I first came across Peter’s instruments when he started doing one-off eBay auctions for instruments. The first one I saw was for the Ambrizer. I immediately wanted one, but I couldn’t afford one at the time. Several years later he came out with the kitten-nettik kits. I bought a Fourses kit, and after getting it in the mail, spent the next week putting the thing together. Once finished it was the coolest thing I owned. I always tell people when they ask what it is, that it sounds like it looks. I feel that statement sums it up well. Angela painted my Fourses, then after a few months she order it’s partner, the Fyrall. She finished hers in a day or two amazingly, then I painted hers. After that he began putting out paper circuits, which, much like 4ms pedals original designs, called for the layout to be printed, and glued onto a piece a cardboard, with holes then punched, and the components mounted directly onto the board. I built a few of those, finishing with the Rollz-5, a beast of a project, and a hell of a machine. I’ve since purchased many of his ‘finished’ instruments, including the Cocolase, Sidrassi (which I used to build my Sidrassi-Tom), Namasitar, and Radio Zither.
Below are photos and descriptions of the ones I, or my wife have built.
FOURSES
FYRALL
OLD MR.GRASSI
ROLLZ-5
This is Angela’s Fyrall. By this point he made the speaker holes smaller to avoid what happened to mine, but we still built in a plastic speaker grill into this one as well.
Both the Fourses and Fyrall had a single extra hole, which had no wire to go to it (coincidence?). I added a 1/4” input jack to both going to that pin, allowing for external instruments to control the kitten-nettiks very easily.
Here are both kitten-nettiks being controlled by my circuit-bent SK-10.
Old Mr.Grassi is one of my favorite Ciat-Lonbarde instruments as it was super fun to build (paper circuit), it’s very small/portable, battery powered, and is very ‘playable’ in the sense hat making connections always has the same results (unlike the kitten-nettiks, which are always in a state of flux).
My Old Mr.Grassi has a few extra connections, which are some circuit-bent points I found when building it.
I housed mine in a generic black jewelry box and initially planned to have 1/4” outputs (visible in the photo), but it’s perfect ‘acoustic’.
Old Mr.Grassi can be found living behind my drumset along with my Fourses, a few circuit-bent drum machines, and other assorted paraphernalia.
Before moving to the UK I had most of my friends building one of these, and for about a month, my house was an Old Mr.Grassi sweat shot, with up to five people crowded on the two tables I had, all soldering away into the night.
Here is a video I made shortly after building it showing off it’s playability, including the circuit-bent points I found in it.
The Rollz-5 is both most frustrating, and eventually satisfying thing I’ve built. I originally built it in Miami, but it never worked properly. I managed to get it produce sound, but a few of the individual board didn’t work at all, and because of how messy I had made the guts it was nearly impossible to effectively troubleshoot. We moved to the UK shortly after nearly completing the Rollz-5, and it sat on the shelf for over a year, reminding me of my failure every time I saw it until one day I decided to finally finish it. I unsoldered all the wired connections and individually checked every single connection. I found a few mistakes, and after fixing those and wiring it back up, it finally worked! I originally planned for it to have built in speakers, but the small speakers don’t reproduce the bassy sounds of the Rollz-5 very well. I will eventually wire them up, but at the moment, they only serve as decoration.
This video does not to the Rollz-5 justice as the low gong was making the house rumble.
GROUP SHOT
Here is a solo drums performance where I use my Sidrassi, as part of my ‘Sidrassi-Tom’, as well as my Fourses, with my ‘Electric Whisks’. Old Mr.Grassi also makes an appearance.
Ciat-Lonbarde
