Do it yourself crew in the house?

[thawkins]

3 minutes ago, psn said:

Doesn't look like it! 

Manual says "expected control range is 0V to +5V" so I think this makes it Eurorack compatible, unless there are some insanely different amperages going on?

[psn]

1 hour ago, thawkins said:

Manual says "expected control range is 0V to +5V" so I think this makes it Eurorack compatible, unless there are some insanely different amperages going on?

Ah, yeah see! Thought you meant three unit rack compatible size. 

[thawkins]

Yeah I don't have a rack, I just have two pieces of Eurorack compatible gear that are gathering dust - Kastle and KOMA Field Kit

This looks like it could pair nicely with them. Build looks complicated though, and the guy's saying things about testing, hah I don't even own a multimeter.

 

Yeah I know I should just get started and figure out things on the way.

[TubularCorporation]

Well, I took the money I made from selling the Mother32 that was going to go toward converting that old road case into a big Eurorack case and, for what it would have cost me to get jsut the rails and related hardware, instead picked up a Loudestwarning format 4u boat with power distribution PCB (but no PSU) and the boards, panel and mounting bracket to build the CGS version of the Serge Stepped and Smooth Generator.  Other than the power supply, DIY Serge is more affordable than Eurorack and it's really what I want to be working with.  Even after diving in as hard as I could afford on Eurorack a few months back I still absolutely hare the form factor and the flimsy little jacks.  You can do a lot with it and there are a ton of great sounding, innovative modules out there but I still just don't enjoy working with it like I do with 1/4" and banana gear, and the whole Serge philosophy of low level modules that can perform a lot of functions (the SSG, depending on how you patch it, can be a slew processor, LFO, envelope follower, simple envelope generator, and a bunch of other stuff. So the little (I think it's 2x84hp but I haven't actually counted) case I got as payment for designing a simple footswitch-controlled gate generator last year is going to keep being my dedicated guitar (and other audio but mostly guitar so far) processing rig and I'll slowly build up the Serge panel I was planning last winter (kind of a hybrid between the standard Eidelweiss and Animal panels) a module at a time. Maybe design a 4u panel for the Klee sequencer next spring and stick one of those in a second boat if I have the money (the way things are going this could all be moot in a few months since I have no idea when my regular editing work that usually funds 1-2 big projects per year will come back).

 

Meanwhile, I'm slowing down on DIY for a month or two, once I've got the last two modules I've bee woring on finished (waiting for a missing part for one, and the other is the Mind Reader that's mostly done but the gate output is still messed up) becasue it's been taking up so much of my free time I've hardly sat down to work on music (not counting collaborations, I've been doignthat a lot more lately) in a couple months.  Time to really use the stuff I've built.

 

That's the big danger of DIY for me, really - it's so satisfying to build stuff that it can get in the way of using the stuff I build.

[psn]

Yeah, I was building a lot for a while, that period didn't result in much music. 

[TubularCorporation]

In terms of pure hours and drive space I'm really prolific right now, but it's all 90 minute remote jams (a bit over 20 of them in the last two months) so far.  Sitting down and working on finished solo tracks not so much.

 

It doesn't help that in the last 6 months I've built more stuff than I have table space to set up all at once.

[thawkins]

16 minutes ago, TubularCorporation said:

In terms of pure hours and drive space I'm really prolific right now, but it's all 90 minute remote jams (a bit over 20 of them in the last two months) so far.  Sitting down and working on finished solo tracks not so much.

 

It doesn't help that in the last 6 months I've built more stuff than I have table space to set up all at once.

Have you considered building a table too?

[TubularCorporation]

1 hour ago, thawkins said:

Have you considered building a table too?

That's what I filled up.

