Ring Modulator: Prototype to Final Build in One Ridiculous Step
If you’ve been to this site before you know that I’ve been building a ring modulator for Bill Graham to use with his Rhodes for the better part of a year. If I had enough time to do it right it’d take me less than a week, it’d be stable, and I wouldn’t be worried [...]
Ring Modulator: Prototype Take Two
About a year ago I posted an article about a Ring Modulator prototype I had created using 2 audio transformers and some matched diodes. The design was beautifully simple, and I may return to it someday, but it had a number of shortcomings. The circuit I started with would have needed a preamp for my [...]
Casio PG-380 Midi Guitar
Several months ago Jason asked me if I could fix a MIDI Guitar. I didn’t have the slightest idea how to fix one, and had only speculative knowledge about how they work, so naturally I said “yeah, sure, piece of cake”. If I’d have known at the time the kind of gear lust this project [...]
Inside The Korg DW-8000: Don’t Put Solder on a Battery
Recently a friend asked how hard it was to replace the CMOS battery in Korg DW-8000 keyboard. I assumed it couldn’t be that hard, looked up what kind of battery it accepted (CR2032) and said “yeah, 5 minute job”. I failed to take into account early 80s circuit construction. Sure, its no Maestro PS-1B, but [...]
Ring Modulator: Initial Prototype
A few months ago at band practice Bill mentioned ring modulators, and asked if I knew how to make one. I had seem some circuits and knew they were pretty easy to construct so I said yeah, no problem, give me some time. Since my life is basically just going from project to project, I [...]
Make Your Apple Pro Speakers Useful
I am convinced that everything Apple develops fits in to one of two categories: awesome or suck. In the awesome category you have stuff like the iPod, iPhone, and OS X. In the suck category, iTunes, iPhotos, and ahem their font management. Many years ago, when Apple started putting an ‘i’ in front of anything [...]
Maestro PS-1B Teardown
A friend of the band recently had a problem with his Maestro PS-1B, a phase shifter from the early 70′s designed by the famous Tom Oberheim, and asked me to take a look at it. Based on the problem, a loud humming at the output with no sign of any other signal, I figured it [...]
