Tiracon 6V sound demo

YouTube via MusicMiK. follow-up to this post.
"Those following me on twitter (SynthMiK) might have seen that i got a nearly complete Tiracon 6V to give the boards i recently showed an enclosure and make it a complete synth again.

In fact, i now have a completely working spare board set, because i was able to repair the ones that came with the synth also.

The restoration of this synth can be followed as a raw photo collection here: http://www.mik-music.org/gallery66
The power supply and the wooden side panels still need work, but this will take place in the near future.

I cut out my usual babble from the video to use the whole 10 minutes for the sound demo, the text has gone here this time.

I hope you have some fun :)"

Tiracon 6V board set brought to life

YouTube via MusicMiK
"I recently got this board set from an internet auction for an interesting price. The seller told it's unused - which really might be true, as i didn't see any traces of screws or so on the boards.
It's just the digital board, analog board with voice boards and the display board. The power supply without the transformer was also included but not used here, everything is hooked up to the lab power supply currently.
The EPROMs were still okay (sure, i first dumped them :), some chips were broken, and in some places, there was a mechanical damage.
All in all got this far in 2 days and i think i will get this back to life as a usable synth again."

Korg Trident filter adjustment part 1

YouTube via MusicMiK
"Today, i'm calibrating the filters of a Korg Trident Mk1. It was a bit difficult to find out what the pots are for and to thing about a useful procedure of the calibration, but finally, the unit is well-tuned again.

All this took about 3 hours for the calibration and 1 hour to find out the purpose of the pots by measurements and trial-and-error.

I hope you can use it as some orientation if you want to do this joy also.

This is a 2-part video, make sure you see both parts."

Korg Trident filter adjustment part 2

4-wire touchscreen on AVR

YouTube via MusicMiK. Touchscreen interface for his MonoMiK DIY synthesizer.
You can find previous posts featuring MusicMiK here.
"I found this display at one of my usual electronics dealers - the one who specialized in selling industry surplus stuff. This display is available for 6,95 EUR, while neither the touch panel nor the EL backlight are mentioned in the offer, i just suspected the touch panel because the characteristic 4 lines going away in the photo of the offer.

The display uses an LC7981 controller, which is obsolete, but quite okay, the touch panel is a resistive 4-wire touch panel. I connected this via 4 protection resistors to an ATmega88, Port C0-C3, while the software uses those port pins as either digital outputs to provide the voltages or as analog inputs to sample the output of the panel. Quite an elegant and simple design.

Before you ask - Pollin Electronic, order number 120346. Currently, 778 are in stock, i think, the 10 units i just ordered are already substracted :)"

Small Stone phaser clone build

YouTube via MusicMiK. Note parts 1-6 previously went up here.
Part 7 has been added and is the last video in this series.

Building a phaser part 4 - 6

Note if you want to see these in order starting with Part 1, click hear and scroll.

YouTube via MusicMiK
"This is a simple project - i will build a clone of the Small Stone phaser as a floor effects unit with some modifications to add some more control over the sound.

Dur to the simplicity of this project, i decided to document all steps, starting with making the PCB for it, ending with the tests. So not all videos appear at once, but i think this should happen within 3 weeks or so. Make sure to come back and see if new parts appeared with the time.

This is part 4 showing mechanical work on the enclosure."

Building a phaser part 5


Building a phaser part 6

Building a phaser part 3

YouTube via MusicMiK. follow-up to this post.
"This is a simple project - i will build a clone of the Small Stone phaser as a floor effects unit with some modifications to add some more control over the sound.

Dur to the simplicity of this project, i decided to document all steps, starting with making the PCB for it, ending with the tests. So not all videos appear at once, but i think this should happen within 3 weeks or so. Make sure to come back and see if new parts appeared with the time.

This is part 3 showing assembly of the boards."

Building a phaser part 2

YouTube via MusicMiK. Part 1 here.
"This is a simple project - i will build a clone of the Small Stone phaser as a floor effects unit with some modifications to add some more control over the sound.

Dur to the simplicity of this project, i decided to document all steps, starting with making the PCB for it, ending with the tests. So not all videos appear at once, but i think this should happen within 3 weeks or so. Make sure to come back and see if new parts appeared with the time.

This is part 2 showing the etching and mechanical work on the PCB."

Building a phaser part 1

YouTube via MusicMiK. follow-up to this post.
"This is a simple project - i will build a clone of the Small Stone phaser as a floor effects unit with some modifications to add some more control over the sound.

Dur to the simplicity of this project, i decided to document all steps, starting with making the PCB for it, ending with the tests. So not all videos appear at once, but i think this should happen within 3 weeks or so. Make sure to come back and see if new parts appeared with the time.

This is part 1 showing all the steps up to a PCB ready to be etched."

Small Stone phaser clone test

YouTube via MusicMiK
"A friend told me he needs a Small Stone phaser after once again hearing it in Jarre's Oxygene album. And i found the schematics of the old 1975 version in the web. So i tried it on the breadboard and liked it. Besides this, i was looking for some simple circuit to practice making PCBs, and i even had a lot of those hard to get CA3094s around. So i decided to use this as a first test project to practice the whole procedure of the CAE steps, PCB exposure/etching, drilling the holes, assembling it with SMD resistors. And it worked like a charm. All in all i made 2 of those phaser boards in about 12 hours.

More on this will go here: http://www.mik-music.org/Small+Stone+..."

Note the Sequential Circuits Multi-Trak and KORG Poly-61.

