I had been thinking about a noise box for some time but I wanted more than a simple MFOS Noise Toaster, as good as it is. I had a case in mind but it was a little large for just the Noise Toaster. Then I remembered that I had a MFOS Echo Rockit floating around.
The Echo Rockit is a delay unit based around the PT2399 chip. It's lo-fi. It contains the delay unit along with a VCF and modulation controls. The Echo Rockit module I originally got to be part of the Therematron but I was not happy with the quality of the unit. That said I'd probably enjoy the lo-fi aspects of it now.
I have several of these old wooden cases which came from a haul at an old college. They were part of a physics department and they're all old electronic experiments. Nicely made cases that wouldn't go to waste.
I had some fun with this design. I renamed all the controls and adding in some aliens and some lighting effects as you do.
Power is always a necessary and challenging part of a design and these two units have slightly different requirements. Given that it's a stand alone type instrument, I felt it would be better with batteries. I'm not a fan of single use batteries and I do have a large stock of salvages 18650 LiPo batteries. What I came up with was four of them in series and a voltage regulator. LiPo batteries prefer not to be drained to totally flat so I have included a simple circuit which will light a LED when the voltage become a little too low.
Here's a video I did for a friends birthday. Weird present.
The Music From Outer Space web site is now hosted by SynthCube since Ray Wilson's death. They have also continued to supply all the PCB and kits that Ray had.
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| Rear of the unit where you can see the MDF extension to deepen the case. |
These boards can be purchased at SynthCube. All of Ray's schematics are on the Music From Outer Space site.