When I get it back, I'll be posting a vid...
https://bsky.app/profile/circuitbenders ... x5oep2jc23
SP303 LTC1799 Mod by Circuitbenders.co.uk...
Moderator: TGN
SP303 LTC1799 Mod by Circuitbenders.co.uk...
Up yer bumz.
Re: SP303 LTC1799 Mod by Circuitbenders.co.uk...
Last edited by Girru on Wed Jun 11, 2025 11:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
Up yer bumz.
Re: SP303 LTC1799 Mod by Circuitbenders.co.uk...
oooO did you just add legit(ish) pitch to your 303! Interesting. I read that it pitches down ONLY is this true?
so no chipmunk samples?
The whole mod looks pretty neat MITrees. the location of the 'pitch' knob looks kinda dangerous for your rca jacks and crowded. Are you able to get it placed anywhere else?. Wouldn't it be more ideal on the left or right panel? ..ya kno, for us knob twiddlers
how much was this?
Seems risky to do that to a vanilla 303 but good on ya mate for going through with it, providing info and a sound demo
much appreciated
so no chipmunk samples?
The whole mod looks pretty neat MITrees. the location of the 'pitch' knob looks kinda dangerous for your rca jacks and crowded. Are you able to get it placed anywhere else?. Wouldn't it be more ideal on the left or right panel? ..ya kno, for us knob twiddlers
how much was this?
Seems risky to do that to a vanilla 303 but good on ya mate for going through with it, providing info and a sound demo
much appreciated
Re: SP303 LTC1799 Mod by Circuitbenders.co.uk...
It is true that it only pitches down but that's the advantage of having a 1.5 octave sweep and everything functioning as normal when in 'the mode' - you can start a track off with the knob in the middle position and then you can make your other samples either 'chipmunk' or 'death metal vocalist', coz you've got 3/4 octave up and down, or approx 54% each way.
But akshuly, if you think about it, had nothing worked but pitch when 'in the mode', chipmunk would've been easy... clock downwards, take sample, return to normal mode and the sample would then be munked. That being the case was my biggest concern but, to my great delight, it seems 99% functional wherever the knob is, so I can do what I said above and have the Hovis Best Of Both, coz I always use the sequencer.
DigDug, the first guy to do this, afaik (his link is in the description of my youtube vid), had his knobs on top but I wanted them at the back as I couldn't bear to see my beloved's looks get mucked up. It's not like I'm gonna be wanging the knob like a live noisecore artist... I'll just be setting and sampling. Haven't hit the outputs yet. Plus, while I wasn't confident doing the mod myself, I'd probs be ok resoldering the RCAs if it came to it. But, so, yeah - you could have them on top and/or iirc there's also space nearer the power input. Not sure about the sides... I guess anywhere you can run wires to and where the PCB allows for space would work? I'd be worried about knocking it on the side tho.
I first saw Digdug's vid a year or two ago but thought that I wouldn't want to risk a working 303 so didn't look much further into it. But, as some on here know, I've had a love/hate-buy/sell relationship with my 303s and not having pitch was always the reason for our break ups. So this time around, since i'd decided that the 303 was definitely the one for me regardless (until I can afford another SP1200, lol), I thought I may as well go for it. I emailed DD for guidance but none was forthcoming so I messaged circuitbenders since their website suggested they do commissions and he said he'd have a pop at it. He'd never done a 303 before and it took him a while to get round to it but I couldn't be happier with how it's turned out. Including fully insured postage both ways, it cost £93 in total, £65 of which was the mod itself.
At some point I'll be opening it up for photos. Hopefully he didn't employ any 'deadman's switches' inside.
But akshuly, if you think about it, had nothing worked but pitch when 'in the mode', chipmunk would've been easy... clock downwards, take sample, return to normal mode and the sample would then be munked. That being the case was my biggest concern but, to my great delight, it seems 99% functional wherever the knob is, so I can do what I said above and have the Hovis Best Of Both, coz I always use the sequencer.
DigDug, the first guy to do this, afaik (his link is in the description of my youtube vid), had his knobs on top but I wanted them at the back as I couldn't bear to see my beloved's looks get mucked up. It's not like I'm gonna be wanging the knob like a live noisecore artist... I'll just be setting and sampling. Haven't hit the outputs yet. Plus, while I wasn't confident doing the mod myself, I'd probs be ok resoldering the RCAs if it came to it. But, so, yeah - you could have them on top and/or iirc there's also space nearer the power input. Not sure about the sides... I guess anywhere you can run wires to and where the PCB allows for space would work? I'd be worried about knocking it on the side tho.
I first saw Digdug's vid a year or two ago but thought that I wouldn't want to risk a working 303 so didn't look much further into it. But, as some on here know, I've had a love/hate-buy/sell relationship with my 303s and not having pitch was always the reason for our break ups. So this time around, since i'd decided that the 303 was definitely the one for me regardless (until I can afford another SP1200, lol), I thought I may as well go for it. I emailed DD for guidance but none was forthcoming so I messaged circuitbenders since their website suggested they do commissions and he said he'd have a pop at it. He'd never done a 303 before and it took him a while to get round to it but I couldn't be happier with how it's turned out. Including fully insured postage both ways, it cost £93 in total, £65 of which was the mod itself.
At some point I'll be opening it up for photos. Hopefully he didn't employ any 'deadman's switches' inside.
Up yer bumz.
Re: SP303 LTC1799 Mod by Circuitbenders.co.uk...