 

I didn't exactly build it from scratch (I'm not in any way set up to do woodworking beyond drilling holes and basic hand tool stuff - even making something like a record cube would be a big challenge) but I got an off brand wire cart a few years ago and made a solid top for it from a cheap countertop I got in the discount leftover parts area at the local Ikea (seriously best place for cheap tabletops and legs) and added slowly to that as I needed to, so now it had a laptop/drum machine stand, a patch cable rack, and a headphone holder (heavy steel bed leg I also got at the Ikea bin) so it's kind of a mobile tabletop gear rig, but it's only about 2/3 of a meter deep and a meter wide. It has just enough space for the little Eurorack case, the Octatrack, a small preamp, and on more piece of gear up on the laptop stand (right now it's the old Boss BE-5 multieffects pedal).  Anything else I use that isn't rackmount has to go on keyboard stands with boards sitting on them, or cheap folding TV trays if I want to use it.

[TubularCorporation]

Both of the modules I was working on this week, that are pretty integral to what I'm even using the little Eurorack for, are problematic (the Mindreader is actually getting worse, something intermittent is happening but it didn't work and then it worked fine for about 10 minutes and then everything but the gate worked for 3 days and now the entire rack won't power up if it's installed, and basically the only thing that's changing is I'm moving it around, but even if I find whatever else is worn there's still the gate problem) and the Dubldeca works fine electroncially as far as I can tell but won't recognize incoming MIDI and I've meticulously gone through and tried everything that everyone else who has posted about having the same problem has done and none of it worked so who knows.  Hopefully just a firmware issue but I'm at a brick wall, and I had to actually temporarily retire the entire Eurorack setup until I get them worked out because what I need it for right now relies on those specific modules, and frankly it's generally getting in the way of making music more than it's helping make music, so I am back to using a couple of semimodular boxes in its place and it's already way better, soundwise and in terms of ergonomics.  It already felt like I was struggling against everything being too small and fiddly to begin with, so this is just the last straw for the time being.  I'll revive it eventually but for now I just want to actually make music.

 

Not going to stop me making some Serge stuff this winter, though.

[TubularCorporation]

Also I'm getting way more in to a sample based workflow again and if I'm going t put any more money into anything in the next couple months it's a nice stand for the MPC and replacements for a few janky buttons, so I can focus on

 

-sample in MPC

-build a pattern from samples

-sample a loop of that pattern into the Octatrack and crossfade to the loop

-do more sampling into the MPC

-repeat

-when there are enough sampled things, record MIDI and then track everything out live for mixing (or do it all in real time as a performance) so I can use all of the good things about the MPC and Octatrack while having them covering each other's weaknesses.  That's been my plan for a while but dipping a toe in Eurorack got in the way.

 

EDIT: After tonight's Ninjam session I'm 100% confident this is the right move.

Edited May 29, 2020 by TubularCorporation

[TubularCorporation]

I had a Devi Evern SM Fuzz for a few years before I sold a bunch of gear, and in the "chaos" mode it could cover more ground than what I've been getting using about 10 Eurrack modules for processing guitar (it wasn't as controllable, but more variety).  I always wanted the full blown Soda Meiser but it looks like under the new ownership what they're seling as the Soda Meiser is actually what used to be sold as the SM Fuzz and what I always wanted (but was already out of production by the time I was wanting one in the late 2000s) is now basically forgotten by the Internet, the closest thing I can find is a "Soda Meiser Deluxe" that's also really hard to get - I think they made like 40 of them 5 or 6 years ago.  So I'm going to build one with as many extra controls added as I can fit.  Other than the pots, switches and enclosure it's about $8 in parts, and all of the different variations are mostly swapping out one capacitor or changing the polarity or type of one transistor.  Once I get a few transistors I didn't already have in the mail I should be able to build it in an afternoon.

