>Well, I
(Matt)
finally got the urge to finish this project. I'm having a blast
with this thing. I can't believe that my oscillator coils were within range
and needed no unwinding, and even more unbelievable was the fact that the
amplifier stage and audio out worked perfectly on the first try!
That's a
testament to your design and clear schematic and components list. Thanks!!
>See attached pics/sound file. I'm not thrilled with my enclosure, but I had
been using the lack of a decent enclosure as an excuse not to get this
finished. Yesterday I finally put all the components on the board and just
threw the assembly into this Meguiar's car care products gift box I had
laying around. The antenna is a wireless phone antenna that Radio Shack had
on clearance. It seems to give good response, but I need to find other
stuff to experiment with.
Matt, I think your wooden box is an
excellent choice for appearance and coil clearance! Let me
know what store you bought it in. (Meguiar's car care products gift box)
>Now I'm playing with the freeware frequency monitor program you had on your
site, trying to clean up the waveform by tweaking the coil angle. So far I
haven't gotten a pretty sine wave yet, and my low end distorts, preventing
nice low pitch. I'll keep experimenting with it. I need to go get a solar
cell to try the volume control with the LED.
A nice sine wave needs a good earth
ground through your power amplifier and a good antenna design.
Don't overdrive the signal Pots 1, 2, 3 should all be
counterclockwise almost to the minimum when feeding a signal
into the microphone input of your computer sound card.
>If you have a sec, can you tell me how I should be using the tuning LED? It
seems to always be off, but will flicker briefly if I tap the green wrap on
the left coil. How can this LED help me tune the coils?
The LED 1 on the TLC555 output is
used as an effect when using the hand held solar cell as a
pickup. When you tune to the Null Point it should go dim or
off. Increasing Pot 1 should enhance this as would rotating
your L1 coil more inward, perpendicular to L2.
I find there is a trade off
between the perfect sound or the ideal linear response.
>p.s. My inspiration to finish the project came from getting the chance to
see Pamela Kurstin playing her theremin yesterday with the jazz group
Third Trio from the Sun' in a cafe' here in San Antonio. Very very
impressive - she's got a tremendous technique. At one point she was playing
very realistic (very fast) 'walking bass' lines on the theremin.
.
-----Original Message Below-----
Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 12:40 PM
To: Matt B
Subject: Re: Ultimate 2 PDF?
>First let me say that your Theremin instructional website is none less than
awe-inspiring.
Thank you, the project has kept me in
awe from the beginning also!
>You have obviously spent a LOT of time and effort in documenting and
researching this stuff.
I let that creative inner voice guide me. Early on I
had a strong sense of the direction of my design. I do visualize my whole project and
still
have a ways till finished. Documenting everything as a webpage forces me to stay organized. One day
in the
distant future I may want to build another one. lol
> I am very much an amateur in electronics and want to make a theremin. Your site seems to be the best resource out there!
I have been doing electronic projects
for many years. I could not find
a theremin webpage that looked doable to me so I developed my
own. The other
disappointment was most
WebPages are reluctant to put up sound bytes.
The theremin response is easy enough to achieve, but a musically good
"transistorized" sound proves to be the more challenging aspect of
a true theremin voice
design. It is still my goal to find an interesting sound technique that is analog, that is economically
feasible for everyone to build and doesn't use a synthesizer or
digitally developed sound. In other words the "True
Theremin Voice".
>Can you please send me the link to that Ultimate 2 PDF schematic? Gonna
take the plunge and make my own PCB.
Wise move to use your own custom
etched printed circuit board using the U2 PDF.
Matt believe it or not, every time I make a
interesting theremin
discovery it is as exciting as the first time I heard my first
oscillator chirp on the AM Radio.
Good Luck,
Christopher
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