My panel designs for Ray Wilson synth stuff (so far)

bigtex · Last edited by bigtex on Mon Sep 01, 2008 2:50 am; edited 1 time in total

I bought a SoundLab board, as well as a bunch of Ray Wilson's modular synth boards. I've spent way too long just designing my panel layouts, but I'm getting closer to being satisfied with my designs. I've settled on banana jacks as my primary interconnect, but I'm also going to put 1/4" jacks in a lot of places to interface with my Octave Kitten and Tama Techstar 305 drum synth (as well as any future acquisitions). I figure a combination of both should serve me well in the future.

I recently pulled a bunch of really nice quality blank rack panels out of a dumpster. They're thick steel with a nice coat of paint. What a find. I have one 1U, one 2U and a whole stack of 3U. I'm going to make my SoundLab 2U and the modular stuff 3U, but it won't be truly modular because I'm not going to cut up the panel, just mount several boards per panel.

So far, I've got 11U worth of patchable synthy goodness.... but it doesn't really exist yet. I've got a panel design, some blank PCBs, and a slowly growing parts list order. Man, it sure takes a long time to order all of those parts. Hopefully I'll be "done" with this design soon so I can finish off ordering the parts, design all of the mods I want, and make the darn thing.

One mod in particular that will take some work is all of the clock divisions I want to make outputs for from the sequencer. I'm going to use some of the info form this thread as a helpful starting place.

Here's my design so far: (this image is huge, so it might not display well)
Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

mosc · Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 8:45 pm Post subject:

Quite impressive. That will be one hellofa fun machine...

bigtex · Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 8:47 pm Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 8:51 pm Post subject:

That question implies there ever was a schematic. There wasn't. It was done on the fly with little hand drawn circuits on scraps of paper. I do have all those scraps in an envelop somewhere.

bigtex · Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 8:59 pm Post subject:

Oh, also...

I'll have 1U left in my 12U rack when I build this (or if I build it as I've designed it so far). I may just turn that last panel into the power supply, but I'm sure I can do better than that... maybe I'll get a Paia vocoder kit.

Could anybody point me to a vocoder kit or schematic that is highly adjustable and has excellent clarity of vocals? This might not be the best place to ask this question...

mosc · Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 9:02 pm Post subject:

Maybe that would be a good new topic in the DIY forum.

For vocoders, I like the G2.

ian-s · Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 10:40 pm Post subject:

Looks beautiful. I like the fine tune control for each sequencer step.

How will you attenuate your cv's?

Edit: You have output levels on the EG's and LFO so it's EMS style. I guess you could use a VCA if you wanted to use a VCO as a modulation source.
Cool.

bigtex · Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 10:57 pm Post subject:

Uncle Krunkus · Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 5:21 am Post subject:

Gees!
Now I know why they say everything's big in Texas!!
Yes, I know you're not from Texas, but it seemed like a cool thing to say. Laughing

That's gonna be one monster project. If you have half the spare time, money, and inspiration you need then I am truly jealous!!
Make sure you keep us all up to date.
There's only one thing better than building a mega modular vicariously Very Happy

fluxmonkey · Joined: Jun 24, 2005 Posts: 708 Location: cleve

very nice layouts, you'll have fun.

unlike the soundlab, which has level controls ont he CV outs, almost all my modular gear has attenuators on the inputs of the CVs. i much prefer the latter (maybe just because i'm used to it, but there ya go), so i'm planning on building my rayWilson modules with added attens on the inputs.

BTW, just saw that ray's released an update to his VCO board, with the previously "kuldged" fixes made on the board. what a guy.

bbob

bigtex · Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 1:40 pm Post subject:

Uncle Krunkus · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 1:23 am Post subject:

I was thinking about this the other day and, I agree, attenuators on the inputs are (generally) the way to go. If you want a VCO and VCF both being modulated to different degrees by the same S&H signal that's the only way to do it.

bigtex · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 2:06 am Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 8:28 am Post subject:

The attenuators I like best are the ones where with the knob at straight up, there is no signal. Turn to the right and it increases - turn to the left and it increases but inverted. These are very nice. Moog included one of these on every oscillator bank controller. They use a little bit more circuitry behind the panel, but the same panel real estate which is the most valuable asset on a modular, IMHO.

Pehr · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 8:47 am Post subject:

How about

?

It couldn't be easier, right? TGF Ray Rolling Eyes

bigtex · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 9:41 am Post subject:

blue hell · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 12:34 pm Post subject:

ian-s · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 1:14 pm Post subject:

Oscillator (LFO & VCO) outputs are generally -5 to +5. Use a LFO for vibrato and you want the pitch deviation centred around the note you are playing.
The invertible attenuator is cool but I use inverted CV’s relatively infrequently so would be happy with a couple on a dedicated CV mixer module. The circuit is not that difficult (two opamps?) but requires trimmers so the ‘zero cv’ setting is top dead centre. The pot should also have a detent at the centre location to make turning off the CV easy.

toppobrillo · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 6:23 pm Post subject:

yeah the circuit i made to generate quadrature functions [based on a counter] does what qualifies as negative frequency in that "sine" and "cosine" change positions when the count direction is reversed. like reversing the knob of a rotary encoder.

anyway, yeah + and - 5 volts is a good area to stay in with your CVs. of course, some sources like a kb controller or maybe your sequencer may only put out positive voltage, but yeah alot of others go + and -.

you should experiment with the G2 demo a bit. all of those CV source modules have a tab to make CVs bipolar, inverted, pos. or neg. all of this + and - happens as a summation [usually] at the control nodes of your VCO or whatever.. i like the bipolar attenuator though!

i have come to realize more [through the G2] that inverted CVs and other phase differences are real useful, as are differences of CVs.

mosc · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 7:48 pm Post subject:

toppobrillo · Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 8:07 pm Post subject:

hey there is one on the front end of scott's mutant vcf too! cool

fluxmonkey · Joined: Jun 24, 2005 Posts: 708 Location: cleve

mosc · Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 7:19 am Post subject:

Perfect.

BTW, bbob, I edited your post just a bit. If you use the IMG tag, you can include images from other sites. When appropriate, always give a link to the original web site, which you did... Very Happy

bigtex · Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 11:59 pm Post subject:

bbob,

Thanks! That's perfect! It also helps me out with another problem I was trying to tackle.

Thanks for all of the great replies everybody!