A little while back I picked up a “10 Effects Voice Changing Toy” at Maplin’s (it was on sale for £5, how could I resist?).

I decided to try and turn it into an instrument effects pedal. I opened it up, replaced all the switches, removed the speaker (bypassing the amplifier chip), and added some 1/4″ jacks for inputs and outputs. I mounted it into an old jewellery box and it was ready to go. I’ve tested it out with a guitar and a keyboard:

It sounds pretty bonkers, which I like! The various switches make it pretty hard to predict what kind of sound will come out. One funny consequence of building this out of a voice changer toy is that the originally design obviously includes some kind of input and output gating – it will only turn on when the input volume is above a certain level, and it will cut out when the output volume falls below a certain level too. I think this its sounds pretty cool, it really makes it even more crunchy and digital.