[sdiy] Doepfer ribbon progress

[harrybissell]

So I got the dopefer ribbon hooked up to
my Theremin Quantizer.

I'm a little underwhelmed...

1) The ribbon has pretty HIGH friction. OK
if you want to tap, but if you want to gliss
its pretty poor IMHO.  Compared to the Kurzweil
its awful.

Anyone else have some experience ???

(disclaimer - I bought it used but it looks like new :^)

2) The pressure sensitivity is very noisy. Its OK if you
play a note and press down... but sliding gives a very
jerky response

(disclaimer, it may be the 'old' pressure sensor... I hear they
have a new one)

Can anyone comment on the old ~vs~ the new.  I'm sure I could buy
a newer one.

Other than that I'm golden.   I'm considering adding an overlay
of some ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene... some of the
most slippery plastic in the universe.  I might try / consider
a Teflon surface.

Or you you just lube your fingers up with K-Y Jelly and slide
right up there (to the highest octaves, of course)

3) I'm running voltage mode on the ribbon. Someone suggested current
mode (ie it would allow you to have a true low note of high note
priority)

In fact... you could play two notes from the ribbon.  That might be
cool.

4) I have a current mode pressure circuit.  It has a sensitivity pot
to change the response... and a zener to clamp the output at +5V

That seems to work pretty well, except for the noise when sliding
I'll probably put some filtering in there

H^) harry