Joe Paradiso’s SK-1 has been around on the net for quite a while, and most likely was one of the first instruments of its kind that I have seen, back when I started researching Circuit Bending a few years ago. Although I don’t think that he shorted his SK-1 persay. It does appear to be modified in order to interface with his huge modular synth which can be seen here.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~joep/synth.html