More info for UJFR and Sleeps...
Mod is really no different from the MS-1 pitching but it's a knob instead of buttons and there's no 'between grade' blind spots as it's a constant sweep. Functions exactly the same. Only slight annoyance is the octave and a half range over a mere 3/4 turn pot can make it tricky to tune in. I'm going to message the mod man and see if it'll be possible to put a switchable smaller value pot in series for more precise tuning. I did have the option of having a 2-note drop instead of the 1.5 octave but went for the bigger one for obv reasons. As stated before, when using the mod, I usually put the knob in the middle position, then I can go up or down by about 50% either way.
Pitching down doesn't make things grungy like on the MS-1 tho, just a bit darker and less high freq info, because the 303 always plays back at 44.1 (or whatever the mod knob is set at), even if you use the Long or Lo-fi button to sample, whereas the MS-1 plays back at the sample rate you have it set at.
The 303 samples at either 44.1, 22 or 11 khz but, AFAIK, plays back everything at 44.1, so when you use the mod knob to pitch down, you're changing the global sample playback rate, same as on the MS-1 or SP202. Like the MS-1, but not the SP202, I can also sample at these 'pitched down' settings.
An example. Say I set the knob to the halfway position which, for arguments sake, puts the global sample rate at 33khz (75% of 44.1). I could take a sample at standard mode which would be 33khz and it'll playback at 33khz; Long would be sampled at 16.5khz (75% of 22) but playback at 33khz; and lo-fi would be sampled at 8.25khz (75% of 11) but playback at 33khz.
As I say, the way the 303 interpolates the data seems to keep things really clean, even on lower sample rates. It's like it cleans everything up when it 'upscales' to the 44.1 (or mod knob equivalent) playback. The difference with the MS-1 is that you can sample on 11khz but also playback on 11khz.
Possible faults caused by the mod so far...
Deletion of card data. This is still unconfirmed as I've been working with stuff I didn't want to risk.
You know how sometimes a pad stays lit even if it's finished playing? Since the mod, if this happens, I can't then use the 'hold down Mark and set the start as the start point' function. The button has to be unlit. I don't know if this was always the case but I've never noticed it before but I did 3 times t'other night.
Upset to my previous workflow...
I used to rely heavily on the BPM read outs for all sort of things, especially with regard to using the sequencer, chopping samples etc. In mod mode the BPM read outs all stay the same and are as if it was an unmodded 303...but the whole machine is slowed down so the BPM read outs aren't accurate. Eg, in normal mode I could take a sample that is 100bpm and put it into mod mode and pitch down but it would still read 100bpm even tho obviously it's now much slower. I therefore have to use a tap-tempo metronome and a calculator to work out some things that would've been easy before.
Any specific questions, ask away, or I can make vids?
Mod is really no different from the MS-1 pitching but it's a knob instead of buttons and there's no 'between grade' blind spots as it's a constant sweep. Functions exactly the same. Only slight annoyance is the octave and a half range over a mere 3/4 turn pot can make it tricky to tune in. I'm going to message the mod man and see if it'll be possible to put a switchable smaller value pot in series for more precise tuning. I did have the option of having a 2-note drop instead of the 1.5 octave but went for the bigger one for obv reasons. As stated before, when using the mod, I usually put the knob in the middle position, then I can go up or down by about 50% either way.
Pitching down doesn't make things grungy like on the MS-1 tho, just a bit darker and less high freq info, because the 303 always plays back at 44.1 (or whatever the mod knob is set at), even if you use the Long or Lo-fi button to sample, whereas the MS-1 plays back at the sample rate you have it set at.
The 303 samples at either 44.1, 22 or 11 khz but, AFAIK, plays back everything at 44.1, so when you use the mod knob to pitch down, you're changing the global sample playback rate, same as on the MS-1 or SP202. Like the MS-1, but not the SP202, I can also sample at these 'pitched down' settings.
An example. Say I set the knob to the halfway position which, for arguments sake, puts the global sample rate at 33khz (75% of 44.1). I could take a sample at standard mode which would be 33khz and it'll playback at 33khz; Long would be sampled at 16.5khz (75% of 22) but playback at 33khz; and lo-fi would be sampled at 8.25khz (75% of 11) but playback at 33khz.
As I say, the way the 303 interpolates the data seems to keep things really clean, even on lower sample rates. It's like it cleans everything up when it 'upscales' to the 44.1 (or mod knob equivalent) playback. The difference with the MS-1 is that you can sample on 11khz but also playback on 11khz.
Possible faults caused by the mod so far...
Deletion of card data. This is still unconfirmed as I've been working with stuff I didn't want to risk.
You know how sometimes a pad stays lit even if it's finished playing? Since the mod, if this happens, I can't then use the 'hold down Mark and set the start as the start point' function. The button has to be unlit. I don't know if this was always the case but I've never noticed it before but I did 3 times t'other night.
Upset to my previous workflow...
I used to rely heavily on the BPM read outs for all sort of things, especially with regard to using the sequencer, chopping samples etc. In mod mode the BPM read outs all stay the same and are as if it was an unmodded 303...but the whole machine is slowed down so the BPM read outs aren't accurate. Eg, in normal mode I could take a sample that is 100bpm and put it into mod mode and pitch down but it would still read 100bpm even tho obviously it's now much slower. I therefore have to use a tap-tempo metronome and a calculator to work out some things that would've been easy before.
Any specific questions, ask away, or I can make vids?
Up yer bumz.