Analogue Bus » Hardware

This is what is being finished tonight!

bryan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:35:54 +0000

GOODBYE SLEEP!

CRY!!!!!

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Finished my fraken triwave!

bryan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:31:58 +0000

Will try to explain this beast later right now we will just settle for a picture of it resting in the modular

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New bent Talking Teacher!

bryan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:26:35 +0000

Well I decided to grab another talking teacher off Ebay and bend it. This time I was aiming for a cleaner job and also to add a bunch of mods to it. That sounds like no big deal until you open the case to these suckers, there is ZERO room inside one. So I went about adding my standard 10 bends when I stumbled on a new one diagnosing a problem. The Talking Teacher (henceforth called TT) has an amazingly cool hold button, but it goes beyond the normal hold and allows “stutters” and random memory accesses. So I added a button on the right side so as you are hitting things you can add a glitch “hold”. Also to super expand it across the top back is going to be a single row of the female pin headers. It will have tiny Krynar wires running down it into a hole and the soldered to every pin in the system (that’s worth it) this combined with another female header on top which has 3 pots glued to it, 5 buttons, and a dipswitch/pot combo. It will allow you to module style connect up bends thus vastly expanding it. The dipswitch/pot combo is for a 10 step sequencer.

Current picture sans modularizing:

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New case shots

bryan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:05:02 +0000

First pic adding more later

My new case from SynthCase.com

bryan — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:28:17 +0000

I know there has been an explosion of insaneness on the forums lately over Randal’s cases at SynthCase.com. Here are some quick pics of my case I got yesterday. I have not been able to properly put everything together, but just wanted to drop in a few modules and act silly and add two of my 128 Monomes at the bottom. The pics are really cheesy from my cellphone. Nothing is really tightly bolted together and the power supplies and distros are just sitting in the bottom of the case. Hopefully will have time tomorrow eve to finish it up.

Pics:

Lookie at these….

bryan — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:16:54 +0000

We are thinking of adding these to our shop. Mind you all of them are currently missing cables.

What do you think non-bananafied people?

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Lookie at these…

bryan — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:19:08 +0000

We are thinking of adding these to our shop. Mind you all of them are currently missing cables.

What do you think non-bananafied people?

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I need to update more often! Doh!

bryan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:15:36 +0000

This only includes a few of the massive amout of stuff we are working on

Here is one of the new 6 voice polyphonic synths before it was etched

Here is circuit bent Yoda:

In the background you can see another poly cigar box that uses body contacts (man I wish I could get ahold of some of those arduino piano shields!):

Finally my little sheep screamer with lfo modulators, square wave osc, and finally a baby toy that was a sheep that is massively bent:

First shot of yet unamed cigar box synth layout

bryan — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:32:57 +0000

This is a silly first glimpse of what the new cigar box synth may end up being laid out like. All the parts are just sitting on the surface currently. There will be a metal tab 8 key keyboard. It will have 8 rotary controls above each key with push buttons. The controls adjust the pitch of each key to anything you want. The push button locks in the step or arpeggio step. The 4×4 RGB 24-bit key pad will be embedded down into the cigar box with only the buttons barely sticking through. The tops of the buttons will be capped with the same wood as the box. This will allow a nice glow effect around each key and not distract too much from the aesthetic I am trying to go for. The 8×8 LED RGB matrix will be embedded down in the cigar case flush with surface. It will have a fine mesh grill (dunno which metal yet) over it so it does not distract too much but is able to confer the information. Next to the LED matrix is 3 more rotary controls. One controls function and the other two are value adjustments course/fine. The button pad will also be used for entering parameters for the synth. Typically a synth that has a engine like the cigar box synth has, has many controls. The last few parts going into case are in the front is a embedded to surface linear softpot. This can be assigned to many modulation sources. On each side will be a pot that is connected to a lever or will have a knob with a gear and then a second reduction gear that turns the pot. Dunno which style yet. On the back will be power, headphone out, main out, MIDI In/Out.

Synth features:

1. 6 voice oscillators with 6 normal waveforms and then an optional wavetable lookup.

2. Oscillators can modulate each other and can do hard synch, FM, etc.

3. 4 envelope generators.

4. Formant filter

5. Two-pole ladder filter.

6. Multi-stage mixer

7. And more + magic!

The first one will use a simple main processor to handle the mundane tasks but we will be moving to the new Illuminato IXM processors. When this move happens they cigar boxes with the new processor will have a small wireless range using XBEE and will be able to work in parallel with other cigar synths to cross modulate, and do other wild things (I hope). Including if one cigar box is on an old firmware it will flash up on the led matrix a new firmware is available and be able to over the air upgrade itself (I think)

Here is a crappy layout shot:

Main circuit bending project: Yamaha PSS 170

bryan — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:27:41 +0000

This one is taking a bit of time for some reason. Its not that tough of a bend just cut the 8 data lines between the main CPU and the Yamaha FM synth processor.

Mods added:

MIDI retrofit using a HighlyLiquid UMR kit.
16 body contacts
10 banana jacks and a set of 15 stackable banana patch cables
8 Data bus glitch switches
8 chrome inset red LEDs that line up with the data lines from the CPU to the FM processor. It is nice for debugging (sorta) and a really cool effect.
(Attempting) pitch bend knob
(Attempting) rotary tune selector
(Attempting) loop system with rotary loop start/end rotary knobs and a loop speed pot