I thought one of these would produce good sampling material, and be nice and easy to build. It only uses a 556 IC, 3 resistors, 3 capacitors, 2 pots and a switch. If you want an LED you'll need another 1K resistor.
Well maybe it's me but vero board is nasty! It did work though. Need to start researching making PCBs. Too many cool schematics out there!
It's pretty amazing what a wide range of sounds you get with just 2 knobs, I think it's especially good for recording it and then editing the audio further. Next step will be to build another one and pimp it out with LDRs, vactrols and maybe body contacts. I will need to get a breadboard.
Yeah, I did it with a drill, then after brush it with an old toothbrush to get the little bits of copper of and use a multimeter to see if it's not still making contact. Pain in the ass!
Etching a PC board makes this build a 30 minute project (not counting the time you spent on the board).
The 556 chip is built like a tank, so you can feel safe experimenting with it. There are a couple of places that you can get body contacts from, and some places that you can add switches to increase the tones possible. Also, if you add in some extra caps there's more options. Try adding a 10uf cap between pins 2 and 5 (if my memory serves). That's a mod from squarewave parade's Blast Fed Disaster, which grew out of APC.
I'm pretty happy with myself. just built one from a couple of 555 IC I had lying around and some scavanged bits from a few of teh dead toys i've got lying around.
I'm totally hung up on vintage cameras and books. Everything I've made in the last six months has been housed in those. Cans of food would look pretty cool, too (ACCC- Atari Creamed Corn Console), or bell jars for a steam punk look, or everything done with super small parts and jammed inside an inhaler.
I was going to stick it in the shell of a toy gun, but i had issues getting everything in, ended up for the ultimate diy look and finished off by cutting up a cardboard poster tube. the way i've mounted the pots and switches makes it look like a horny dalek.
VHS box with sticker I'm thinking of making 4 of these, one as a present, one for me, 2 to try and sell to my producer friends cuz I'm S.K.I.N.T.
1 glitch body contact, the switch is an on-off-on double throw, one side on is classic 2 knob action, other side adds an LDR in series to one of the pots. The VHS case is transparent so the LDR will be inside the case to the left of the bug.
If you build this try 44 uF for the electrolytic cap, slightly more bass. (Still really thin sounding because it's all narrow pulse waves but hey that's the design)
« Last Edit: March 09, 2008, 01:04:32 AM by djsynchro »
me and my friend just stayed up all night and designed an apc from perfboard and put it into a plastic orange juice container from the recylin' bin. He took it to work so i dont have picts, buts its super nitty gritty and sounded great. we added an LDR to and put it through the cap.
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