Hey, it's a modular synth. Very low-cost, -fi, -skill, etc. Generally low. I don't know what I'm doing (e.g. transistors were avoided, because what do they do?) but no flames so far, therefore success! I wanted something that would work with eurorack adding much needed triggers and lfos, but that could also stand alone as a 9v battery powered patchable weirdo noisebox. The circuits are all pretty simple - either CMOS or passive - so very light current draw. Quite a few homemade vactrols in there, as vactrols are expensive, but easy to make with an LED, a photoresistor, some tape and they will look kind of like molluscs, which commercial vactrols do not really - so added bonus there. It's housed in a most-reasonably-priced tool box from the home-improvement center, Bauhaus. It's made of aluminum, probably a little over 1mm thick. Cost about 9 Eurobucks.
I drew up a plan and drilled holes in the back with a hand drill. Not the fun part.
Filled it with the following curcuits:
A quad-oscillator which is based on the 40106 hex-inverter chip. Each oscillator has a range switch to select between audio and control frequency and an input for voltage control via a vactrol.
3 input logic gates based on the MFOS Mickey Mouse Logic circuits. Switchable between AND and NAND; and Or and NOR. Wow, ridiculous sentence (but logical, maybe?).
A pulse divider made with CMOS 4040 chip and diodes.
A CGS Ring Mod because I had the pcb laying around and it's passive. It doesn't work that well with the levels this box puts out but sounds great with signals from stronger eurorack oscillators.
6 "low pass gates" or slews. These are passive and have voltage control via vactrols. Switchable capacitor size gives either slew or filter/vca effect.
A 3x3 matrix mixer.
Multiples
Components are from Tayda which is very cheap and somewhat offbrand in certain cases, but there is a recession, and this is how we must roll. Maybe cost about 50 Euros for the parts.
Here is a demo of the box making noises with a bit of reverb and synced to a kick and snare from the octatrack.
And here is a short demo of the box making noise on its own with no reverb or anything else helping out.
The Modern Door Live album cassette will be released soon via hot pink audio cassette tape on Strategic Tape Reserve. All recorded live in Hanover in December 2012. Below are some samples. More infos here.
