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My Drum ProjectI've done no work on the Synsonic for over one year. Although *others have successfully done my modifications -- which remain valid -- I couldn't leave well enough alone, and through my tinkering managed to damage not one, but two Synsonic boards.
So I 've come up with a new plan. Part will use a PAiA DrumTone kit, and part will be D.I.Y.
Lacking any information on the innards of the toy all I could do to modify it was wire up a jack to connect a foot-switch in parallel with the Accent button, which shortened the Cymbal decay to sound like a closed Hi-Hat. (I later learned that this option, as well as an asynchronous input for Bass, appears on the 5-pin din jack that looks like MIDI but isn't.) The Synsonic got packed away and didn't get unpacked when I moved -- three times. My electronics D.I.Y. activities dwindled. Fast-forward to the Internet Age. I found a wealth of information on what could be done in Analog Percussion Synthesis and techniques that hadn't occurred to me so long ago. My decades-old desire was rekindled. In my searches, I happened upon burnkit2600, a site devoted to Circuit Bending -- modifications to existing devices to get new sounds from them. Hells Bells! There was a thread devoted to my long-neglected Synsonic -- including the Service manual! It had all the information I needed: schematic, component layout and (barely adequate,) circuit description.
On the following pages you'll find
my modifications to and enhancements of the Synsonic's capabilities.
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This should actually turn out better than my original plan. Details begin at 
Then
along came the Mattel Synsonic. It was inexpensive, had four drumpads
that could be played with sticks and, most importantly, it could record
and playback user-created rhythms. It seemed to have all that I wanted
and I could possibly build upon it. Alas, I was once again
disappointed. The sounds it made were ok, if a little bland, but the
programming method was, in my opinion, atrocious. What's more, recorded
patterns were lost when the unit was turned off! And the so-called
Bass, which was just a click, was not manually playable, having only
on/off and tempo buttons that "pounded out" its miserable clicking on
every beat. What the hell was that? That's not how human drummers always play
kick drums! Not if they have any imagination. Or minimal talent.