The Mysterious Penfold Book

[Chris Crosskey]

On Wed, 19 Feb 1997 15:00:01 Josh Brandt <brandt at fishe wrote: 
>
>
>
>Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever built the various bits of gear from
>the Penfold Book? (What's the real name of that, anyway?)
>
>If so, how well did they work? Were they useful and neat? They at least look
>like a good place to start playing around...
>

Hi Josh,
Yeah I've heard one in action. The guy I mention with the Moog 
fixation built one a couple of years ago. I would have done 
too, but I was knee deep in Formant at the time. They sound 
OK, they are a brilliant starters project just because they 
are cheap and all the stuff is available. Replace the 741's 
with TL071's though, it's a big improvement. Paul reckoned you 
had to stack two filters up to get a decent sound, and then he got a 
Mini-moog filter design which I'd cracked to work at +/-12V and added 
a baby digital delay based on a Holtek chip (A-D/D-A and DRAM 
controller chip) called the HT8955 IIRC, and it sounded great. I think 
he had four of each of the big four circuits (VCO, VCA, VCF, ADSR) 
plus the panner and a noise source that he replaced with the Minimoog 
one, and a couple of LFO's and some bits. I'd recommend it to anyone 
looking for a cheap and easy way to start, you could have a 3VCO, 
2VCA, 2VCF, 3ADSR system for less than a hundred bucks if you make 
your own boards.
chrisc