Thursday, 1 July 2021

Moog Subharmonicon - patches A

 Some beginner patches with the Moog Subharmonicon.
These are from the manual.
 


It's a really enjoyable synth, with lots of surprises.
 

Patch 1  called Aquatic Chords connects 
seq 1 to the filter cutoff &
clock out to trigger in.
 
Turn off the EG
 
 
---------------------------------------
 
Patch 2 called Mellow Harmonies 
This is almost identical to patch 1.
 

It connects
seq 1 CV out to the filter cutoff &
seq 1 clock out to trigger in.
 
Turn off the EG
 
 
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Monday, 28 June 2021

Julia Bondar: studio recording fragment from upcoming album

..

Very Cool.
It's so refreshing to hear danceable electronic music.

Hopefully more artists like Julia, come to Australia when the borders open.


Saturday, 26 June 2021

Peter Zinovieff

 It's a sad day.
Just heard the news that Peter Zinovieff passed away.
He was one of the great synth inventors and designers.
Up there along with Bob Moog, Alan Pearlman, and Don Buchla.
 


The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd all used his synths.
 


He will be sorely missed.



Moog SubHarmonicon & Korg Volca Beats

 I only recently purchased the Moog Subharmonicon and have 
been testing it with various other synths & drum machines.
 
 
I don't have a DFAM, but the old trusty Korg Volca Beats seems to sync ok, and sounds fine. The Volca is supplying the master clock.

Ive added a bit of reverb care of a Strymon BlueSky/
 
The Polyrhythms are quite inspirational. 
You can create melodies and rhythms that I don't think I could easily do
with a conventional sequencer.
But you need to play with them for a while .
...... gems suddenly appear.
 
I find that  trying to recreate the sound later is tricky. So if you stumble across a good patch just record it.
 


Wednesday, 23 June 2021

BBx291 - Nonlinear circuit build notes part 2

This is part 2 of my build notes for the NLC eurorack formatt BBx 291 filter.
Its a module inspired by the Buchla 291.

Part one is here:

I'm up to making the vactrol box .

One header at a time.




This uses headers to construct a lightproof box to house a combination of LEDs and LDRs (Light dependent resistors.)

I'm using the GL 5516 as suggested

 

Make sure you have the PCBs the right way round.

I like to place the headers for the box one at a time.
requires a little patience to line everything up.
 

Time for the LEDS
Using red





four B100k pots,
three B10k pots - linear

Next the jacks and the panel LEDs
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

All Done

 

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You can find more NLC builds here.
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Sunday, 20 June 2021

NLC - BBx 291 VCF - build notes

 Finally starting this build of the Nonlinear Circuits 291 filter.
This is inspired by the Buchla 291 bandwidth/bandpass filter.

The BBX291 in Eurorack format.


I don't own an original 291. They are extremely rare.
However I have built a few "clones" ... whatever they call them these days.

Don B didn't do many filters. I think he preferred waveshaping over filtering.
This however is a great sounding module, and well worth having in your arsenal.

The original 291 (and the clones) used vactrols - four for each filter. They were VTL2C3 vactrols which have a 10M1k range.










Andrew's version uses his "black box" idea.
Rather than use individual vactrols, the LEDs & LDRs are housed in a light-tight enclosure built into the PCBs. It's a really neat idea.

This is a pic of a LPG module that uses the same idea.


Andrew used some clear lens red LEDs and GL5516 LDRs (0.5M-5k) for this filter module.
I'll see what i have.
His suggestions are that if you are using any LDR with an off resistance less then 5MΩ you can leave off the two 10MΩ resistors as they will be superfluous.
Ones that get down to 1k or less are prob best


Here are some pics of the non populated PCBs and front panel.
On the panel  the two CV pots are sort of attenuverters, so 0 is at mid-point.


Ok back to the build.
























Some NLC words of wisdom


ICs 1st.
There are five TL 072 op amps 

Resistors next


Caps next

S1JL, Schottky, power rectifier








To be continued......

Links
+ Build notes & bom

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You can find more NLC builds here.
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