The Stylophone Repair

Today I received a broken Stylophone which I bought off ebay.

I bought it cheap knowing it was faulty and I'm happy to say it's now in full working order.

The speaker needed replacing and a lot of soldering was needed to fix a few components with broken connections, but now it plays perfectly.

The Stylophone is a hand held electronic instrument which creates an oscillating square wave with vibrato if needed. It's played using a stylus connected to a wire completing the circuit when pressed on the key pad.

It was invented by Brian Jarvis in 1967 and distributed in the early 1970s by a company called Dubreq. Sir Rolf Harris played and promoted the instrument. David Bowie used it on the original recording of 'Space Oddity' and Kraftwerk used it on the album 'Computer World'.

Now I am the proud owner of one I will record some music to publish on this blog to show you what is possible with this primitive electronic instrument and some effects units.