Vacoloco Ramblings

I’ve been chatting to Tom Wiltshire from Electric Druid.net about Voltage Controlled Chips.

Back in the good old days you could by a chip that would do the various sub parts of a synthesiser, for example the SSM2044 is a complete voltage controlled low pass filter (used in many classic analogue synths).  Tom has developed a voltage controlled envelope generator and voltage controlled LFO. This got me to thinking about a couple of ideas I’ve had in my head for many years now.

Firstly,  A complete moog ladder on a DIL format chip. The idea was to use surface mount components and create a DIL module that enabled people to buildsynths using this as a simple building block.

Secondly, a DIL module holding a voltage controlled wavetable oscillator. It’s no secret I’m a fan of PPGs (check PPG.synth.net for more details) and I’ve always wanted to build a polyphonic wavetable synth. The Monowave was a step towards this, but the size of the voiceboard would’ve made a polysynth absolutely enormous and also contained 1000’s of components, far more than I’d have been willing to solder.

With Tom’s achievements fresh in my mind, it’s brought this whole concept back. Tom has put a lot of work into these two chips, he’s even written comprehensive datasheets for each, nice work Tom!

I’m going to have a dabble with the idea of the VCDWO (Voltage Controlled Digital Wavetable Oscillator) over the next few weeks to get back into the flow of building hardware and writing embedded code. I plane to use an Atmel Mega32 for the prototype (as I have half a dozen not being used currently) and I’ll post updates here as things move on. Once that’s done I’ll be more confident about getting back into the flow of development and build for finishing Defender.

Well The gear pile is now at an all time low, at least in quantity.

Left is a picture of my current gear pile, this includes a no-name 5 octave midi controller, starfield preamp, starfield power amp, ashdown mag 300, asdown 210T cab, homebrew bass, Fender Aerodyne bass, Variax 700 Electric guitar, Phonic Helix Board 18 MkII and ESI-32.

Aside from this, I also have a small set of mic’s and various bits I use when recording. The Phonic Helix Board 18 was the lates aquisition, I missed recording with the VS too much. The Phonic has firewire in/out and allows me to record 14 tracks (it has 14 inputs) and a stereo mix. It’s also got some nice features in that I make the signal going to the firwire interface to be pre eq/fader or post eq/fader, so I can run a ‘clean’ mix to my mac for recording. I’m going to be doing some recording this weekend, and weekend after of my band, Ten Fifty, so mp3’s will be up later if you want to hear it in action.

I beleive everyone gets one bargin from ebay in their life, mine was the starfield preamp and power amp. These are all valve boxes made by a company called ‘Starfield’ in the 80’s. Starfield was an offshot of Ibanez.

 The preamp sounds very nice and will be used for my guitar (replacing the line 6 spider 3) and will feed the starfield power amp when I’m practicing my guitar. It has four 12ax7 tubes in, I suspect configured with two for clean/crunch channel and two for the overdrive/scream channel.

 The power amp is 100w + 100w stereo amp. Inside are eight, yes eight, 5881 power tubes and two 12ax7 tubes to drive them. This in turn is driving the ashdown 210T cab and the speaker in the Mag 300 (I’m not using the in built amp). For bass I unplug in the input from the preamp, plug it into my Hartke Bass attack and I’m ready to go with 200W of pure valve power, and it sounds nice, real nice.

Blimey, hasn’t it been a while since I did any major work on Defender?

Looking back, it’s actually been over 6 months since I did anything with it and just under a year since I touched the main core of the code!

So, with my new found enthusiasm, and hopefully more spare time to use, I’ve started work again. Whilst I liked the idea of a simple front panel from the point of low cost, I really wasn’t happy with it.

Whilst I won’t have the same flexability with this design as with the previous one, I do have everything I could need and then some.
So, above we have a panel based on a 3 octave keyboard version. I’ve got an old 3 octave midi keyboard that is not going anywhere fast, so I’ve decided to take it out of its case and put it to good use in Defender.

I have enough bits for 2 voices, and initially it’ll be one voice until I’m happy with the code and functionality. Then I’ll build the second voice card and possibly more (Defender will handle uopto 15 voices).

