stylophone mod

[Goddard, Duncan]

>>>I bought a stylophone.<<<

I got mine as a straight swap for a pristine mono "sgt pepper's", with all the cardboard bits still intact. well, the stylophone was in particularly good shape.....

>>>0. The frequency down with 1 or even 2 okatves. It will probably mean
> cutting out a R and solder a pot in somewhere.<<<
> 
it's easy. I did mine. can't remember what it was though, either a c or an r that doubles or halves in value.
I'll have a look. also, you'll need to put a dummy load where the speaker is if you want to disconnect it and run a line-out off the earphone jack; it won't oscillate if the load impedance is too high. about 50 ohms'll do.


>>>1. Portamento.
> Sliding the pen over the keys does: plidididididoo. I need it to do pliiiiioo.
> So I figure I need a capacitor somewhere, to hold the CV for a while.
> If the side effect is that every note will go down after release: Exellent.
> I'll make a not-holding switch for it.
> Any hints on where I will want the cap and what the value could be?<<<
> 
a lag processor in a stylophone? it'd be easier to replace the keyboard with a lump of resistive material. there was some mention a while back of something like this using the stuff those electrostatic-proofed bags are made of. you'd have to take out the resistor arrays from the circuit and then you'd need some way of setting the "scale trim" of your new fretless keyboard.

so instead of the stylus making a circuit with one of the many resistors to start the oscillator, it'd make a circuit with this bit of polythene with carbon impregnation, and there'd be a trimpot somewhere to adjust the scaling (but not in parallel otherwise you'd have a continuous tone).

then you'd have the world's smallest ondes-martenot.....


>>>2. a frequency wheel/knob.
> So far, I noticed that if I switch the device off while playing, it nicely
> drops in tone. Good. So to safe these old components, I want to find a spot
> that a) does drop the frequency, but does not hurt the electronics. Any
> hints?<<<
> 
it won't hurt it, but you could maybe add a push-to-break switch to make it easier.


>>>3. Dirt
> So, back in the tough the electronics topic!
> I definitely need some dirt in this machine. Toughing the keys lightly does
> sound dirty already, as it's switching on and off all the time (noise
> modulation).<<<
> 
stylophones reward the use of effects pedals- I use mine through an se-70 with pitch shift and delay/reverb- it comes out like a church organ. anything that's good for monophonic sounds, like the mxr blue box, should be interesting.


d.


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