 

Anyhow, when I was looking for information on the two button "soda can" version that I never ended up finding anything about except this review that I can't read, I dug up this and it's really useful:

 

https://www.scribd.com/document/211309101/Devi-Ever-Diy-Info-Manual-aw-heck-yes

 

 

Mine's going to be somewhere between this version and the three knob "super" version.  I'm not sure yet what the Boost switch actually did but I'm going to move the Chaos switch to the second foot switch and use the toggle to switch between Soda Meiser and Vintage Fuzz Master (only difference is reversing one transistor), add a battery starve knob, and if I have space I MIGHT add another switch for "noise" mode or set it up so that the footswitch toggles normal and noise/chaos and a toggle switch chooses which mode the footswitch selects (they're both just lifting a single component, so it wouldn't be that hard so setup  that way, but I have no idea what Nosie mode will sound like so I don't know if I want it or want to have the option of using both at the same time).

 

Now I jsut need to find a bottle of this stuff so I can stick the label onto the pedal enclosure:

Edited June 8, 2020 by TubularCorporation

[psn]

On preorder for a few days now. 

Info and link to order page, etc:
http://www.thehumancomparator.net/rm.html

 

 

 

 

[Hautlle]

Finished up the RYK M185 sequencer.  Took me longer than anticipated since 1 switch wouldn't work.  After troubleshooting my soldering/parts placement for a couple of days it turns out there was some gunk inside the switch that kept it from working....

 

 

 

[sweepstakes]

Just did a 4ms passive mult kit (piece of cake) and a Befaco Sampling Modulator. My case didn't arrive yet, so I'm not sure whether the latter works... but the former works great!

Edited June 9, 2020 by sweepstakes

[TubularCorporation]

FINALLY got it to the point where it's working and usable.  After the stuff I've done this year, it was actually pretty simple but when I first started it a few years ago it seemed really intimidating.

 

It's still just bolted to a piece of wood but the motherboard, control board, displays and one MIDI i/o board are all set up, so it's usable.

 

 

Still to do:

- second MIDI i/o board for 4 input and 4 output ports total

-digital and analog i/o boards for CV, gate and trigger output (probably more complicated than that though, the best way to do it is to use a couple B25 connectors for the analog outputs, and then make breakout modules in your modular rack, but that actually needs a bunch of active circuitry on both ends because the AOUT can't drive a very long cable run on its own, and as far as I know there aren't PCBs available for any of that.  So for the medium term at  least, it's going to be MIDI only.

-Actual case

 

EDIT: also need to get knobs, and maybe a couple colored switch caps for the transport controls and some others.

 

Wish I'd gone with amber displays instead of white, though. Might be worth the $20 to replace them sometime.

Edited June 9, 2020 by TubularCorporation

[thawkins]

That looks really good.

I did not do any soldering, but I did set up a NoteModulator M4L device so I can feed any arpeggiator MIDI into it and fade individual notes in/out using velocities (works well if the synth responds to velocities dynamically).

It supports 16 steps and a lot of other insanely configurable parameters, but since Live racks only have 8 parameters easily mappable (and therefore easily visible on Push UI), I just restricted myself to 8 steps. Fortunately the sequence length is easy to change in the modulator plugin so changing it to 5-7 or other odd number AND feeding in a arpeggio that repeats in a different number of notes, you can basically have a rhythmic (arpeggiator is constant tempo, and the note modulations set up a kind of rhythm) stream of random-but-not-too-random notes.

Next level is to map a M4L LFO to all of the different steps, set to a low speed and lot of randomness should ensure completely generative sequences based on notes that you can just play on the keyboard. (Random arpeggiator + hold).

I also cleaned and tidied up my desk.

Here's the link for the M4L note modulator I was talking about by the way https://roberthenke.com/technology/m4l.html

Edited June 10, 2020 by thawkins

[TubularCorporation]

If it weren't for the cost of having a front panel made you could put one of them together for like $200USD, give or take.  The newer "plus" version looks nice but honestly I feel like the simpler interface works against a lot of what appeals to me about this thing (not control-per-function but still close - flat menu structure with dedicated, labelled buttons for every menu page) and it's a lot more expensive to build. It wasn't out yet when I got that panel made so it's a moot point anyway.

