Trobetronic40 - DIY Noisemaker

Introducing the Trobetronic40 - my first DIY synth project, built for a mate's 40th birthday out of parts sourced from a knackered Korg PolySix, Thingamagoop box and various cheap components.



I'd been keen to get into a bit of soldering action since reading Nicolas Collins' excellent Handmade Electronic Music last year, but always found excuses (work, life, making music, the wife etc.) to put off my first project. The turning point came in November when I bought a Thingamagoop and realized the circuits it contained were pretty much exactly the ones Collins describes.



Bread-boarding the circuit took about 20 minutes, the soldering about five hours, housing it about an hour and finding the right screws for the PolySix switch about four days. It was fun, but this might be my first and last DIY project. Life's just too short for this kind of nonsense ...

Here's a short video of the Trobetronic40 in action and here's the schematic.

BTW there was a certain karmic quality to the build: the mate in question was also responsible for blowing-up the original P6 back in '95. Happy Birthday Mike and look after this one, OK?

Welcome to Navs Modular Lab!

Welcome to navs.modular.lab, a resource for Euro format module reviews and samples.

Over the past year, I've tested more than 20 different VCOs, VCFs, VCAs, Modulators and Manglers and posted the results over at the Canecutters website. I'll be moving the tests from their old home during the next couple of weeks and adding some new ones. You can look forward to Plan B's Model 10 Polyphonic Envelope, Doepfer's Source of Uncertainty and some lovely examples of the Livewire AFG's FM capabilites.

This site will also be home to Patch of the Day, my modular patch diary which has just celebrated its first birthday.

But to kick things off, I've got some demos of Bleep Lab's Thingamagoop which I bought here in Berlin at General Robots - a great shop full of things you didn't know you needed.



Not exactly modular, but fun nonetheless!


Thingamagoop Rises


Thingamagoop Flies


Thingamagoop Modulates

Thingamagoop did his thing through Cwejman's MMF-1 filter and a Roland Space Echo. On track 3 I ran him through an envelope follower and took the signal to stimulate a pair of ring modulating VCOs (Cwejman's VCO-2RM).

Hope you enjoy the sounds & site and look forward to your comments!

Cheers,

Navs