Interested in Tau Pipe Phaser / Flanger boards ?

[jhaible]

Taking orders for Tau Phaser / Flanger Boards *now*.

I will be out of town on a business trip till the end of the week, and I thought I should post this now, and see what comes back when I return.

I’m offering PCB boards for the 20-pole Phaser (redesigned Tau Pipe) for 27.00 Euro + shipping. (I’ll charge actual shipping costs, no overhead.) If there are any Taxes / Customs to pay in your country, you have to handle and pay this, too.

Several people have shown interest in these boards, via mail and in different forums.

Regardless whether you have already sent such a mail of interest or not: If you are definitely willing to buy one (or more) boards, please send me an email (not a forum PM!) in the following form:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

send to:
jhaible[at]debitel[dot]net

Subject line of Email:
Tau PCB order 1 piece (or: Tau PCB order 2 pieces, etc.)

Text field of Email:

Mr. / Mrs.
Your Name
Your full international Postal Adress,
including Zip code, Country, etc.

(I will copy and paste this for your shipment adress)

paypal mail adress: (your paypal account email)
or other method of payment. Cash in Letter, or Überweisung (Germany only)

I’m ordering N (insert number) of boards for the 20-Pole Phaser for EUR 27.00 each, plus shipping.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Some remarks about this project:

(1) Time and methods of payment

I don’t take advance payments. I’ll only ask you to pay anything when I have your boards ready to ship.
Paypal is my preferred method for international payment. If you don’t have a paypal account yet, you have a few weeks to set one up and transfer some money from your bank account to the paypal account.
Bank transfer (Überweisung) is an option for German buyers only.
If you, for some reason, don’t want to pay with paypal, you can send me cash in a letter, at your own risk. Please tell me, if you want to do this, in your order email.



(2) Total costs of the project

Many who showed interest in this have asked about the price of the PCB and a bill of materials, to calculate what the whole project will cost.

Well, you know the price for the PCB now. I have not made a bill of materials yet (not even a complete schamatics drawing). This will all come as I find the time to do it. (It’lI be several weeks between the order and the delivery of PCBs, no need to hurry.) I have published a PDF of the component overlay of the board here:
http://www.jhaible.heim.at/tau/jh_tau_component_overlay_with_comments.pdf
You should be able to roughly calculate the expenses for components from this.
(Maybe someone is faster than me in making a bill of materials from this; it is encouraged to publish this and share it with others then!)

Costs for front panel components will highly depend on the quality you choose, and on the extras you’re going to implement.
Absolute minimum requirements: 4 potentiometers, 3 audio jacks (I made the demos with this.)
Optional: Input and Output level potentiometers, switches for different modes and bypass, jacks for CV inputs and outputs.
Don’t forget the costs for a front panel and enclosure, and a wall wart or other power supply!

(3) Project documentation

I have set up a web page for this:
http://www.jhaible.heim.at/tau/jh_tau.html
This contains all the relevant stuff, and will be updated with all major news.
Ongoing discussion will be on the electro-music forum:
http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-18396.html


(4) Components

Resistors:
1% or 2% metall film resistors are cheap nowadays. Don’t bother to use anything else.
Capacitors:
For the ladder, you need 40 equal valued capacitors.
I recommend 15nF 5% Wima MKS-2 types. (5mm spacing)
7.5mm spacing Siemens MKT caps will also work.
ARP specifies capacitor tolerances of 20% for the (similar) Quadra Phaser, so it shouldn’t bee too critical. I recommend using 5% caps, though.
Other capacitor values, see component overlay.
Bypass capacitors: You can solder SMD parts (0805) beneath each opamp; 100nF recommended. If you don’t like SMD parts, I’m sure you can use tiny ceramic caps with shortened leads here, too.
Opamps: Except for one low noise OPA2134, you can use cheap TL072s.
Transistor arrays:
I recommend using 11 CA3046 ICs (10 for the ladder, 1 for the 1/x converter.) (tested by me)
Alternatively, you can use 1 CA3086 or CA3086 for the 1/x converter, plus 20 LM394 for improoved SNR and precision. (also tested by me.)
Or you can use 11 CA3086s (not tested by me, but spec’ed in the similar ARP Quadra Phaser)
Or you can use 20 SSM2210 or 20 MAT-02 instead of the 20 LM394 (not tested by me), plus one CA3086 or CA3046.
Tempco resistor see below.


