Ouda
MQ-5418		 lo-fi tablehooter with impulsive percussion & cheesy accompaniment

This wacky Chinese plastic tablehooter is rather an arson timer to burn houses down than an instrument - it contains the most life-threatening dangerous mains voltage circuitry I ever saw.

There are each 10 preset sounds and rhythms, but despite 54 midsize keys and cheesy accompaniments the main voice is only monophonic. There is also a keyboard drumkit mode (many pitches, not combinable with rhythm), a primitive sequencer and 6 nicely arranged Chinese demo melodies with any key play mode.

By the lack of keyboard matrix diodes the fingered accompaniment makes a lot of flaws, because the keyboard can not reliably sense more than one pressed key. Although the main voice of the demos can be theoretically played by hand, also here it skips plenty of notes by software bugs. Generally the user interface is quite a mess. The sound generator is based on low resolution loop samples. There is also a quite useless sequencer, that looses its contents by any key or button press. The sound is only mono; the 2nd speaker grill is an empty prop. Like with My Song Maker there is an any key play mode that repeats the accompaniments of the demos in a loop, which can be used for tekkno. Also the grainy sound and impulsive percussion may make it interesting for this (as far it won't catch fire on a gig...).
 
DANGER!
Life-threatening flaws! Do not connect to mains without repair.

The internal power supply in my specimen was wired parallel(!) to the battery compartment without diodes, thus any attempts of plugging it into a mains socket (even when powered off) with batteries inserted may cause the batteries to EXPLODE or catch fire. The main hardware employs the tiniest switching power supply PCB I ever saw, which hangs on a single tiny screw and is connected to the mains jack by horribly flimsy wires. Any mechanical shock or vibration (e.g. by mail shipping, dropping on floor or transport in a car) may tear it loose and make mains voltage parts short with the DC circuitry, causing fire or deadly electric shock at the jacks and battery contacts. There was also an unused yellow GND cable with bare end hanging into the electronics and stray solder drops spilled inside the case - ready to short it out at any time. Also the only 111cm short euro mains cable feels very flimsy and has no current rating printed on.

This deadly unsafe switching power supply hangs on solely one screw. Flimsy wires lead to the mains jack, waiting to fall off.
A stray wire and spilled solder blobs everywhere lurked to short out mains voltage!  Install diodes to prevent battery explosion.
Thus do not use the mains voltage input unless you repair the flaws (add diodes, secure all loose parts with hotglue, straighten bent wires and remove solder drops). Even when repaired, the about 13mm tiny mains transformer still rises the bad feeling whether you really should play it without a fire extinguisher next to it. At least I strongly recommend not to leave this fragile tablehooter unattended and keep it away from romping children when plugged into the mains socket.

I found a similar atrocious power supply PCB in a Bandstand MQ-5408 tablehooter and another by Play-On(?) had its mains jack shut with hotglue and hidden under black ducttape because the importer apparently knew the danger. Later models often came without mains jack installed, but the prepunched empty case hole was still there.

The instrument itself has no manufacturer label, but the horrible construction strongly reminds to early Yongmei/ Meisheng products (see Golden Camel-7A) and it also stinks like them. However I never saw one of these with internal switching power supply, thus I conclude it must be newer; all later Yongmei models I saw have their battery compartment wired correctly with diodes (see Yongmei YM-238C). On the box of my specimen was a sticker with the German importer Ouda.
 
Importfirma ouda
Herzbergstr. 128-139
(Halle 3, Raum 335)
10365 Berlin (DEUTSCHLAND)
Hergestellt in V.R.C.
Nicht geeignet fuer
Kinder unter 3 Jahren
NR: 00327

Although originally packaged, it came without manual. The brand icon looks like a written 'M' with a musical note in front of a 'Q', which may mean "MQ" or "QM"; the CPU however is labelled "AQ-5418A", thus I guessed the model name as Ouda MQ-5418. The later Bandstand MQ-5408 (silver with LCD + disco lights in speakers) contains a similar deadly power supply. According to Chinese wholesaler websites, MQ-keyboards are made by Jinjiang Shengle Toys.

main features:

bottom pattern

modifications:

notes:

The case design has superficial shape similarities with Miles MLS-4900A, but in detail (e.g. jacks) it resembles rather the Miles 3738. The yellow circle of function buttons reminds to the button circle of the absurd Kamichi tablehooter. Strangely deplaced appears the stylish, almost noble looking pseudo- engraved cube pattern across the entire bottom surface. Although the plastic case is very lightweight, at least it feels less fragile than the horrible yoghurt cup grade Golden Camel-7A. Inside there are empty fixtures for a real (non switching) small mains transformer and a 2nd speaker. The hardware employs a couple of small separate PCBs for amp and power supply like typical Yongmei constructions, but despite the components look fairly modern (switching PSU, simplified control panel PCB with COB CPU, very few components), the build quality is much worse than in modern Yongmei designs. (May be that Yongmei has sold their old tooling machines to an even worse manufacturer.) The volume can not be set lower than low ambient volume. All buttons beep (and truncate held notes with rhythm on), which disturbs life performance. Also the control panel layout is an illogical mess; like with Miles 3738 the preset sounds and rhythms have numbers instead of names printed on their buttons to imitate a sound bank, but here they have each only 5 semi-OBS buttons with select button (both labelled "tone page"), and unusual for bank select buttons is that they do no change the current preset sound or rhythm but only toggle the behaviour of of their select button group. Additionally the preset sounds and rhythms can be cycled through with the "tone/rhy" +/- buttons; whether sounds or rhythms are affected depends on which bank select button was pressed before. Apparently the user interface programmer could not decide whether to make OBS or sound bank controls and thus combined the worst of both. By the lack of key matrix diodes the fingered accompaniment makes a lot of flaws, and even the single finger mode makes trouble. Pressing certain key combinations does not work, and some also causes odd digital beep noises (likely from the key matrix) in the speaker. (I haven't analyzed the hardware closer yet.)

