Most of us have beheld the sonic glory of an Atari Punk Console, that lo-fi synth whose classic incarnation is a pair of 555 timers set up to warble and bleep in interesting ways. Very few of us, however, have likely seen an APC built from 555s that are made from vacuum tubes.
It’s little surprise to regular readers that this one comes to us by way of [David] at Usagi Electric, who hasn’t met a circuit that couldn’t be improved by realizing it in vacuum tubes. His “hollow-state” Atari Punk Console began with the 18-tube version of the 555 that he built just for fun a while back, which proved popular enough that he’s working on a kit version, the prototype of which served as the second timer for the synth. With 32 tubes aglow amid a rats-nest of jumpers, the console managed to make the requisites sounds, but lacked a certain elegance. [David] then vastly simplified the design, reducing the BOM to just four dual-triode tubes. Housed on a CNC milled PCB in a custom wood box, the synth does a respectable job and looks good doing it. The video below shows both versions in action, as well as detailing their construction.
As cool as a vacuum tube synth may be, we realize that not everyone goes for the hot glass approach. No worries — plenty of silicon Atari Punk Consoles to choose from here. There’s one built into a joystick, a circuit sculpture version complete with mini-CRT, or even eight APCs teamed up with MIDI control.
I always love how the “analog” audio folks complain about how “digital” digital synths sound.
This is a fully _tube_ synth that sounds just as squeaky-squawky a pair of 555s. :)
The beauty of synths, digital and analog, is that they are the sum of lots of different stages (filters, oscs, envelopes, modulation) all sensitive to how the other functions. This is just an oscillator ;) (albeit a cool one!)
I am shocked that no one has yet posted that you could have just built this from a couple of 555s…
That’s legitimately the entire premise of this article?
16 vacuum tubes in one timer and 18 in the other makes 36 tubes total?
B^)
Oh yeah, [David], the T-shirt arrived!
Thank you!
He has no idea what HASL means? It was right at the top of the page where the acronym was being used.