AXiS-49 teardown

cthruteardown

We touched on harmonic table MIDI controllers when [aris] was building one. [Ken Rushton] has one of C-Thru’s commercial keypads, the AXiS-49, and disassembled the device to show how it works. A PIC18F2450 microcontroller provides the USB interface and is connected to a dsPIC33FJ128GP310 digital signal controller which decodes the keypresses. The membrane buttons are made with … Read the rest

Auduino software synth

audiuno

Tinker.it has published plans for building a software synthesizer using an Arduino. The Auduino uses granular synthesis to create a truly unique sound. The grain is constructed from two triangle waves. Each one has adjustable frequency, decay rate, and the repetition rate can be changed too. The Arduino just needs five potentiometers attached to the analog inputs and an … Read the rest

Tiny optical theremins


Matrixsynth pointed out a couple incredibly small optical theremins that look like they’d make for a great afternoon project. [AlexArt] first built the simple circuit on a piece of protoboard (Google translated). Knowing he could go smaller, he then built it freeform with a buzzer instead of a full size speaker. The design is based around the common 555 chip … Read the rest

EMS Synthi AKS teardown


Here’s another bit of analog synth pr0n for you: Initially sold in 1972, the EMS Synthi AKS was a portable modular analog synthesizer with a built in keyboard and sequencer. The VCS 3 portion of the device had a unique routing matrix pegboard used to connect components together. [firegroove] has opened up his precious machine so that you can see … Read the rest

TR-909 Teardown


Flickr user [firegroove] recently had to take apart his Roland TR-909 drum machine in order to fix it, and he photographed the entire teardown, offering detailed pictures of the TR-909′s internal parts. The TR-909 is legendary as one of the first fully programmable drum machines that could store entire songs, and its legend is only boosted by its scarcity: … Read the rest