[psn]

14 hours ago, Hautlle said:

Finished up the RYK M185 sequencer.  Took me longer than anticipated since 1 switch wouldn't work.  After troubleshooting my soldering/parts placement for a couple of days it turns out there was some gunk inside the switch that kept it from working....

 

 

 

Congrats, looks good! Cool that it has a couple of features not on the Metropolis.

[Limo]

So I wanted to solder together a simple distortion module (nothing fancy, a CD 4049 circuit from "Hand Made Electronic Music" which I happen to think sounds really, really good), discovered I did not have 1M linear pots, wanted to order some at Conrad, decided to fill up the order to offset the ridiculous shipping costs and discovered they hardly have any stock left of commonly used components. None of the ceramic caps or ICs were available in through hole format. All they had was SMT and components with odd specs.

Anyone else encounter this? I thought China had started up again, but apparently not

[TubularCorporation]

I had a similar issue, I built that Soda Meiser pedal today and I had most of the stuff on hand but had to order 100k post and transistors that showed up late last night.  Turns out instead of 100k linear and a 100k log I got all 100k reverse log, but I ended up being able to scavange what I needed from some old stuff that didn't work right when I first started building things.  So now the volume is a little 9mm smooth shaft pot with PCB tabs that I sort of bent into hooks and soldered wires to, and the gain is a knurled shaft 16mm pot.  Ended up with an extra hole in the front and both jacks up in a weird spot in the corner because space was so tight, but that's all kind of appropriate since the thing sounds broken anyway (by design).  Really glad to have one of these in my life again, and since I already had most of the expensive parts (jacks, footswitches, enclosure) it only cost about $12, mainly because two of the transistors were about $4 each.

 

Instead of putting the "chaos" and "noise" mods on a single switch, I gave them their own footswitches so you can use both at once, and it does this ridiculous almost inverted-dynamics thing where the attack of your note is squashed into nothing and then it kind of swells up.  Downside is it also pushes any pickup hum up really loud when you aren't playing, but it's still useful.

 

Also put in a toggle that switches if between the Soda Meiser and the Vintage Fuzz Master, which is almost the same circuit but sounds quite a bit different.

 

Ended up using this layout instead of either of the layouts in the PDF I posted earlier.

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by TubularCorporation

[Hautlle]

Anyone messed around with the Ciat Lonbarde paper circuit stuff?  I think I'm about to make an order of a bunch of "random" stuff from Tayda to play around with these circuits.

https://www.ciat-lonbarde.net/paper/index.html

 

[TubularCorporation]

I've looked at it but never messed with it, I'd be really interested to hear about it if you give it a shot.

 

 

I finally dug out the 3trinsrgb+1c that I'd half finished before I moved and then never picked back up. Should be done tomorrow, hopefully it'll work.

 

 

EDIT: works!

 

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by TubularCorporation

[thebotmakes]

Same - I’ve looked at it, even printed a couple off and ordered some parts then never got round to it.  Would still like to though, be interested to see how you get on.

[TubularCorporation]

Not tested yet because I don't have the panel where the DIN jacks mount yet so I don't know how long the wires will need to be and I don't have many IDC connectors left so I'm not going to make a temporary one.  These things are so simple I'd be shocked if they didn't work.

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by TubularCorporation

[user]

Looks nice! What is it? 

Ordered components and parts to put together a Phonic Taxidermist and a couple of piezo preamps (https://www.zachpoff.com/resources/alex-rice-piezo-preamplifier/) 

The taxidermist will be the most challenging build for me yet I think as there are a few different ways of putting it together/configuring it wrt to having it as a desktop unit or eurorack module and having some extra parameters exposed on the panel.  
It uses a HT8955A delay chip that’s oop and apparently not super easy to source. Ordered 5 from a seller on aliexpress before reading that there are a lot of fakes/replica’s in circulation that either don’t work correctly or are even entirely useless. Luckily the seller decided to send me 10 and going by the description of the genuine chips it seems that at least 3 of them are the real deal.