Big Mouth Phatt Bass

Imagine, if you will, the heady early days of the 2000s. The Millennium had come and gone, and things were looking bright. Warp Brothers’ hit Phatt Bass was doing the rounds in the clubs, and for an altogether different demographic, Big Mouth Billy Bass was taking the world by storm.

The bass (fish)/bass (music) pun writes itself. My friends and I were joking that this should happen back when we were still in school, so I’m not sure why it’s taken over 20 years to get to where we are today.

But this is where we are today. Please welcome, and accept my sincerest apologies for, Big Mouth Phatt Bass:

The “Big Mouth Phatt Bass” is a modified 15th Anniversary Edition Big Mouth Billy Bass singing fish. The original electronics have been replaced with custom ones providing more features and more songs.

If you want to recreate the project for yourself, check out the quick start guide. Everything you need is there.

If you want to see more details, the full development process, or just more videos of a Billy Bass singing stuff, keep scrolling!

Liner Notes

(aka, the development process:)

Back-stage

Inside the fish, the stock PCB has been replaced by a custom one, hosting an ESP32 microcontroller, TB6612 motor driver, and MP3-TF-16P audio player. As well as singing “Phatt Bass”, a number of other tracks can be loaded from the SD card with corresponding lip-sync routines.

A Billy Bass opened up with a bunch of wires from it leading to a PCB.