The prototype still works, despite a very thick layer of dust and I’ll be ordering this panel at the end of the month. I’ve got my eyes on some funky knobs and I have the rest of the parts.

Front Panel PCB wise it’s going to have to be strip-board for the moment, I just can’t afford to have custom built pcb of this size right now.

My aim, is to have something ready to show at Synth DIY 2008 in Cambridge, England. There’s a lot of work to go in between now and then. Updates and pictures as things progress.

Well, there goes another year. Today, I’m 38.

It’s been an interesting year in many ways. Starting a band, gigging original material, making new friends and a very busy year at work.

I’m older, yes that’s true, but do I feel it? To be honest, no. I can honestly say I don’t feel any different now to when I was 28. I’m a bit more ‘mature’ and I feel I appreciate things a little more, but I certainly don’t feel like I’m nearly 40.

I’m leaving my current employer as I feel it’s time for me to spread my wings a little and develop my career, something I don’t feel I could do at my current job.

I’ve neglected my family and friends, including Jessie (my wife) and Stevie (my dog) and the many synth geeks out there whom I consider friends.

I’ve neglected my synth projects, Defender and QiX, and I hope to get back up to speed with these and soon.

And the new band is going from strength to strength but again, I’ve neglected my song writing and guitar practicing for far too long.

The new job offers more regular hours and a lot less travel, so hopefully I can correct all these things and spend more time on the things that are important to me.

It’s that time of year when people start promising to do things they know they couldn’t possibly do.

I used to do the whole new years resolution thing, like last year. Only one of which has happened, I got into a band, writing my own songs and even did a couple of gigs. I was asked to audition for bass in a rock band, The Gypsy Pistoleros, and I chickened out. That was a big mistake, it won’t happen again!
This year, I’m not doing that. I’m just going to list things I hope to do, so without further waffle here’s what I’d like to do ;-

• Record an EP or album with the new line up.
• Play to an audience of more than one hundred people
• Finish Defender, it’s just not had the time it deserved
• Do some more work with my Chameleon (finish Phoenix, Wave 2.C, etc)
• Get out more often with my friends and family
• Learn more Spanish
• Downsize my stuff

So there you have it, consider it a wish list, rather than a set of promises.

I’ve started on the last one of those by listing my VS2480 on ebay. I shall miss it, but I’m really not using it much at all, and it does take a lot of space, it wouldn’t be practical to take to Spain with us when we do move.

Happy New year to you all.

Well, what a “Spinal Tap” month our band has had.

First we all agreed to change drummer. There were many reasons for this decision and it wasn’t one we took light heartedly.

Then much to our suprise, the lead singer/guitarist left due to personal issues at home, disaster.

This left us, Frank and myself, with a grand total of 5 songs totalling about 15 minutes of material, no drummer and no lead vocals. We had to turn down two gigs, which is something I hated having to do.

We soon got a new drummer, Jim, who’s very good and loves what we’re doing musically. We had a couple of practices with him now and it’s going really well.

Frank and I have been busy writing more songs, and we’ve got another four rough outlines which we’ll be working on over the next few weeks.

And last night, we got ourselves a new singer, Rick. Rick has done some large events before, has a great voice, plays guitar, likes our music and is mad keen to get working on lyrics for our new songs and get practicing.

Our website, TenFifty.co.uk, is down for the moment as we’re redesigning it from scratch and we’ll be revamping the look and feel to give it a lot more impact. We will also be uploading new recordings and hopefully some new songs around the end of December.

I can’t wait to get working on these new songs and start gigging again soon. I think this new line up is stronger than ever before and we also have some cracking new songs which will carry us onto bigger and better things in the new year.

I don’t normally post political posts, but this is just driving me nuts.

The government has decided to charge householders for the rubbish they through out - story on the BBC.

Now, given I already pay for refuse collection in my council bill why should I pay more for the inadequacies of the government and it’s ability to manage a problem?

My refuse collection is a disgrace, I get given one black bag a week, and one clear one (for plastic) and one purple one (for paper) on alternate weeks.

One bag? For a household? my wife and I often end up with two black bags of rubbish and one of paper/plastic each week. How about a family of three or four? they’re going to be throwing four or more bags a week!

