Tuesday, June 29, 2010

TR 505 XL

This is what happens when you give me a TR 505.
The 505 is a digital drummachine made by Roland. It has a nice, easy-to-use sequencer, a big display, full MIDI capabilities and some of the most boring sounds that you'll ever hear...
Time to mod it, I'd say!
It now sports single outputs (1/4") and trigger outs (1/8"). Especially the trigger outputs are quite handy for owners of a modular synth... the 505 will work as a MIDI-to-trigger converter too!
Also the sounds are now tunable - I added 8 new oscillators (this time 40106 based, unlike the 555 based ones on my TR 707) to accomplish this.
I also added volume controls, so now there are 16 new knobs on the front panel. The volume controls are doubling as a"crunch" control, which goes like this: the maximum volume is reached at the 12 o´clock position (and the potentiometers have a center detent to reflect this), turning the knob further to the right will overdrive the internal mixer stage a bit, resulting in a slightly distorted sound. This adds a nice punch and grit! Due to the way the mixer stage is designed this will only work on the main outputs.
Most of the necessary informationon how to do these mods can be had from the Burnkit2600 TR505 page, so thanks to those guys!
All that stuff did not fit into the stock enclosure, I had to make some side cheeks out of stained plywood in order to raise the height of the case by 3cm.

Check the sound sample below for a glimpse of what this machine sounds like. No FX, no overdubs, no EQ used - recorded straight from the master output.





Monday, June 21, 2010

x0xb0x, again

So here it is, my second x0xb0x. This one has been finished for ages, but only today it occured to me that pictures would be nice.
It is completely self sourced, which means that I did not buy a kit but aquired all parts separately. Likewise there is no official Adafruit serial number.

The frontpanel was made by Schaeffer Apparatebau in Berlin - this one has far too many modifications for the "stock" panel. The legend was made with Lazertran.



The mods are:
PWM for the square wave
Accent Sweep Speed selectable between fast, normal and slow
Accent Decay control
Filter Overdrive with "color" knob
Bass Boost, Resonance Boost (with separate pushbutton switch and LED indicator)
"Eternal Bliss" - this is a combined Gate On Forever / Envelope On Forever to get those liquid acid lines
Filter Modulation with selectable source (square, saw, VCA) and two modes (buffered / unbuffered)
Envelope Retrigger button
VCO out / Filter in on TRS socket
orange / amber 3mm LEDs
Sokk0s 1.9 operating system