Do it yourself crew in the house?

[psn]

Yeah, will probably build a wooden case for mine too.

[TubularCorporation]

Seems like the way to go.I'm thinking I'll order four o the standoffs (for the corners) a couple MM shorter than the two for the middles so I can put some aluminum angle between them and the front panel, and then drill and tap it so that I can screw the wooden sides on.  Maybe get some hard rubber sheet about 1/4" thick and sandwich that between the keyboard part of the PCB and whatever I use as a bottom to give it extra support.  Probably mount the connectors to a panel on the top like the original, and put a MIDI retrofit in it (but no speaker or batteries). Haven't actually read much of the original thread yet so I didn't see if it already has the filter input mod build in to the design, but if not I'll obviously add that, too.

 

Have to finally finish getting the parts for the Midibox SEQ and finish it, too.  Main board has been done for months but I keep spending the money I should put toward getting all the encoders on stuff like this instead.  This thing, the Anushri, the x0x and the old MT-32 (for those great/awful drums!) sequenced from the Midibox would be a pretty excellent minimal, portable setup.

[lala]

Tried to glue my broken speaker cone for my glastonburys and the first minute the sound just stopped.  blew them somehow? valve amp not calibrated?  or am i just terrible at DIY for some reason..

 

Everything I touch seems to explode

[TubularCorporation]

Was it broken near the surround (outer edge) or the voice coil?  If the voice could gets even a little out of alignment it can freeze up, and worst case scenario is that actually makes it overheat or otherwise short, which can damage a valve amp.  I've replaced the surrounds in one pair of woofers and it worked but it was pretty nerve wracking.  then like an idiot I used the remaining glue as a cone treatment like the instructions recommended, which apparently isn't a good idea for vintage paper cone speakers, apparently the soft paper is part of what makes them sound the way they should.  Still sound good though, but not as good as the nearly identical pair they replaced.

 

If it was just a small hole or tear in the cone that you were fixing, and it wasn't near the center or edge, I'd be surprised if you damaged them.  That seems to work fine; I stuck a screwdriver through the cone of a really nice old EV guitar driver when I was putting it in my amp after a trade and just glued a piece of brown paper shopping bag soaked in watered down white glue over the hole.  Been working fine ever since, and that was back in I think 2009.

 

Is there any chance you accidentally shorted the + and - terminals on your amp when you reinstalled the speakers? Loose strand sticking out of a braided speaker wire maybe?  I probably killed my tube stereo that way (can't afford to take it to a real tech and have them check it out, at the very least I blew a power tube, and replacing all four of them is out of my budget).

Edited August 27, 2016 by RSP

[lala]

it was just the rubber surround (?) to the paper cone, someone laying on a couch at a houseparty stuck their foot into it and separated the two..  was just gluing those back together, even if sounded a bit crap it would be at least fixed.

 

Hes quoted me £180 per speaker for re-coning, also something about learning new tech since then (these are Townshend Glastonbury mk1s) and can upgrade them, but god knows how much that would cost. Modern Townshend stuff is wayyy out of my pricerange. these are inherited.

 

The rubber is begining to split all over both speakers anyway. 

 

Fwp,  but yeah, im shit at DIY 

Edited August 27, 2016 by lala

[TubularCorporation]

it was just the rubber surround (?) to the paper cone, someone laying on a couch at a houseparty stuck their foot into it and separated the two..  was just gluing those back together, even if sounded a bit crap it would be at least fixed.

 

Hes quoted me £180 per speaker for re-coning, also something about learning new tech since then (these are Townshend Glastonbury mk1s) and can upgrade them, but god knows how much that would cost. Modern Townshend stuff is wayyy out of my pricerange. these are inherited.

 

The rubber is begining to split all over both speakers anyway. 

 

Fwp,  but yeah, im shit at DIY 

 

Yeah, that's actually more complicated than it looks.  If you're messing with the surround you really need to cut off the dust cap and put shims around the inside of the voice coil to make sure that it stays in the right place, otherwise it will toch the sides, which means rubbing (sounds bad and eventually wears through the wire in the coil) or freezing up altogether.

