Drum Buddy.

This spy-camera website is selling the Boss VT-1 voice transformer (presumably for making threatening phone calls, or recording an audio ransom note? Such cynicism).
Their price is $549.

Boss VT-1 at 4hiddenspycameras.com

Meanwhile, you can buy it from ZZOUNDS….for $339.
Boss VT-1 at ZZOUNDS
And Musician’s Friend sells it for $319.
Boss VT-1 at Musician’s Friend

Recently I was in the local Dollar Tree store, and came upon the toys below on a shelf.

yes, they cost a dollar each.

yes, they have TUNING knobs. Press a button and twist the knob for garbled craziness.

btw, they have only one real button, the four buttons visible are all connected in parallel…..

sounds later…..as soon as I install wider range pots.

Moaning Lisa (with video!)
The creator’s website

The enclosure is reclaimed medical surplus, a Sleep Apnea machine controller. I gutted (hanging on to the nice rotary switches) and built some cool circuits into it!

3 Triangle Core Linear VCO’s with variable wave clipping
1 Clock Sequencer with attenuators (the ultimate LFO/ modulation source)
1 6 channel mixer with 2 attenators, 2 DC coupled (the rest AC coupled), 1/4″ out
1 external in/ expression pedal in (5V on ring for expression pedal)

I have some sounds:

make noise

Based on the Eric Barbour schematics from the cgs synth website. Now I just have to build a keyboard controller, though it mangles my guitar quite nicely.

It contains a noise source, 2 VCO’s, 1 VCF, 1 VCA and a 2 channel mixer(from the old RCA tube book).

His website hasn’t been updated since November 1998…. Does anyone know what happened to him?

His site’s continued existence is a miracle–it ought to be preserved.

“Winnipeg is a Frozen Shithole” by Venetian Snares.

Song titles are (no, I’m not making this up):
1. Winnipeg is a Frozen Shithole
2. Winnipeg is a Dogshit Dildo
3. Winnipeg is Fucking Over
4. Winnipeg is Steven Stapleton’s Armpit
5. Die Winnipeg Die Die Die Fuckers Die
6. Winnipeg as Mandatory Scat Feed
7. Winnie the Dog Pooh
8. Winnipeg is a Boiling Pot of Cranberries
9. Die Winnipeg Die Die Die Fuckers Die * Spreading the Hepatitis SKM – ETR Style

Heh. Perhaps he doesn’t like Winnipeg.

shitty?  yes.  fun. sure?  deviant?

mark verbos designed this as a child; i built one as a big baby. we’ve used it on a lot of cheezy noizy sounds.  interested in a rotary sequencer, and due to its design, the 10 hour clockface was chosen.  crappy 555 internal clock , but also takes external clock.  the center rotary switch will change steps from 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10.  10 trig outs on the side.  case is from a kids wood puzzle set.  i have one more of these wood puzzle cases to be a companion to this corny  sequencer — not sure what simple, stand-alone module would be best…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rtWbBvDyKc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjqN0N1JG6Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xda-i4To2LQ

…….in between thousands of badly-drawn furry and anime comic characters.

BTW, I don’t think Matrix or Music Thing have featured this guy yet. Good panel artwork, esp. for a 16-year old kid from Chicago. Looks like a FatMan board inside. Wonder if he ever finished it.

Zorgitron’s homemade synth

A friend mentioned seeing an ARP Quadra in a pawnshop yesterday. He asked the pawnbroker to plug it in, and sure enough–it was totally non-functional.

In case you were not aware of it, the Quadra was ARP’s 1978 attempt to make a “super keyboard” by tossing together a pile of assorted stuff they already had. So, it’s basically a “sandwich” containing an Omni string synth, an Axxe (or Solus? some disagreement) lead synth, a simple one-VCO bass synth, and a really nice phaser, all stuffed into a very large box with a cheap keyboard assembly (which was easily ruined if you dropped the Quadra, as it protruded from the case) and a very primitive preset capability. I seem to recall that it sold for more than $4000 when it came out.

Should you be tempted to buy one, be aware that it is guaranteed that the membrane buttons will be unusable and very difficult to replace or substitute. And the electronics will have a long list of issues. Synth-collector snobs don’t like to talk about the Quadra…….Oh well, at least it had a nice phaser. Long ago I was tempted to buy a used Quadra because it could do fascinating, warped things…but then I heard the horror stories about it…..

Sonic State’s Quadra info

Emulator Archive’s info on the Quadra

A brave soul repairs his Quadra’s buttons, by building a subpanel with regular pushbuttons–BIG job

(If you want just the phaser, you could maybe DIY your own from Juergen Haible’s design)

Ondes-Martenot

“ Unfortunately, the recent generations of highly versatile, polyphonic keyboard synthesizers and digital samplers have resulted in a diminished interest in the ondes Martenot today. In the years following Maurice Martenot’s death in 1980, manufacture of the ondes (which had always been a family business) ceased altogether. Perhaps with renewed interest in these wonderful devices, which are most unlike synthesizers, manufacture will start up once again.”

Well-known thereminist Mr. Pringle predicted the arrival of the French Connection.
(now if he’d just update his website–this looks to have been put up around 1998.)

I like this photo.

If you want weird synth music made with weird synths you want Holy Fuck. Yes, that is the name of the band.

A four piece improv synth-rock band from Toronto, Canada, their instruments include a drum set, bass guitar, and two tables of broken synths, wires, and weird electronic crap. And I assure you, they can rock a party. Witness the insanity herein. Listen to some of their “songs”. See them on tour through Europe. Buy their second album out in a few weeks. Holy crap!

(Images by amadeeeep)

<+++++>

…still in progress. Think about lots of neon lamps used as electronic elements.

Well, dearie, it meant something like the Baldwin Orgasonic:

Inside a Baldwin Orgasonic

Thirty-six 6SN7s as oscillators and dividers.

(I estimate that the tube heaters alone consume about 200 watts.)

A 6L6 amp with a field-coil speaker.
Total weight about 500 pounds.

La la la.
Circuit-bend THAT, Mister LoFi!

It may not look like much to you. But this is one of the first-ever products of the Fisher Radio Corporation, and is so rare that no hifi collector that I know has ever seen one–or even an ad or catalog listing for it. This particular one was found recently by John Eckland at a Palo Alto garage sale. Made circa 1953. It is a copy of the more-common HH Scott dynamic noise suppressor, made with miniature instead of octal tubes. The “Eye” tubes on each side of the panel display the operation of the bass and treble noise gates, respectively.

There was a special amplifier for it, but John didn’t find the amp chassis. So he will pair it with the Fisher 60 triode amplifier seen in the 3rd photo, for some historical parity. Imagine a home hi-fi system using this stuff, plus a large rackmount preamp, perhaps a rack-mount REL Precedent FM tuner, and a Rek-O-Cut turntable with a GE variable-reluctance magnetic cartridge mounted on a massive Gray tonearm. All feeding a huge Altec Voice of the Theater horn speaker. Top-end for 1953.

here’s a few photos of my modular synth taken sometime in 2005…. 

(to give you an idea of scale, that’s a 20″ pc monitor in the left side of the photo)

mostly made up of old industrial & military generators, etc.  many of which are labeled “Property of NASA” or “Dept. of the Navy”