Hasta La Gadget!

This custom Super Mario Bros. Drum Kit looks pretty awesome. It’s the kind of thing they would play at the Koopa Cabana. If such a place existed. Anyway, your Mario themed band has found it’s first set of equipment.

It was made for the drummer from One Fell Swoop by SJC Custom Drums, who makes all kinds of cool custom drum sets. I say beat on Bowser, not drums, but if you are a Nintendo fanboy with rhythm, you’ll want to get your drumsticks on this awesome themed drum kit.

This is sooo much better than Donkey Konga. Of course, I’m no Keith Moon. More like a Keith Loon. I’m one Goomba shy of a gaggle, but I know a cool drum set when I see one.

[Facebook via it8bit]

The FretPen is a pen that doubles as a miniature guitar. Even if you can’t do much with one string and teensy frets, at least you can write and play a neat little tune with it.

The FretPen is also smartphone-connected. A small D-pad on the pen allows you to switch strings on the fly, which gives you the ability to play scale-like runs and rudimentary melodies.

The video below will show you some of what this pen can do.

A Kickstarter campaign will be launching on the 22nd, so if you are interested you can give them your email address to be notified when they’re ready to accept your pledges.

The pen is mightier than the sword, plus now it can play tunes.

[via Chip Chick via OhGizmo!]

This Super Mario themed drum kit was built by Josh Fry and it looks amazing. I can see Mario, Luigi, the Princess and even Toad all rocking out together.

Now Josh just needs some other Mario themed instruments and he can get a band together. They could call themselves the Peach Cobblers, or the Toadies, or Plumber’s Tape. It would sound great and for their finishing act, they could all disappear down a warp pipe.

Can I be your manager, Josh? I’ll only take 50% and demand that you lose that talentless brother of yours, Luigi.

[via Geekologie]

It may not look like much, but Dentaku’s tiny board lets you follow in the footsteps of Leo Fender, Antonio Stradivari, Ikutaro Kakehashi and other musical instrument makers. It’s called the Ototo, and it’s a small synthesizer that can be activated by any conductive material and tweaked by a variety of inputs.

The Ototo is a lot like the MaKey MaKey, except it specializes in making music. It has 12 capacitive touch keys that you can activate with your fingers or any other conductive material. It also has four inputs for its sensors. One input modifies the volume, one changes the pitch and the other two sensors tweak the “texture” of the synth. At launch, Dentaku will offer seven types of sensors. There’s a knob, a slider, a joystick, a force-sensitive button, a touch-sensitive strip, a light sensor and a breath sensor.

Augmenting the synth with one or more sensors lets you make a variety of instruments, from a cardboard saxophone to a drum made of human heads. I mean live human heads. I mean living human drums. With their heads still attached – you know what I mean. Don’t kill people.

Ototo is powered by two AA batteries or via micro-USB. Speaking of which, you can also use the synthesizer as a MIDI controller over USB.

Jam with your browser and head to Kickstarter for more info on Ototo. A pledge of at least £45 (~$73 USD) gets you an Ototo board.

Korg has taken the wraps off of its NAMM 2014 instrument range, including mobile synths for the iPad, a DIY monophonic synth, and a resurrection of the classic 80s keytar. … Continue reading