 

IF the surrounds are splitting they're well past needing to be replaced anyway, and you should be able to find a kit on eBay for just about any speaker for between $15 and $20 USD, which is a lot (getting the parts yourself would be maybe $5) but worth it to know everything is the right size and for the detailed instructions it should come with.  If you're lucky, the voice coil was stuck but wasn't damaged and replacing the surround will fix it.  Even if it needs a full recone that's possible and arguably better than replacing the entire driver.  I'm not sure what to recommend as far as qualified, trustworthy speaker techs (I do this stuf because I'm perpetually broke, professionals aren't even an option I consider), and it's best to find one local if it's at all possible, to save the cost and risk of shipping the thing.  But at any rate, it should still be cheaper than replacing them if it comes to that.

 

The hardest thing about replacing the surrounds I did was getting the old ones off without damaging the cone - you have to scrape off as much glue as you can and it doesn't want to leave.  But it's definitely doable if you take your time. 

 

Also make sure to not let anything, especially metal, get in to the gap between the coil and the magnet when you have that dust cap off!

 

 

EDIT: I may have spoken too soon, I'm not seeing any surround replacement kits or information with some cursory Googling.  Also those speakers are way beyond the 60s KLH and AR stuff I've dealt with, and definitely worth finding a professional tech to look at!

 

If you go the DIY route, maybe contact this eBay seller and see about getting a kit for your model.  I've got no affiliation with them, but I used one of their kits on my AR2ax's and it was good, well worth the money (although their prices have gone up).

Edited August 27, 2016 by RSP

[lala]

is that part less important than the rest of the speaker then?

 

 

can you fix it

 

 

srsly im joking i know it a windup  

[lala]

fwp but the needle is bust as well.   its either a decca london gold (havent even heard this cartridge yet - ££££) or Linn Addikt (sounds amazing)

 

 

most amazing setup ive heard in my life, like putting on a pair of ear glasses

[TubularCorporation]

[TubularCorporation]

Heads up for the DIYers here:

 

The group order for a third run of the Jasper EDP Wasp clone kit is open over at Muffwiggler.  Finally registered and got on the list yesterday, can't wait!

 

Demo of one of the earlier runs:

 

 

Bumping to let people know there will be a 4th run.

 

Still haven't built mine, my Mouser order was delayed for like 8 weeks because of a couple backordered parts.  PCBs are excellent quality though.

[Hautlle]

Got hit by the DIY bug really hard over the past 6 months or so.  I had built a couple MI Shruthis and a Bliptronome in the past 4-5 years.  Once I saw the Sonic Potions LXR drum synth had a Trigger i/o expansion I knew I had to build one and jump into eurorack.  

Little did I know what I'd done to myself....  Now I've got a hot air station and do a lot of SMD work.  I've learned how to program a few different microcontrollers and code a bit. And I've spent a few hours frustrated as hell   



 

Edited December 3, 2016 by hautlle

[TubularCorporation]

So in the process of figuring out the best way to replace the Sony CR2032-HE2 battery (HE2 = unusual pin configuration with a second + pin that nobody other than maybe Boss and Korg at certain times in the 90s actually used, so there's very little support for them now) in a piece of gear with a clip so I won't have to solder in the new battery, I found this and I think it'll be of use to some of you, especially Yamaha owners (it also converts standard 20mm clips to the 15mm pin spacing that Yamaha batteries use):

 

MTG CR2032 PCB Saver, Rev A

 

I ordered one, it came to $4.50 with free shipping in the USA, and according to the email receipt they are actually sending me three boards for that price rather than one, which makes it a pretty good deal.

[TubularCorporation]

Finally got around to doing the power supply mod on my x0xb0x.  Last straw was hearing some comparisons somebody posted on Gearslutz a long time ago that were supposed to show that it wasn't a useful mod but actually sounded better with the mod than without.  Very easy, just removed r1 on the output board and replaced it with an identical 100ohm resistor in series with a 500ohm trimpot (the typical mod calls for somewhere between 200 and 300 ohms combined but 500 was the only trimpot I had handy that was even close) and it actually works and sounds good over the whole range, but I ended up on about 10:00 (it's set for stock 100ohms in the photo), which probably works out to right around 250ohms between it and the fixed resistor. 

 

Only thing that wasn't totally smooth was using my cheap stepper bit instead of a better twist bit to do the hole in the panel, and having it come out kind of rough and a little off center. Also the resistor could have been placed more neatly but I cut the veroboard as small as I could make it so I wouldn't have to even think about clearance when I drilled the mounting holes.