(5) Temperature compensation

I have used a 560 Ohm tempco resistor for my own prototype, because I had a few in the drawer.
You can use other values (like the ever favorite, 1kOhm). In that case, you’ll need to also change the value of one other resistor and one trimpot. I’ll give you assistance on this.
The effect will also work without any tempco resistor at all. In that case, just solder in an ordinary 560 Ohm resistor. The V/Oct tracking will slightly change with temperature, but hey, it’s a phaser / filter / resonator, not a VCO after all!

(6) Power Supply

The board needs a 18V AC / ca. 5 Watt (either single secondary transformer, or 2 * 18V dual secondary transformer). 15V AC may be enough in most cases, too, but you have less margin against mains voltage drops.

I highly recommend using a completely insulated Wall Wart if you’re not trained and experienced to work with mains voltage. That’s the good thing about this project: just connect a Wall Wart and you have a complete, stand alone module.

Otherwise, if you want to build your own power supply, you must know how to use mains transformers, where to put fuses etc., know about safety issues – it’s completely on your own risk. Mains voltages can be lethal!

Alternatively, the effect can be powered with stabilized +/-15V DC dual power supply. Then you can electrically integrate the effect into various modular sythesizer systems (like MOTM or others.) For this, some components on the board must be omitted, and wire bridges soldered in instead. I’ll give detailed instructions for this option later.


(7) Component value printing on the PCB.

I have decided to print the actual component values onto the board instead of reference designators. So you *won’t* have to read “R25”, look up the value (like, 620 Ohm) in some table, then look again where to put it into the pcb. Instead, you have “620” directly printed on the board – what you see is what you solder in. That’s the way I love to work.
Of course this is a quite daring approach for me to do this, because if I had to change a component value, I couln’t just update a _list_. I’ve been lucky, though, and everything works as intended with the values printed on the board. But of course I expect some modifications / improovements to come in the future, either from myself or from the diy community.


(8 ) Handling of the whole project

This is my first time offering PCBs for others to build projects that I have designed or (in that case) redesigned. I’m not doing this professionally; as you all know I love to build synthesizers and effects in my spare time for fun, and this is (hopefully) an extension of this activity. I hope it will be as much fun for everybody who participates as it is for me.
Please do _not_ expect to get a foolproof construction manual (like the MOTM kits, for instance). You *can* expect to get the same kind of PCB as from which I have sucessfully built my own prototype, so with the right skill and with working components you can build your own effect device sucessfully as well. Other than that, I don’t offer any guarantees, warranty, whatever. I’m offering this as a private person, and I will not take any PCBs back, repair them, or similar. (I expect lively discussion in the relevant forums and mailing lists, however; so relatively unexperienced builders will probably be able to manage that project as well.) Whether I will make similar projects available in the future will highly depend on how smooth this one will work – it’s an experiment.

JH.

[Funky40]

you or an admin should change the writing form of the eMail Adress.
To post this on Forums can cause SPAM

normally People put @ in this Form : [at]
same with . = [dot]

maybe with space between [ at ]
I don't know how the robots are reading.

[jhaible]

[Scott Stites]

Hi JH,

Maybe a pesky question, but I ask it here in the off chance other people might wonder the same thing:

This morning, as soon as I saw your post, I sent an email which I think followed the correct format.

In other words I put as the subject "Tau PCB Order 1 Piece". In the body of the email I included my shipping address, my paypal address, and the line "I'm ordering 1 board for the 20-Pole Phaser for EUR 27.00 each, plus
shipping."

