Similar to BadComrade's Circuit Bending thread, but here goes.

Something breaks, an amp, a synth, a guitar... whatever -- you start fucking around with it and the malfunction opens the door to some new cool sounds. Or: you do something that isn't good for the gear at all (is something burning?) and it makes a fantastic noise.

I have an old tiny/junker Peavey amp that when I ran a patch from the out jack into its own in jack I'd get the most fantastic squall of screeching distortion. It could be manipulated by turning the knobs -- like shortwave radio, but with more Merzbow-like qualities. I guessed I was probably ruining the amp, but it was a cheapy so I didn't really care. Also, I've had synths that started making interesting noises as they began to die.

Anyone?

Apparently Julian Cope used a broken piece of gear for the World Shut Your Mouth single.
That wierd arpeggio thing at the the end of the first couplets of each verse is a Casio dying.

I've used a Stylophone with a dying battery before.

-A

Many guitar pedals, in my experience those made by DOD in particular, start to sound pretty interesting when their batteries are dying.

John W. wrote:I have an old tiny/junker Peavey amp that when I ran a patch from the out jack into its own in jack I'd get the most fantastic squall of screeching distortion. It could be manipulated by turning the knobs -- like shortwave radio, but with more Merzbow-like qualities. I guessed I was probably ruining the amp, but it was a cheapy so I didn't really care.

I do a similar thing with a small Mackie mixer and an array of pedals. Simple feedback loops, really. I get an inordinate amount of pleasure from plugging things back in on themselves and spraying the resultant audiospunk all over the joint.

Rimbaud III wrote:

John W. wrote:I have an old tiny/junker Peavey amp that when I ran a patch from the out jack into its own in jack I'd get the most fantastic squall of screeching distortion. It could be manipulated by turning the knobs -- like shortwave radio, but with more Merzbow-like qualities. I guessed I was probably ruining the amp, but it was a cheapy so I didn't really care.

I do a similar thing with a small Mackie mixer and an array of pedals. Simple feedback loops, really. I get an inordinate amount of pleasure from plugging things back in on themselves and spraying the resultant audiospunk all over the joint.

i used to do this with a little kustom amp for a while then a fender solid state with a reverb unit. treble and bass knobs controled the feedback. great stuff.

when i was in hubcap, i used a sunn bass head which SCREAMED. the whole time i was in the band, i never turned the volume above 1. it sounded like shit with my rickenbacker running through it, but it was somehow perfect for the band.

the monomen later blew this head up, when they borrowed it. they got it and instantly turned it to 10.

i had it Sorenized, and now it acts 'normal', which is to say, boring.

Rimbaud III wrote:Simple feedback loops...spraying the resultant audiospunk

This can be heaps of fun - I've wasted hours with two Zoom Studio 1201 multi effects units (these can be had for as little as £10 on ebay) feeding off each other via a couple of Y cable splitters with an output to a guitar amp. You can really go out to the meadow/strip the enamel from your teeth.

jayryan wrote:when i was in hubcap, i used a sunn bass head which SCREAMED. the whole time i was in the band, i never turned the volume above 1. it sounded like shit with my rickenbacker running through it, but it was somehow perfect for the band.

the monomen later blew this head up, when they borrowed it. they got it and instantly turned it to 10.

i had it Sorenized, and now it acts 'normal', which is to say, boring.

sidenote:
i liked the crappy Fender "bigasafreakinpiano" cabinet personally Jay.

My favorite awesomely shitty sounding equipment was the Traynor practice amp with both speakers ripped beyond sounding good. gigantic holes in the speakers. later in the famed "greg norman and his bruised pussy" band, that amp got stabbed by a flying V and it still sounded great plugged in (for the 10 seconds it would stay on before popping)

the other? the upright piano from my parents basement which had a warped soundboard from sitting in 2 feet of water. THAT thing had some nice sounds.

Our guitarist discovered at our last practice that the only way to get a usuable sound from a Boss Metalzone is to put an almost dead battery in it. Doesn't last too long, though. Neither does our guitarist, I've heard. Boom Boom!

Cheapo keyboards that get too many incoming MIDI messages can go nuts sometimes, but of course it never happens when the tape is running. I used a DAT machine that made all kinds of horrible digital modulated noise for the first five seconds of tape, but never when you needed it to.

We had a broken tape deck in our car twenty years ago that picked up radio signals from passing ambulances, police cars and the like. That was weird.

My roommate's Peavey-guitar-amp-modded-into-a-bass-amp has a fucked up speaker and distorts in really interesting farty ways.