MUTANT ENHANCER BUILD GUIDE

The Mutant Enhancer is based on a video enhancer circuit,

originally desigend for consumer units from the 80's/90's, aimed at
people who wanted to copy tapes or perhaps edit their amateur
footage onto VHS.
It is both a contrast boost and a sharpener, and without any
modifications it will do just that: make the image a little
brighter and sharper.

But soon people started circuit bending it, and that's when the
magic happens: by adding some electrical shorts (connections
between two points of the circuit that were previously unconnected)
the circuit starts creating new effects, high frequency ringing,
drop shadows, rainbow effects, you name it.
These connections can be modulated in various ways: switches to
open and close them, potentiometers to vary how much current is
entering the branch and so how much effect you're getting, VACTROLs
to make the effects audio reactive.
The Mutant Enhancer comes as a blank slate for you to create your
own unique glitch box.

Let's get started!

 BUILD IT

If this is your first project and you haven't soldered anything before,
fear not! This is the perfect way to start.
I won't cover the basics on how to solder here, but you can find a good
tutorial on Sparkfun: https://learn.sparkfun.com/...
Another beginner warning: you have to put all the components on the
marked side of the board, not on the bottom.
You should have a big bag with all the components with two smaller bags
inside: one contains just two transistor (Q1 and Q3-leave them inside it
for now) and the other one has some extra components you'll need after
the build, so put it aside.

Now it's a good time to check your BOM (bill of material): it's on the
last page of this guide.
There you can find which component goes where: for instance if you wonder
which resistor will go to the spot marked as R1 on the board, just check
the table and see that it's the 75 ohm one.
Then you can check the resistor color coding (the colored bands on each
resistor-if you don't know how to read them there are apps/websites that
will help you) to see which one is the 75 ohm one. Capacitors have the
value written on them.
Don't worry about the holes (pads) marked as BP1, BP2,.. and GND. Those
are connected to the circuit nodes and will help you modify the Mutant
Enhancer, but you don't have to solder any component on it at this stage.
(more info in the BEND IT section)
To keep components in place while you're soldering just bend the legs a
little so that they will stay put.

For starters we will solder in the capacitors: there are two type of
capacitors in the kit; electrolytic and ceramic. The electrolytic ones
(those looking like little cylinders) are polarised, meaning they have a
positive and a negative side. The positive side is the one corresponding
to the longer leg and it has to go in the hole marked with a +. The
positive and the negative HAVE to match with the indications on the
board. The same is true for the LED, the diode and the transistors.
The ceramic ones can be put in both ways. These are the small blue ones.
There are two of them: in the first run of the kits the one with the
shorter legs is C1(1000pF), the other blue one with the longer legs is C4
(0,047uF).
 Now let's put in all the resistors: with these orientantion
doesn't matter. Check the numbers/values on the BOM against the
resistor bands and the numbering on the PCB to match them.

There are two types of transistor: Q1 and Q3 are identical and come in a
small bag, while Q2 is loose with all the other components. Be sure you
don't mix them up!
**Their shape has to match the one drawn in the footprint!**
You might have to pull the center leg a little so that it gets in the
hole.

Then it's time for the LED and diode: again these are polarised, so be sure
not to solder them in reverse.
The diode is marked by a narrow black band on one end, it should match the
white one in the footprint. The LED has a longer leg which marks the
positive side; match it with the "+" on the footprint)
Last but not least: the hardware! You have 3 rca connectors, two
different switches, a potentiometer and a dc jack connector.
You really cannot go wrong with this; You can put switches in both ways,
and the connectors and potentiometer only fit one way. These also have to
be mounted on the upper side of the board, where everything is marked.

TEST IT

You can now plug your 9v DC supply/battery(center positive), and the

LED
You should
can nowlit up.
plug inThen
yourplug youryour
supply, video source
video to IN1
source to and
IN1,connect
and a tv on
your TV toend.
the other the output (older CRTs work best)
Now put the BYPASS switch up and the input selector switch in the down
position, and you should see the image varying in brightness as you
turn the knob.
If nothing shows up or the signal is intermittent, check for cold
solder joints.