I received an email this afternoon thanking me for my interest, and then reiterating the procedure for ordering a board. This leaves me wondering if my order actually was received and or if I had done something incorrectly, or if you just later happened to email an announcement to people who'd expressed an interest.

Does my receiving that email this afternoon mean I need to re-order or am I just worrying too much? (I don't wanna miss out on a Tau Pipe).

Cheers,
Scott

[jhaible]

[jhaible]

I've just sent confirmation mails for all orders I've received so far (not many).
If you already ordered, but don't get a confirmation mail, please send your order again.

Thanks,

JH.

[mono-poly]

THat's weird i've seen the message on AH or SDIY and did reply with an order.
No confirmation yet.

[krisp14u]

[germaniac]

The email I sent JH yesterday got bounced back to me today as "Mail Delivery Failed." Will send again today. . . .

[sonicwarrior]

I have seen the message on the synth-diy list, too.

Got my order confirmation this morning.

[Fernando]

friends, let's wait until Jurgen cames back on Saturday...

[shawn]

still need to send an email tonight for this. fun fun, can't wait!

[johans121]

I put my order in

[Scott Stites]

This is for JH when he arrives back on Saturday - in case anybody else is experiencing this, this ought to be enough to help him figure out the email thing (I believe Germaniac may be experiencing the same, for example). I post it now, because I may not be around when he is

Here's what I'm getting back from the server:

[mediatechnology]

[shawn]

I'll be sending my email to order one JH tonight.

[shawn]

Email sent, hope it arrived ok.

[jhaible]

Greetings from my VHDL training course!

I've made a remote check of my mailbox - lots of pcb orders in there.

I'll send confirmations on saturday - don't worry before that.

JH.

[clickmrmike]

I got the same undeliverable message; then I got an ack from JH that he recvd my order. You may want to wait until after Saturday,when JH sends the acks out, just in case the mail server is oddly behaved.

clickmrmike

[mono-poly]

Getting errors here to for the past few days.
Let's wait till Jurgen gets back.

[jhaible]

Hi,

I came back last night and sent "order confirmed" mails for all orders I have found in my mailbox.

I hope everyone who has sent an order mail has an order confirmed mail by now.

(If not, please contact me again.)

JH.

[yusynth]

Hi Jurgen

I received your confirmation last night !

Just to know can you tell how many orders you got ?

Regards

Yves

[jhaible]

I made some drawings for various options of input and output connections of the Phaser, and put it to the web site:
http://www.jhaible.heim.at/tau/jh_tau.html

direct link:
http://www.jhaible.heim.at/tau/jh_tau_signal_and_cv_connections.pdf

The potentiometers and LEDs and power supply connections that you always need (4 potentiometers) are not shown in this drawing; just the pots and stuff that is optional.

This is to show you how this project can be rather simple and cheap, or quite comprehensive. The "Deluxe Version" is how I normally build stuff for myself: Input and output level control, separate pots for left and right output channels, a switch for each output (L and R) to select the main outptput or aux output from the pcb (gives two versions of Mono, Stereo, and inverted Stereo), bipolar electrolytics to get rid of the remaining millivolts of DC voltage, True (hard-wired) Bypass that puts the circuit completely out of the signal path (including the load of the input level pot!), and a green/red status LED to indicate on/bypass. (Requires a 4-pole, dual-throw switch.)
That's a version that allows comfortable working, level adjustment for the right balance of L and R output, and also for live manual panning effects.

OTOH, you don't need all this to get the dramatic phasing effects: The demo recordings were all made with the minimal configuration (page 1).

But I recommend to use an input level pot at least (page 2). Otherwise, you have to adjust the input level with th eoutpul level pot of the instrument you connect (or with the Mixer's Effect Send pot), and you probably want to reduce the input level with increased Resonance.

JH.[/i]

[mono-poly]

I got my confirmation to

[funkyfarm]

Does the Tau Pipe works with line level signals (IN/OUT at +4dBu), as the FS-1 frequency shifter does ?

Or is it 10V p-p ?
Tau Systems made modulars ?