rolled with synthbenji and junkrhythm to the modular synth meet-up at the gilman in berekley this last sunday to get our geek on. most everyone was reppin eurorack but there were some other things going on as well including a beautiful modcan system. lots of metasonix in effect. toppobrillo showin off new stuff. it was a good time, looking forward to the next! check out a few pix:
my initial small case filled and setup as a basic 2 voice synth! from left to right are 2 oakley rev2 vco’s, cgs synthacon filter, mfos vc lowpass filter, cgs super psycho modulator, mfos adsr and mfos dual vca. i built this little case myself out of shelf wood, which was pretty easy and only cost around $25. at 14u wide it filled up pretty quickly, so i built a second case, this time double rows:
still 14u wide. a little tricker build in getting the spacing all correct, but i think it came out pretty good and only around $30 in materials! ive already gone on to moving all the modules into this new case and will have most of the second row filled with the current batch of stuff im working on.
not too long before i moved from ohio to san francisco i started collecting parts to build a modular synthesizer. i had already built the Paia 9700 and a frac rack of Blacet modules, when i was invited in on a group buy of panels from Schaeffer by Scott of BrideChamber. these were all going to be in MOTM format, and being somewhat dissatisfied with the 1/8″ jacks on the Paia i thought it would be cool to go that route. so i got some panels, a couple of Oakley VCOs, and a stack of CGS PCBs. then i moved out to SF. no longer having any money or space the project was put on hold for quite some time.. until now. inspired by my friend’s eurorack system i decided to finally get to work on my long delayed project.
i started out with a case to put the modules into. i built it out of pine shelf boards for around $20 or so. it actually turned out nicer than i thought it would and i’m pretty happy with it.
heres a pic of it with some of the Schaeffer panels i got back in 2002 or so..
l-r the panels are paia Midi2CV8, Oakley VCO x 2, CGS Sub Oscillator, CGS Super Psycho LFO and Blacet / Wiard Miniwave. the case itself is 14U wide, which is maybe an odd size, but i plan to build more and stack them. i wont actually be using any of these panels except the VCOs in my initial builds, as i plan to create a basic setup to start out with, ie VCO, VCF, ADSR, VCA. but after that i have stuff to build most of them.
i built this for my brother Niall using the schematics and parts list from this page. i went with the silicon transistors version. i think it turned out pretty cool and it was a lot of fun to make!
here’s a clip of some casio through it:
mos vox - 2003
based on Dave Wright’s joystick noise synth schematic.
2 oscillators with pitch control, and an overall tone/volume control. the 2 oscs interfere with each other and cause interesting noise and pitch stepping. i added an 555 based lfo and cv inputs with depth control to modulate each oscillator. also cool retro knobs.
the insides.. messy jumble of wires and perf boards..
here is a clip with osc1 being modulated by an external lfo, and osc2 by the internal one:
Lumivox - 2001
modified from QR Ghazala’s Lumivox II design, a cool 555 based opto-theremin. the button and switch both activate the sound and the knob and photocell change the pitch. there is also an 1/8″ output wired from the speaker. the spherical enclosure makes it alot of fun to play with.. i have recorded with this and used it live many times.
for the different values i used a 100k pot, 1.7uf electrolytic cap & 100nf ceramic cap.
here’s a sound sample (with a little bit of delay)
