Hello Keyboard Cooks. Welcome back to Retro Recipes. In Part 1 of this project,
I started to turn the gray Commodore Music Maker into something like this.. hm.
So we added some filter dials,
sprayed plastic primer, then a classic glossy piano red that would make Elton John jealous
But trust me, the best is yet to come in Part 2, as we try to make a hit record when we refurbish this!
Now, to start off the finishing touches,
I used a fine tipped white Sharpie paint pen and just filled in the top raised section of the logo
Hm.. not too shabby!
So now I need to make a hole here for the grommet
Yeah!
There we go.
Why would they put those in upside-down?
Great, now it won't come out
I'm going to put the keyboard in. This is kind of THE moment I've been waiting for
Don't break, don't break, don't break!
Hmm.
(laughs) I was drilling backwards.
Ugghh
It's in! Didn't break!
(relief laugh/sigh) It's iinnn.
Mm-hmm. So I was thinking about naming this and
Commodore Music Maker, CMM. Well. This is like version 2 and
it's red.
Put that a little equal sign from the Commodore logo. E = MC ²
Let's get these lovely, shiny red keys in there, which go in a bit easier.
Oooo! I want to play this so badly!
Ah, that gave me chills
This is everything that I wanted it to be and soon it will be more.
Look what I got!
(playfully giggles)
Ahh..like a kid in a candy shop,
store, depending if you're American. which to go with? Well, surprise
I already decided on these.
I think I'm gonna switch that for yellow
There we go
Nice
So one of the guides that I followed told me to use 250K potentiometers
And I did that, soldered them in, glued them in, and of course.. that's wrong
They would only turn up about a quarter or a third of the way
So I switched them to 500K
Logarithmic potentiometers and these now give me full control of the filters. Looks like a normal roll of tape.
Look how thin it is. This is pin-striping tape
And, hopefully it's going to help me put a little embellishment
hmm
And you know if it goes wrong we can just peel it off
Clean my hands so that we don't leave any residue on the sticky.
The end is just as hard to find as any other roll of tape. I may be here for some time...
Hmm..
Now (sighs)..
The challenge begins!
Interesting. What do you think?
Okie-dokie! An exciting moment because some LEDs arrived!
Is and LE really electrostatic sensitive? Don't think it is.
Ah, yeah, this is what we want
And it has a resistor in-line!
Well well well well well!
This looks really nice.
Plug-in our red joystick cables, and that's gonna be going like that
We now have power!
Bring that through again
What a suitably retro-style LED that is
We have way more cable than we need
Well, well.. which one to cut?
This is pre-tinned..so..
Yeah, I'll just do that
Reveal my handywork here a little bit
So it doesn't matter that we already have a resistor on there. You can put them in series
So if you go to this website, it's actually a calculator
It'll tell you what kind of resistor you should put in a circuit if you're trying to drop down the power
So this is a 3.5V LED and this is a 5V power
Doesn't matter which direction they go in
Shrink this down
Let's try that out.
Let there be light!
Ahhh (relief sigh)
You know this used to be just a redundant piece of plastic?
It's now a powereded, potentiometered,
damn sexy-looking... piece of plastic.
Just imagine it's Christmas
1983
You unwrap your gift,
and take the lid.. off this...
(kid's voice) "Mummy! What have you bought me?"
(Mum voice) "Oh, well it's what you wanted, it's the C=MM² red
(kid's voice) "Oh, yes, Mummy! It is, it is! It's just what I always wanted. I just wish it came on disk."
Put this in here,
kind of like, something like that
And I'll put a link below this video to everything that I've used to make this. so you have a little shopping list
Yeah, it just sticks out
Cut a little curved line into this
And to help us with our template, we can use part of a Yeti Beer Cooler, it has a rubber thing on the top
Keeps your beer bottle, or can,
really cool
And I don't need a manicure. I like to use emory boards.
I find them actually really good way just to sand down very fine material
And I'm not gonna be painting this red because
the unit already has black features, has black knobs
The AKAI has also black side panels, so this is kind of going to be my black back panel
Ah, that's good! That's really solid
Nice thing about making videos is I don't have to take notes!
25
We could screw through and then we'd have nice little silver rivets
I dunno why Commodore redesigned their whole thing for the C64C
All they needed... was this!
Doesn't move left or right
Up or down
That's it!
The C=MM² Red
One thing left to try!
Let's make some music!
(music)
I'm going to rudely interrupt myself here, just to thank you for joining me on this little journey
Amazing to think really that every single sound you're hearing was recorded from this keyboard
Indeed, if you'd like your own shiny copy of the MP3 plus an enhanced radio edit
Ooo
Just check out the links.
I'll leave you now with the dulcet tones of my Commodore 64.
So until next time, cheerio!
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