 

The difference is definitely subtle but it's there, as you turn it up you definitely hear the "warble" in the filter that 303 purists are always going on about, and the low mids get kind of slightly blurry, for lack of a better word, in a nice way. It's one of those things where you probably wouldn't notice it at all if you just turned it on and use it, but it's pretty obvious when you adjust it while a pattern is playing with the resonance, envelope mod and cutoff all the way up.  Subtle but definitely not placebo effect subtle, maybe comparable to the difference between a DCO and a very stable VCO (in terms of subtlety, not what it does). I think it's worth doing if you have one and solder - the only real challenges are where to put the trimmer and desoldering the spot where R1 is, because there are some capacitors close enough to it that it's hard to reach one of the holes with either an iron or a desoldering pump from the component side. 

 

Edited December 7, 2016 by RSP

[TubularCorporation]

Got the resistors in.  Still need to order a couple more pots and some pin headers.

 

[TubularCorporation]

Turns out it takes FOREVER to get 17mm brass spacers, first order took a month and they sent me 5mm by accident so now I'm waiting on my second order before I can install the pots on the Jasper.

 

In the mean time, tomorrow is the slightly terrifying job of taking out the main board, desoldering the CPU and drilling some holes in the chassis of my Juno 6 to put in the Tubbutec mod.

 

It's really basic (other than cleanly desoldering a DIP-40, but I don't want to clip the legs off it I don't have to) and yet the stakes are on the high side.

[Hautlle]

Hot air station is magical for large desoldering jobs if you have access to one

Edited January 29, 2017 by hautlle

[TubularCorporation]

I've got an off-brand rework station but I've only needed to use it a few times so I'm not that good with it yet.  First time went fine.  Second time I got the heat/nozzle size/timing combination wrong and actually melted part of the surface of a PCB, although somehow it still works so I just slathered some epoxy over the trace that was lifting and hope I never need to repair that pin header again.

 

 

So in light of that I'm not sure I want my next hot air rework job to be the Juno, I think I've going to go with the solder wick and patience method of just loosening up the legs one at a time, and just bring in the hot air at the very end if I absolutely have to. 

[Hautlle]

Check your temps! How hot are you running it to have melted the PCB?

 

I had to remove a resistor array that I installed backwards, low air speed + 350F and I pulled it out with a pair of tweezers and reinstalled it the right way all at once.

 

I've done similar with a DIP16 socket I had to remove too. Heat the back side of the PCB so it doesn't melt the plastic socket and pull it out once the solder is melted.

[TubularCorporation]

I don't remember exactly but it was in the same range that I've used before (probably a bit too hot but under 400c)  so I'm wondering if the temperature control on the thing is messed up.  At the price I paid I wouldn't be surprised, especially since I had actually desoldered the same part with the same settings once the day before and it was really easy.

 

I haven't damaged a part with a soldering iron in over a decade (I overheated a pot once trying to solder a ground wire to the outside with a cheap iron back when I was first learning to work on stuff) but I've damaged something with hot air in the last 5 days so for this job I'm sticking with what I know.  Those big, old, through hole boards are pretty easy to work on anyway.

[TubularCorporation]

Well that was easy.  Time consuming, but completely routine.  Solder wick never ceases to amaze me.

 

 

I still have to install the leads for the filter and pitch bend control but I already tested it out without them and it works really well. 

 

Not going to put the Juno66 logo sticker on it, though.  That's just going too far.

[TubularCorporation]

I know how I'm going to spend my next free afternoon:

 

[TubularCorporation]

Built a Dan Armstrong Green Ringer clone over the weekend.  Pretty cool to misuse.  Was getting some great, contrapuntal, metallic sounds by putting it in front of a reverb with a long predelay on an aux send and sending a pretty forgettable x0x acid loop into it. Looking forward to getting more time with it, I have a feeling it's going to sound really good on individual drums.

[Braintree]

Do any of you have experience with building robots? I have a project in mind where it would be useful to have a MIDI controlled drum robot.

 

Any suggestions for guides or tips? I've looked into some arduino guides. Just looking for a good intersection of price vs. build involvement.

[TubularCorporation]

Do any of you have experience with building robots? I have a project in mind where it would be useful to have a MIDI controlled drum robot.

 

Any suggestions for guides or tips? I've looked into some arduino guides. Just looking for a good intersection of price vs. build involvement.

 

I don't know much of anything about that, but can't you control servos and stuff more or less directly with GPIO? Axoloti supports GPIO directly from the pin header on the board if I'm not mistaken (haven't used mine as much as I probably should), so that might be a more music-friendly platform to start from.

[Hautlle]

Yeah, no need for a full-fledged "robot"

Just some solenoids

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKzLCb6uvQE

Edited May 26, 2017 by hautlle