Tuesday, 10 November 2015

Buchla Easel - Krell patch - figure 21

A Krell patch based around the program card.


The temple of Medinet Habu - Luxor Egypt

The Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu.
This is very close to the "Valley of the Kings".
This dates from the New Kingdom.

 First Pylon of the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III
 It's a huge place. Very famous for its decorated wall reliefs -- about 7,000 m2 (75,347 sq ft) of them..

The reliefs depict the defeat of the Sea Peoples during the reign of Ramesses III.


The battle between the Egyptians and the Sea People occurred around  1175BC.
Ramesses III seems to have repulsed an invasion of the Nile delta.
Other sources suggest a date of 1177BC
This period is very important, as it was a time of great upheaval and marked a turning point in civilization
and the end of the Bronze Age.
 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric Cline, PhD)

The end of the Bronze age marked the start of a new dark age which lasted till the Renaissance of Greece.






 Ramses harvesting corn

 Lion headed goddess - Sekhmet ??
Sekhmet is the warrior goddess as well as goddess of healing  .... a strange combination !
She is often depicted as a lioness, the fiercest hunter who's breath formed the desert. 



Amun & Maat
Amun - the Father of life who later combined with Ra to become Amun-Ra the all important State God.
Maat is here representing truth, justice, balance and morality. She is the daughter of the Egyptian sun deity Ra and wife of the moon god Thoth.




Horus
God of the sky & Kingship - often depicted as a falcon Horus as the son of Isis and Osiris.

CGS 58 Dual Utility LFO - build notes

I'm finally getting around to building one of Ken's modules.
It's his classic LFO (Cat Girl Synth 58).

First some unpopulated PCB pics.

 And the reverse side.

Headers first.

Resistors, diodes, caps, beads. There are no hard to find parts.
The circuit uses a Schmitt trigger  --> integrator  ----> comparator.
Check out Ken's schematic.
The 1st section, the  Schmitt trigger has a positive feedback applied to the non-inverting input.
In the  integrator , the feedback resistance is replaced with a capacitor and finally the comparator
kicks in  where we have no feedback loop. The comparator generates the square wave.


I've been getting a bit spoilt lately in building modules with surface mounted pots.
So decided to try adapting this.

You need to be careful with polarity of the LEDs too.

It seems to work well.
Now it's time to make the faceplate.


Some useful links:
1. Adding a range switch - Muffs 
2. Bridechamber
3. Adding CV control - electro-music
4.  Serge Audio & CV levels - muffs
5. Ken's own site - CGS
6. Video - youtube


Sunday, 8 November 2015

Prototype Easel program cards

I've been playing around with a few different configurations for the easel patch card.
Its is wonderful way to extend the capabilities of an already incredible instrument.

This is my first version using IC sockets to build the breadboard.

The circuit on the red breadboard is a very simple comparator.


The red breadboard can be removed. It plugs into the IC sockets if more development
space is needed.
This is my second version of the Easel dev board using headers rather than IC scokets.
I found it much cleaner and easier to work on.

A larger breadboard can be added if needed. And the patch cables have resistors embeded into them like the EMS synthi' patch pins.



Wednesday, 21 October 2015

Delay No More - NonLinearCircuits build notes.

The saying "Delay No More" is a great ideal to live by.
And for those of you who have spent any time in Hong Kong, you might also recognize it by its local slang meaning.. "Delay no more" sounds similar to the Cantonese foul words (Diu lay lo mo) which translate as "fuck your mother".
Seldom used seriously "Delay no more" appears in writing as a joke among Hong Kong people. There is even a fashion brand in Hong Kong producing T-shirts with "DelayNoMore" on it.


I'm sure Andrew knew none of this when he picked a name for his new delay module. :-)


Here are the build notes:
http://www.sdiy.org/pinky/data/DelayNoMore%20build%20notes.pdf

All the SMDs are passive ... just caps & resistors. So building this puppy should be pretty easy.
(Be careful not to heat the caps too much).

The DNM uses the PT2399 which is a great chip for DIY. It's almost a whole guitar pedal by itself.
According to Princeton (the manufacturer) it is a echo audio processor IC utilizing CMOS Technology which is equipped with ADC and DAC, high sampling frequency and an internal memory of 44K.



It also features an internal VCO circuit in the system clock, thereby, making the frequency easily adjustable.
Cool Man !

First some virgin pics of the PCB.

Both sides require SMD components. Solder these on first.


Headers, resistors, caps next.
Next the BC 547 trannie, the 78L05 (+5v voltage regulator) and the vactrol.
I'm using a Silonex NS 32

K = Cathode.

Now the pots & jacks. There are six linear 100k pots , one 1M linear  and a single 50k linear.

Don't forget to solder the ground tabs with scrap wire.
Lastly do the LED.
Beautiful !!! Time to stand back and admire.
And she sounds very distinctive. esp for such a small module. Another sound effect in your arsenal.

I'm thinking of putting this into one of my Buchla cases. As the CV input is isolated by a vactrol, plugging in 10v - 15v Buchla voltage levels should be fine. This module is not just for Eurorack.
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Sunday, 18 October 2015

Buchla 200e & a Roland TR 909

Some fun yesterday. 

Cobramatic & I paired two of our favourite instruments:


The Buchla 200e & Roland's TR-909


The 909 is the master clock. (all midi)  sent to the 225e -- the top left module in the pic below.

The timing to the 250e sequencer was super tight... all midi clocked via Buchla's internal bus

Remix 2: