RAVE BOX

This project was supposed to be a quick quick one, but it ended up taking nearly the entire month of October to complete. it was't terribly difficult to build, but this month has been so full of distraction. initially all i had intended on doing was modding up a toy keyboard with some simple mods that could be built quickly, and would yield some interesting sounds. i started with a Rhapsody programmable electronic organ. i forgot to take a picture of mine before i totally dismantled it, but i did find a pretty good picture of it on google images.

RED CLOUD KEYBOARD

This project started shortly after completing the NT02 series. i wanted to get back to experimenting with the CD4046 PLL chip, and i thought it would be kind of cool to use a toy enclosure as the body for the new synth. i shuffled around in my basement for a while until i found the perfect toy. it was an old radioshack animal sound keyboard. originally i had planned to use the internal circuitry of the toy, but soon realized that the sound quality would not be suitable. instead, i grabbed a little toy keyboard i had laying around, and began prototyping around that circuit. the keyboard was nice because the keys were all different colors, and they were small enough to mount in the toy organ body. i thought it was a perfect match since the keys kind of resembled a rainbow and the organ body kind of resembled a cloud. 

NT02

This is the latest set of NT(noystoise) series novelty synthesizers. following the overwhelming reception of the original NT01 series, it was pretty clear that if i build them, they will sell. the NT02 is simpler in many ways than the original NT01, but the sound and character are a bit more sophisticated than that of the NT01. the NT02 consists of a square wave VCO with chorus/delay, a white noise generator, a ramp LFO, and individual 12db resonant lowpass filters for the VCO and white noise generator. the pitch of the VCO is controlled by one axis of the VCO joystick, while the other axis controls the delay time of the chorus. the chorus circuit is basically just your typical PT2399 delay chip setup, except there is no feedback loop. the VCO is fed to the delay chip, and the delayed signal is

YAMAHA PSS-170

I started this project soon after finishing up the NT01 set. after feeling a bit overwhelmed by the idea of trying to compete with other novelty-synth producers that seem to be popping up all over, i thought it might be a good idea to fall back on my strengths. rather than trying to develop some new and original device that is completely "from scratch", i wanted to get back to modifying obsolete things. this is not to say that there wont be more NT models in the future, but i needed a break from brainstorming. i had a yamaha PSS-170 laying around, so i figured i would just have some fun with that. the initial plan was to keep it simple. an echo circuit, a filter, a sequencer, and so on. i figured this would be a quick little project that i could crank out in a couple of weeks, but it ended up taking about a month to finish.

NT 01

 

   

This project started at the beginning of April. the main motivation for building these noise boxes was to create a product that could be sold easily to try and recoup some of my losses from going a month over my deadline with the Ivan synth. it seems like everywhere i go, people are selling Atari-Punk-Consoles, and other simple square-wave drone synths. the one thing that most of them are lacking is any kind of design aesthetic, so i figured i might be at an advantage there. i got to work designing a wood console for them using my google sketchup demo.

IVAN

This commission started near the beginning of January of 2014. it took approximately three months to design and build. it was only supposed to take two months, but was realistically impossible for a project of this scale. in the past, projects of this caliber have taken between six and twelve months to complete, so i guess i don't really have much to complain about. i have been playing catch-up ever since though. i haven't had much time to post the details on it until now. i will have to make this one short.