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Circuitbending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments (ExtremeTech) | 
 enlarge | Author: Reed Ghazala
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Category: Book
List Price: £18.99
Buy New: £8.28
You Save: £10.71 (56%)
New (39) Used (9) from £8.28
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 106860
Media: Paperback
Pages: 450
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.4 x 1
ISBN: 0764588877
Dewey Decimal Number: 786.7192
EAN: 9780764588877
ASIN: 0764588877
Publication Date: August 26, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand new! Parcels average 7-14 business days from the States. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions!
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| Customer Reviews:
Ok for an American novice September 6, 2005
Mr. D. J. Wall (Huddersfield, UK)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
For circuit bending enthusiasts, the publishing of this book is a mixed blessing. It reveals a few of Ghazalas' (and circuit benders in general) secrets which were previously just hinted at or extremely vague. On the other hand for the seasoned circuit bender, the hours of experimentation and studying on the web for a sniff of a decent schematic, bend or tip have been exposed condensed into a pretty readable book. This goes against the belief of many circuit benders who tend to, (rightly or wrongly) guard their personal bends and discoveries with great passion and may feel that their code has been breached.
As expected, a large chunk of the book covers ground which is available in many places on the web including Ghazalas' very own website (tools of the trade, soldering techniques etc.) so out of the 400 pages and skipping the inevitable hippy warbling, only a fairly small percentage of the book has any real meat. But yes, Ghazala does reveal a few bend points, some of which have not been exposed before AND they're not illustrated using the terrible Bryce 3D diagrams of old, which again is a bonus.
For a circuit bender with reasonable experience I would imagine most of the book would be thumbed through quite quickly until we reach Part IV - Projects. Out of the 18 projects, many are pointless unless you live near a large charity shop in the States and it doesn't help that a few of the toys aren't even named correctly - do a search for "Fisher Price Electronic Womb" on Google for example. If you can't find it there, you're pretty unlikely to find it in Huddersfield market on a Tuesday. Again one of the toys to bend is called the "Inverter" because Ghazala can't remember the name of it. This isn't very useful. Other unlikely projects include the "Casio DH 100" midi sax (costs about 300 if you can find one on eBay - do you really want to mess with something so precious?) and "Mall Madness" (almost certainly an American only product). This leaves us with the generic Speak & Spell/Math(s)/Read and a couple of fairly common Casio keyboards. My point here is that not surprisingly this book is aimed at the American market leaving us Europeans feeling a bit left out (check the all-American supplier links at the back of the book). I wish he'd included some V-Tech toys (far cheaper and available for peanuts in the UK) and TI's Touch & Tell or Speak & Music - both bendy classics.
Without being too negative, this book is a little better than I expected and there are a few killer tips. As it is the only book out there of its kind I had to buy it regardless of its shortcomings For the complete newcomer, this book could be exactly what you're looking for and may possibly command a higher overall rating.
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