notes on the sk-1 as on "normal" instruments. Often I hit just one note in Chord mode, the bends do most of the pattern variations ( the sound demo of my joybox1 controler is  an example of this phenomenon).

This page may inspire you when youy want to rehouse your sk-1. MIDI is not as usefull as I imagined it would be.

So I will eventually rebuild this (again!) as an expander for another sk-1. Electri-fire doesn't care for the results. He's into the process.