MusicMiK Site Updates

You might remember MonoMiK from these posts. MiK wrote in to let me know he has found a new host and made updates to his site which will include info on the MonoMiK as well as his other projects. You might also remember him from this how to repair a KORG Poly-61 post.

"after taking down my website a while ago, i found a new hoster this year and took the opportunity to give the site a whole face-lift. During this, i also rewrote the articles about the Poly-61 repair. I sent you the link to the old pages a year ago:

http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-repair-poly-61.html

I fixed the bad structure of the old document and added some minor information about the inner workings of the Poly-61, besides this, more repair stories will appear as time allows. All the other things can also be found there, like more information about the MonoMiK including the blog about the development: http://www.mik-music.org/MonoMiK"

MonoMiK Demo 1 Part 1

YouTube via MusicMiK
Welcome to a more complete demonstration of my current DIY synthesizer project, the MonoMiK. I needed a bit more to carefully test the latest module, which consists of the waveform selectors and the sub oscillators for the VCOs. The setup uses one VCO module (2 VCOs), the new VCO mixer module (waveform mixer and sub oscillator per VCO), the ladder filter module (only transistor ladder used in the video) and the envelope modules.

MonoMiK Demo 1 Part 2

click here and scroll for more videos by MonoMiK previously posted here on MATRIXSYNTH.

Lineal TML-01 Home made analog syntheziser

You can find the story behind this synth including more images on Lineal TML 01. via MusicMiK
"Features:
3 x Analog VCO:
Sawtooth, Pulse w/modulation, triangle
2 modulation channels for each one
Individual transpose: +/- 2 octaves and free
Hard Sync
1 x White Noise Generator
1 x External imput
1 x VCF (4 pole Lo Pass): Moog clone filter w/ 2 modulation channels, and resonance, cut off and envelope amount controls.
(The mixer overdrive the filter producing a very nice overdrive effect, similar to valvulated amplifiers)
1 x VCA w/ 2 modulation channels,
2 x LFOs
2 x ADSR envelope generators
MIDI IN: Note, Pitch bend, Cut Off and Modulation controlled vía midi messages."


DIY Analog Synth Demo YouTube via rodriemi
"On http://arsamus-lineal-tml01.blogspot.... you can see details
This is just a demo of an do-it-yourself analog synth I designed and build.
Oh, remember I just want to show the synth no my performance nor improvisation skills!!!"

CR-78 remote repair

YouTube via MusicMiK
"Today, Steen and i will show you a quite interesting small project. Steen has a broken Roland CR-78 and sits in Denmark, i have the knowledge to repair it and sit in Germany. He could send the unit to me to have me repair it, but we tried a different thing, as Steen thought that he could do the job if i guide him through the steps.
So i told him what material he needs to replace the potentially failed latches for the instrument triggers, he got the material, i told him a bit how to solder and desolder, created the desoldering video recently, and after those preparations, we started all this.
So enjoy this video and see, how everything worked out. From those 8 hours of work, i just have 25 minutes of video material which i had to cut down to 10 minutes for YouTube. So lots of fun is missing there, but we hope, you enjoy it anyway."

Desoldering an IC from a PCB

YouTube via MusicMiK
"If you ever wondered how you get an IC desoldered an easy way if you don't care about the IC but want to protect the board, just look here.
Not perfect, but maybe informative enough."

DIY UV lamp for PCB exposure

YouTube via MusicMiK. Posting this one for the DIY aspect of it all. You might remember MusicMiK form these videos.
"No directly synthesizer related stuff today, as i'm currently building a new tool - an ultraviolet lamp for creating PCBs by exposing the photosensitive coating to this UV light later.

See more about the construction here:

http://www.mik-music.org/tiki/gallery53

This unit is not yet completed, i need to build a powerful Step-Up converter for about 80V and 0.6A to feed the LEDs, which are chained in 30 chains of 22 LEDs each. Besides this, some more mechanical work is needed and a timer will also be built in. And of course - safety. You don't want to look into a 40 watts 400nm UV light source accidentally :)"

CR-78 Restoration

YouTube via MusicMiK.
"Okay, no new synthesizer modules, as i'm on holiday and just was at home today with a new toy - a CR-78 from a friend which needed a repair/restoration.
Just a short test video here, the full restoration story follows soon, for now, there is just a bunch of photos created during the day:
http://www.mik-music.org/tiki/tiki-br..."

MonoMiK ADSR demonstration

YouTube via MusicMiK. You can see the previous videos by MusicMiK posted here.
"It took quite a while due to vacation and some stress the last weeks, but finally, i soldered this module together. This was sort of much more difficult due to the very compact layout i needed so save some space in the overall construction behind those modules.

As usual, you can find more information about the project and the schematics for the modules via the blog: http://www.mik-music.org/tiki/blog1"

Synthesizer Module Development

YouTube via MusicMiK. You can find prior videos here. If you ever wondered what the process of building a synthesizer from start to finish was like, watch these. Fascinating stuff.
"It took a while, but now it's completed - the making-of video of my ladder VCF module.
This is some highly compressed form of the development and assembly of a synthesizer module including some work for the thermally coupled matched pairs of transistors and matching of the diodes. You also see my way of handling the veroboards to get a reliable module afterwards."

MonoMiK ladder VCF module test

YouTube via MusicMiK. You can find prior videos here.
"After you have seen the breadboarding videos of the two ladder filters, you can now see the final test of the assembled filter module with both filters in direct comparison.

Higher quality audio track and more about this here:
http://www.mik-music.org/tiki/tiki-vi..."