Thursday 23 December 2010

DIY RCD Breakout Panel

If you haven't already done so, this is an easy build which I can highly recommend. It opens up new possibilities by bringing some of the 4MS RCD's 'hidden' features to the fore.



My original aim was simply to get front-panel access to the up/ down count and gate/ trigger switches, which normally involves unscrewing the module from the rack. I wasn't even going to connect the reset jumpers but I'm glad I did - this has a marked effect, particularly on the odd divisions. Flicking between trigger and gate mode also yields an added bonus when driving logic operations. For example, patch the /8 to Brains' 'direction' input and toggle between gate and trigger to 'activate' and 'hide' the boolean function. In combination with the reset options, this can yield some funky sequences.

The build instructions are here. Soldering took all of 20 minutes, drilling and filing the faceplate, despite the Make Noise blank being softer than metal, took two hours. Always my favourite part of DIY...

3 comments:

Brian Biggs said...

Hey nice. This is in my "next project" line up, right behind the Choices I've been working on for four months. Good idea to use the Make Noise panel.
I'm planning to add a small 555 timer-based clock on the same panel above the switches to be the master clock. Happy New Year!

d said...

Hey!
For those that don't have a spare blank panel around, I've created some alternate faceplates for the RCD Breakout (and other 4ms modules):

http://glitched.org/up/
(Check the first couple posts on how to get one!)

By the way, this is one of the best modular blogs out there because the posts are descriptive and include the most important thing: sound samples!

Navs said...

Cheers, d! Your panels look great!