Building an Optigan-like instrument

blackdeck_top

[Olli] sent in his writeup of a musical instrument he made called the Black Deck. [Olli]'s instrument was inspired [Jimi Tenor]'s photophone - a transparent disk attached to a fan and photocell. A transparent disk is placed on the turntable [Olli] rescued during a dumpster diving expedition. A light shines though the optical disk and is picked up by phototransistors. After writing a program to … [Read more...]

Resurrecting the Optigan disc format

optigan

The Optigan and Orchestron were a pair of electronic organs built by Mattel in the 1970s which used swappable optical discs to store instrument information. The discs can still be found today, but the organs are extremely scarce, much to [Gan’s] dismay. After researching the organs for a bit, he decided he could probably build his own MIDI-compatible interface for the audio discs. The discs … [Read more...]