I don’t know if anybody else collects these things besides me. They’re 70s electronic kits for kids to learn them the basics of electronics. As a kid I never had the funds to buy one, but luckily my brother’s friend borrowed us a kit for a couple of weeks and I was hooked instantly. Now as an adult I’ve obviously bought every one I’ve come across at thrift stores.
You can build all kinds of things from them for example a lie detector, a bath water alarm, a transistor radio etc. There’s also the elusive and very rare “synthesizer block” that turns your Gakken into a primitive synthesizer. A very basic pencil-theremin can be built straight out of the box. It’s like a very very poor man’s Lyra-8. I need to build it and sample it sometime.
The number in the box relates to the amount of different things you can build from that particular kit. The bigger the number the more advanced it gets. I have the EX-30, EX-60, 2x EX-100 and the EX-150. The EX-181 is the one with the synthesizer block included and I’ve never seen one.
Last sunday at a fleamarket I found the ST-45 for 5€ which is of an earlier series. The blocks are clear plastic and not green like in the EX-series. I’ve been reading Kim Bjørn’s Pedal Crush and when I found the smaller size ST-45 I started to think about doing a build your own guitar pedal product with a metal body and proper professional switches and pots that would take these denshi blocks. That would be just crazy and amazing, you could hunt down for certain denshi blocks from thrift stores to build yourself the ultimate germanium fuzz or whatever.
Does anyone else use these vintage toys in their music projects?