Add to this that our refuse collection is noisy and messy, black bags left on the street over night result in cats ripping open the bags and leaving rubbish everywhere, not to mention the mess that the collection guys leave behind.

Am I the only one who sees that people are going to stop putting their rubbish in bin bags, and start dumping it in random places if they’re going to be charged?

The problem isn’t with householders chucking out too much rubbish, it’s with the suppliers putting things in too much packaging into their product. Futhermore it’s often  packaging that is not recyclable!

But, yet again, the UK tax payer/householder is being forced to pay for the ineptitude of the government.

This country is turning into a very expensive nanny state, why people want to come to live here from other countries is totally beyond me, this country is a disgrace.

Well, it’s been a while since I posted.

Life has been pretty hectic of late, with work, My Band (Ten Fifty)  making progress and with some DIY.

This time, not of the synthesiser variety. In a previous post I mentioned I had purchased a bass kit and wanted to build my own bass. Well I did that and was pretty happy with it, but it needed something more.

So I looked into pick-ups, after a lot of looking , reading of specs and listening I chose two from Seymour Duncan, The SPB-2 (P-bass type) and the STK-J2 Hot Stack.

Due to the fact that my bass originally had two J pickups I had to hack up the pickup holes, not having access to a router I decided to go with the Eddie Van-Halen school of guitar modding, I took a drill and chisel to it.

Doesn’t look very Pretty does it? I can assure you I took the utmost care with this process, you can see the cavity I cut for the E and A strings, and the cavity for the D and G outlined ready to be cut. The observant amongst you will notice I went for the non-standard orientation for the pickups, that’s because I wanted to get a good balance from the upper two strings (which have always sounded quieter on regular basses) and the lower two strings (which have always sounded dull on regular basses).

And above is the body after hacking away for a couple of hours. OK, sure I’m not going to win any awards, but There is a scratch plate to cover it, made with reflective orange plastic.

Perversely the thing that took the longest was shaping the scratch plate. It’s still not exactly what I had in mind, but it’s close.

All in all I speant about 8 hours on this mod, but the $64,000 question remains, “how does it sound?” In a word,  awesome. I really can’t explain just how deep and clear the bass from the P pickup is and just how much growl can be had from the J pickup. I am so happy with the sound of this bass and the playability of it, I can’t see myself getting rid of it, ever. After all there’s a lot of sweat and effort gone into it.

This is almost getting to be a habit now. I mean, updating my progress with Defender regularly.

So, today I’ve finally managed to route the new front panel PCB. It’s taken me about two weeks to get fully routed and with everything on I want.

I’ve added some additional inputs so I could now add in things such as foot switches and pedals.

All I need to do now, is to save £150 for the prototype PCB, assemble it and program it. So there’s still a way to go before I have a fully working front panel.

I’d like to point out that whilst Defender currently has no panel, all it’s parameters are midi controllable and it responds to midi. Though it’s only a mono-synth at the moment once I have finished developing the basics I’ll be adding more voices and I’ll probably take it to 10 or 12 voices.

Feeling Brave, and wanting another bass but not being to afford one, I decided to build one.

A bit of shopping around took me to wd-music and their bass kits. It looked easy enough to build and the price wasn’t too bad.

It arrived Friday, and I spent 3 hours assembling it. Although it arrived without any instructions it was relatively simple to assemble. The only thing they got wrong on the order was the wrong coloured scratch-plate. They’re sending me the correct colour one, hence it’s scratch plate less in the picture.

Allowing a day for the neck to settle, I speant an hour setting up the action and then about two hours playing and adjusting.

I have to say, I’m really quite impressed, the action feels good and it’s got a very different sound to my other bass, which is exactly what I wanted. The strings are adequate, and I’ll be replacing them with some rotosound strings fairly soon. I’ve also got some Seymour Duncan STK-J2 and SPM-2 pickups on order. So I’ll be replacing the mid J pickup with a P bass pickup, the SPM-2. which should be fun as I’ll have to attack the body with a router!

Anyway, if you want a bass to play with and experiment with, then you can’t go far wrong with a kit. I don’t have so much of a problem modifying a bass I built from kit, much easier than taking a 500 quid Fender and hacking at it!