RECYCLING NOISE SINCE 2001

The Phonic Taxidermist 47.2b PCB is a clone of the Maplin Voice Vandal. This was a kit that was available from Maplins electronics throughout much of the 1990's. Back in the day you would often see the Voice Vandal on the kit lists of electronic bands such as Fluke and Underworld, along with Add N to X, Autechre and many artists recording for Warp Records. These days it is extremely rare that you'll see one for sale, and when they do turn up they tend to sell for stupid money.

The Phonic Taxidermist 47.2b consists of two main parts, a grungy 10 bit digital delay based around a HT8955A 'Voice Echo' chip, and a high speed audio chopper that strobes incoming audio on and off at four separate frequency bands. Each frequency band can be activated individually or simultaneously with others, and the overall rate of the chopping effect is controlled by the frequency knob.
The chopping circuit produces effects that sounds similar to a kind of nasty cross modulation or filthy frequency based distortion. It can be used to produce unearthly 'Radiophonic Workshop' type tones from pitched sounds, similar to what you might hear in the background on Forbidden Planet, or an old episode of Dr Who. Percussive sounds can be hideously mangled in a manner not unlike a ring modulator thats actually useful, instead of just being that weird effect you mess around with every now and then but never actually use on anything! Its also very useful for emulating that weird crunchy aliasing noise ringing effect you get on very low bit rate samples. According to the original Voice Vandal promotional material 'You can now imitate The Daleks, Chewbakka, et al, without straining your voice', and yes, they do spell it as Chewbakka. Obviously even Maplin were somewhat wary of the notoriously litigious George Lucas!

The board measures 100mm wide by 92mm deep, with the four pots mounted on the front 100mm edge.

ONLY THE BLACK PCB IS AVAILABLE. We no longer sell the yellow version.

You can find a couple of demo videos of this board in action on YouTube HERE and HERE.

This is just the bare unpopulated PCB. We do not supply kits for the full build.

The board will run on anything from +9v to +15v, but check out the build guide for the various power options.