Showing posts with label Thomas Henry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Henry. Show all posts

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

Thomas Henry MegaPercussionSynth (BetaTest)


Here's some pics of a new module I've been helping to beta-test. I've previously built quite a few modules designed by Thomas Henry, but this has got to be one of the best - it crams in so many features! You can read more about the project on this electro-music.com thread (I've shared the front panel design file on page 8 and there's a demo mp3 there too).

A brief overview of the features:
There are three sections which together make up a synthesized drum -- Impact (a short impulse like the beater hitting the drum), Shell (the main body of the drum) and Noise. Each section has its own decay control - these are all fired by the main Trigger Input. The Impact is a pretty simple Squarewave and the Noise is white noise passed through a voltage controlled resonant filter (low-pass or band-pass). Its the Shell section that really packs in the features -- its based on the XR2206 chip, outputting a triangle wave, and its basic freq. range is massive - I measured 25Hz right up to 19kHz! But, on top of that Thomas Henry has added a wonderful RingMod osc allowing really great tones.
Just like that things'd be great, but you also get CV modulation for the Noise and Shell (which can actually be cross-modulated with the Impact or Noise outputs) and the great LockMode - this holds all the Envs open, giving you a wierd and wonderful synth voice!

PCBs will be being made available pretty soon for this project once some more testing has been done -- check back to the electro-music thread for further details.

As you can see there's quite a lot of wiring to be done! It was quite a squeeze to fit everything into a 3-frac-width panel, but I'm happy to have such a powerful module in such a compact form.

Friday, 15 June 2007

Porta-frame filled

(click to see it big)

...just in time take to Amsterdam. Hopefully I'll be able to take this on Easyjet as hand-luggage - the dimensions are *just* ok for their 'carry on musical instruments' though it remains to be seen whether they believe its a musical instrument...

Details:
Top row:
- Thomas Henry Quadrature VCO
- Lofi looper module
- Thomas Henry XR2206 VCO x 2
- Thomas Henry NE566 VCO (from the 566 cookbook)
- Noise and RingMod
Middle row:
- BugCrusher (old version)
- Dual Pattern Generator
- Dual Envelope
- Low Pass Gate clone
- BugCrusher (new version)
- State Variable VCFilter
- VC PT2399 Delay
Low row - auxes panel:
- Power
- 3 x preamp
- inverter section
- 2 x mixer


EDIT -- hey, I'm happy to report that I was able to get through just fine carrying this box onto the airplanes -- absolutely no problems (which is strange considering my friend had a lot of hassle for carrying harmonicas in his hand-luggage --- all nuts!).

Next plan is to make a bigger box made to measure to fit exactly the maximum carry of musical limits of 30 x 38 x 117 cm... hehehehe!