CMOS Modulars

The 4000 series CMOS logic series holds some wonderful chips for clocking (ie rhythmic) and audio generation (squarewaves). There's a very inspiring new forum at electro-music.com that's dedicated to / inspired by Stanley Lunetta..
Lunettas - circuits inspired by Stanley Lunetta

Here's my first module - clocking and XNORs - pretty much the heart of a Weevil but without body contact and power starvation..
Quite a few more designs in the pipeline now - the rhythmic possibilities are really exciting.
I'll be posting more details such as panel layouts and schematics shortly. The whole idea behind these circuits is that they're meant to be quick and dirty -- its actually the panel making that seems to take the longest!

Edit:: more schematics and details now on my electronics page

Can Weevils fly?

The new batch of Weevil08s flew out of the BugShop in under 24hours..

Blow-up Magazine

If you can read Italian...
From the January edition of BlowUp Magazine

New (really)Micro PCBs

This is the first test PCB for the new production version BugCrusherMicro, built and tested today. The Micro part of the name is apt - those three ICs are freaking tiny! My first time with SMD chips and, somewhat surprisingly, they're not actually too hard to work with (though you do need a damn steady hand!).

All the tests have worked out well, so production will be beginning imminently!

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.

Welcome Weevil08

Here's the test run of the new Weevil08 design. Its got a similar 3-osc heart to the PostcardWeevil, but the end results are quite different due to the more-involved circuitry with extra pitchings for the Oscs, filter control, etc..

These boxes can make some very rich drone tones along with all manner of crazed'n'burble Weevil sounds! Here's an mp3 demo - 6 minutes covering some of the sonic possibles, recorded straight into a soundcard with no processing...

These will be hitting the BugShop sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Building Bugs - the new BugCrusher08

Things have been busy behind the scenes in BugWorld - I've been trying to streamline my ways of producing devices. Last month I brought out the diminutive PostcardWeevil (which has gone down well!) - my first foray into Pro PCBs (from Futurlec) - and now comes the first box, a new and powerful version of the BugCrusher.

The use of ProPCBs opens up some new techniques and the theory is that I can make things much more replicatable, while also packing more features in. To be honest, there's still plenty of figuring to be done - both on what circuits to build and how to integrate everything efficiently- but things are heading in good ways. Don't be thinking, either, that using ProPCBs makes the building process all that much easier -- it still takes a freaking age to put the boxes together!!!

So, here are the first pictures of the new BugCruhser08 - inside and outside!
A batch of 8 will be released in the next few days via the BugMailList (you are on it, aren't you?!)
There'll be more info going up on the main BugBrand site shortly too.
Coming soon will be a new version of the (standard) Weevil and then on to some more BugCrusher9VoltStomps...


The box features are:
Input Preamp for mic or line level
Voltage Controlled Crusher circuit - with main Crush Control plus variable CV modulation
Mixer to blend Dry / Crushed signals plus switchable phase inversion on the Crushed signal
Voltage Controlled Resonant Filter with LoPass / BandPass - with main Cutoff Control plus variable CV modulation
Output with lo (guitar-amp) or hi (line) levels
Modulation input switchable between Expression Pedal or external Control Voltage (CV - from analogue synths (standard +/-5v levels))
Electronic Bypass Switch plus external Footswitch socket


And some shots of the building process:
There are four boards within - one main board and then external boards joined via IDC headers.
One for Input / Output sockets
Two for dials and switches