On a recent trip, to my local Borders Bookstore. I bought a copy of Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop, bu Mark Brend. It's a book about offbeat instrumnets. From the Theremin, and Ondes Martenot. Even Magnetic Tape, and the Casio VL and VL1. From Early Rythm Machines, to the Jews Harp. It even comes with a CD with various samples of the instruments, disscused in the book. I had never even heard of this book before. It was first Published in 2005.

Also, has anyone on here used any instruments, that are not gennerally used a lot in POP Music? Like Magnetic tape? Or a toy Casio keyboard?

My first keyboard was a VL-tone and when I "borrowed" the 3M Wollensak reel to reel from my high school, I started cutting up tapes. I had no Idea what I was doing as I was 13 at the time but it was quite a lot of fun anyway.

Two of my other friends that same year bought a theremin kit and I got to use it after they got it together. For drums, we could always count on the decrepit CONN theaterette 355 organ with it's destroyed Eprom to bark a furious keith moon deluge of percussion. I got in there with a screwdriver and tuned the whole rig an octave low for extra bass.

it was all leftovers from the sixties that we had to play with. We were quite happy when we found a non-suitcase rhodes in one of the bandroom closets.

Pity we never recorded anything- The leslie unit on the organ began to catch fire.

That's cool Justin. I have an old Fisher SC-300 portable stero system, that has a small keyboard ontop, that can be removed to play it. Or it can be left attached to the system, as it plays through, the systems speakers. I have had it since I was 14 years old. Of course by now it's become a bit tempermental, and the main volume has gotten scratchy from dust over the years, but it still works.

For awhile I had a nice collection of mini, and mid size Casio Keyboards, all of whihc I have since sold. Never realized, there was such a demmand for them. I used to have a casstte tape player, that I used to just record into, althought it had no way to mainipulate the tape. Plus I had my share of larger Casio and Yamaha, homw keyboards, that I have sold as well, but never got much money for them, as I did with the mini ones's. Go figure?

Paul

i use a couple of circuit-bent casios around the house, as well as speak-and-spells and stuff. also, i managed to "borrow" a theremin from my bass player when he left it at my house when he moved.

my favorite cheapo board is the Golden Camel. a little background: in the early and mid nineties Camel Cigerrates had this promotional thing called "camel bucks" or something, and you could buy things using the upc's from cartons. one wasthe Golden Camel keyboard. it had buttons and sliders, which apparently did nothing since the actual keyboard never changed from a honkie, mid-rangie triangle wave.

Golden Camel Wins!

But I am on a lookout for my second synth, something called a "rhythmic 8," a 49 key wierdbox I found at a garage sale. Ive only seen one in real life(odd because I've seen 2 prophet 10's in the same room in real life so you'd think that the rhythmic 8's would be hanging from the trees) I must find another R8.