The main voice is based on short looped medium low resolution samples with volume envelope. They have a bit of zipper noise and noticeable DAC aliasing noise especially with high notes. There is also some digital noise in the bass range. All sounds are quite bassless, which may also be result of a too small speaker output capacitor. Within the scope of their limited resolution, most presets resemble what their name suggests. The "piano" uses a fairly short looped sample. The "bass" reminds to a distorted dull e-guitar with grainy overtones; it sounds a bit of a sawtooth waveform. "organ" is a metal pipe organ rank with dull bass range and soft attack. The "trumpet" reminds in the bass range to a tuba and turns harsh with high notes; the fluttering attack resembles a bit the Casio SK-1 "trumpet". The "guitar" may be a nylon stringed on; "mandolin" is the same sound ringing at 6Hz. "violin" resembles more a harmonica or oboe; bass range resembles a dull saxophone and high notes sound harsh. "bell" sounds like a xylophone; bass range is a bit dull and high notes resemble a glockenspiel. "mnsic box" resembles a glockenspiel or steel drum; the bass range is dull and grainy. "flute" may be a metal flute, but sounds too fat; bass range sounds sonorous and somewhat harsh with slow attack. The vibrato button a 6Hz square vibrato, which makes especially high notes sound nicely cheesy because it modulates the overtones of the DAC aliasing noise in a creaky way that reminds to 1960th beat organs or Casio VL-1. (It's a pity that this tablehooter is only monophonic.) The sustain button adds a 3s long sustain.

The percussion of this instrument is made from medium low resolution samples. The rhythms contain drumrolls and impulsive accents, which makes them sound nicely special, but also less versatile. Despite different sound generator they somewhat remind to Hing Hon EK-001. The preset rhythm and "tone/rhy" +/- buttons (in rhythm mode) immediately (re-)start their rhythm, but also select a default tempo and volume for each rhythm, which limits their use as a realtime sound control. The "fill in" button plays a fill-in pattern instead of the rhythm (together with standard accompaniment when enabled). With the "stop" button any rhythms or other sounds can be stopped immediately, which makes also a good realtime effect.

The accompaniment resembles Sankai 01870K and recognizes only very few chord types. The accompaniment consists of e-bass and usually sweetish e-piano chords, and the styles are quite over- orchestrated and thus less versatile. Most styles contain a sweetish pop arpeggio and remind to Casio SK-1. By the limited choice of chords they can never sound nasty or disharmonic and also react a bit slow on chord changes. There is no manual chord mode (without rhythm). Strange is that the accompaniment section reaches to the 19. key of the keyboard (2nd octave "F#") while the letters above the keys suggest it to end already on the 2nd "C". Unlike the main volume control, the accompaniment volume control ("ACC VOL") reduces the bit resolution of accompaniment notes, which truncates their decay envelopes the earlier, the lower the volume is set. But this I consider rather a sound effect than a flaw. Worse is that the control does nothing when accompaniment is off, thus the only way to control the rhythm volume without accompaniment is to start it with accompaniment (i.e. press "single" or "finger" followed by any key in the main voice section) and avoid touching any chord section keys (which would start the accompaniment).

Like My Music Center, also this tablehooter has the known record/ playback sequencer, which is almost useless because its contents is erased when anything beside preset sound selection or "re-play" is pressed. It also ignores key press duration and can not be combined with rhythm. To use it, press "record" and play some notes. Press "re-play" to play it back. You can rhythmically press this button to re-start the running pattern and you can select a different preset sound, however sustain, vibrato and tempo +/- don't work. When you have pressed "drum mode" before recording, the sequencer will record the keyboard percussion instead of notes, but you can neither use it as a rhythm nor do anything else with it.

The 6 Chinese demo melodies are nicely made and seem to consist of 4 polyphony channels {main voice, obligato, bass, rhythm} and use different preset sounds. Their accompaniment employs a real 2nd voice instead of the cheesy standard arpeggios.

  1. Attain Eminence Step Bystep
  2. Jun Ma Ben Chi Bao Bian Jiang
  3. Beaming With Joy
  4. Zhu Ba Jie Bei Xi Fu
  5. For Whom
  6. Go To New World
The "learn" button enables an "any key play" mode, with that the demos can be stepped through note by note with the keyboard keys while the accompaniment repeats in a loop (like with My Song Maker). The resulting monotos (sound loops) can be quite inspiring for tekkno.
 
 removal of these screws voids warranty...    
WarrantyVoid
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