If it's ok, try to connect the source to IN2 and turn the selector
switch up: you should see the signal just as before.
If you don't get a stable signal you may wanna check the solder points
around the switches and the input connector as well.
If it works, great!

Time to get it glitching.

 BEND IT
Don't solder the components now! Just put them into the pads while the unit is powered &
active (check that bypass switch)and see what happens on the screen.
There's no electrical shock risk as long as you're using batteries or a safety compliant
9V DC power adaptor.
Remember the extra bag that we put aside? Now it's time to use it.
To start seeing some fun on the screen, try sticking the 220 uF capacitor from
the extra bag between BP4 and BP5 (in this case you can put it in both ways).
You should see something like that:

Older CRTs are recommended as they will display what you're feeding
them no matter what, while more recent TVs might just go black or
blue when the video sync signal gets too distorted.
Now put the 100 uF capacitor in BP6 and BP7; The image should get
clearer, also you should get a range of effects while turning the knob up
and down.

I won't really guide you through the whole process of bending it as the
point of this device is to let you do what you want with it, but I'll
give you a couple of ideas for modifying it.
 Let's take the 220 uF capacitor from before: what it was doing
was creating a short through it between these two points:

To open and close this connection at will, we can add a switch. Just
solder two pieces of wire on BP4 and BP5, then a switch on one end, and a
capacitor on the other. At this point solder the capacitor free leg onto
the center pole of the switch.
Now you should see the effect appearing only when the switch just added is on.
For a more permanent solution you could solder the wire and the component(s)
of your project on perfboard.
You can also put a potentiometer in between to regulate the strenght of
the effect.(1k, 10k, 100k are some suggested values)
You can use the same method with other components and bend points to
create new effects. Not every combination works, so you'll have to be
patient and experiment, but that's the fun of it!
The components in the kit are a starting point but you'll want to try out
some more stuff. You can buy more parts online on sites like Mouser or
Farnell or at your local electronic parts shop. Another good idea is
to buy a set of different values capacitors and resistors so that you can
swap values easily.

A breadboard (photo)
might also help you to
try stuff out without
having to solder and
desolder components.

If you want to mount the switches in a permanent way, a

good road might be building a box with all the
connections and switches mounted inside, and a 9 pin
serial connector that allows you to plug and unplug it
from the enhancer BP. That way you can have permanent
sets of mods in different boxes that you can easily
interchange just by plugging a different cable to the
Mutant.

///melt_dream_2019
 BILL OF MATERIALS
(BOM)

Diodes
Resistors
1x LED Green 5mm (HLMP-CM1G-350DD)
R1,R12 75 Ohm
1x Diode 1N4148
R2 18K Ohm
R3, R8, R9 5.6K Ohm
Hardware
R4, R6 330 Ohm
3x PJRAN RCA Connector (PJRAN1X1U01X)
R5, R7 680 Ohm
1x DC Jack In (163-7620E-E)
R10 220 Ohm
VR1 1K Potentiometer 9mm Linear
R11 7.5 Ohm
(RK0904N)
R13 82 Ohm
1x SPDT Switch
R14 1K Ohm
1x DPDT Switch (MTS202)

EXTRA PARTS:
Capacitors
These are for experimentation
C1 1000 pF (102) MLCC
C2, C3 47 uF Electrolytic polarised
220 uF Electrolytic polarised
C4 0.047 uF (472) MLCC
100 uF Electrolytic polarised
C5 220 uF Electrolytic polarised
0.01 uF Ceramic
C6 100 uF Electrolytic polarised
0.1 uF MLCC
10K Potentiometer 9mm Linear (RK0904N)
Transistors
1MOhm Photoresistor
Q1, Q3 2N5088 NPN
Diode 1N4148
Q2 2N5087 PNP
2N5088 NPN Transistor
LED 5mm
SPDT Switch
1m Electrical Wire