Friday, December 31, 2010

Synovatron DIY Eurorack prototyping kit - Follow Up



As promised here's the follow up video to the Synovatron DIY kit post.

I used the kit to make a simple polarizing CV mixer. To make this all you need is the Synovatron kit, seven 100k resistors, a dual opamp (tl072/tl082/lm358 etc) and an spst switch.

The inputs are unbuffered but you could simply add a couple more opamps to buffer them if you wish.



click the picture to download a PDF of the schematic.

Buy Synovatron DIY Kits on ebay

Visit the Synovatron blog

Ok so this is the last post of the year, hope you have a great 2011

Cheers

Paul

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Watch this TB-303 video very carefully



It's worth watching until the end, it'll make more sense then.

Synovatron DIY Eurorack prototyping kit



Hope you are all having a nice holiday. Here's a quick overview of the DIY kit#1 I just received for evaluation from Tony at Synovatron.

All in all its a great little tool for those of you that like to DIY your modulars, I'll be doing a follow up video at some point so keep your eyes on the blog to see what I make with this kit.

Here's the details of what you get with the kit,

Eurorack Modular Synth Prototyping Kit 1

This is one of the new Eurorack standard modular synth prototyping kits for synth constructors and enthusiasts; these kits will enable you to make neat prototype or one-off projects that accomodate bracketed pots, PCB mounted jacks, switches and LEDS so that they can be easily mounted to a module front panel. The idea is that you build your designs on the prototyping boards supplied and get the front panel manufactured separately, either by yourself, or by a company such as Schaeffer (A Schaeffer template file can be provided that you can use directly or can modify as you require). The PCB header and ribbon cable assembly is compatible with Doepfer power bus connectors and supports CV, Gate and +5V connections too.

This kit comprises the following components:-

* 1 x DIY1 prototyping circuit board (104.3mm x 47mm x 1.6mm) with dedicated pot, bracket, header and capacitor locations, power rail bussing and a 0.1" matrix breadboarding area
* 5 x control pots (50k linear supplied as standard but 10k linear, 100k linear, 1M logarithmic or a mixture are available upon request - ask about availability)
* 5 x pot mounting brackets
* 2 x 100nF decoupling capacitors
* 2 x 16-pin headers

* 1 x DIY2 prototyping circuit board (100mm x 20.3mm x 1.6mm) with dedicated jack socket and/or toggle switch locations and a 0.1" matrix breadboarding area
* 5 x 3.5mm jack sockets

* 1 x DIY1 to DIY2 linking ribbon cable assembly (16-pin IDC socket to 16-pin IDC transition, 75mm long)
* 1 x standard ribbon cable assembly (200mm long)

Buy Synovatron DIY Kits on ebay

Visit the Synovatron blog

Monday, December 27, 2010

TB-303 Button programming reference



Came across this rather nice page by tinyloops that might be of interest to some of you, its a reference to programming the TB-303, here's a quick quote from the site.

"This "quick button reference" is meant to be exhaustive. This reference only makes sense reading after you have read the manual, especially pages 49-63 which explain about the beauty of mixing different step modes into one track. This reference does not cover that. I'm trying to give some insight on what buttons to press to achieve something in the process of programming the sequencer. The approach is an effort to bring some logic in the combination of workflow and button arrangement."

you can visit the site here

happy tweeking

Roland TB-303 Repairs and Midi kit fitting



This rather sick TB-303 landed on the workbench.



The internals were in pretty bad shape,



the control knobs were shot and the client also wanted a midi kit fited.



New control pots installed,



and a Sequentix MIDIBass 303 Mark II was fitted.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

x0xb0x make over

Cast your mind back seven months and you may remember this post about some x0xb0x front panels by Substyler based on my "TB-x0x" custom x0xb0x.

Well now Substyler from x0xsh0p has made them into case kits which you can now purchase. The client for this job that arrived on my workbench bought one of these kits and asked that I fit it for him.

And so here we are with a couple of pictures of the unit before





Looking at the assembly instructions it was quite straight forward, some desoldering and drilling. Everything was going well until i noticed this,



The cable from the micro-controller to the I/O board was too short. The J7 cable was too short also so both had to be replaced, while not hard it does take quite a while to do.

After that was completed it was time to assemble the kit and drill out the selector knobs a little (these need to be done if the x0xb0x has the original greyhill encoders).

And so we have the finished unit.





Looks really nice don't you think? It's also nice to see that Substyler has taken my design to the next level. The kit was packaged together very nicely and the instructions were clear and concise.

Here's a video of the unit in action.