[sdiy] kitchen sink module & putting synth modules into guitar pedals

[anthony]

You know what my biggest problem is when I set out to start (or rather 
finish) a project? I start with a cool basic idea, but then I keep adding 
and adding until it's just not a simple thing anymore and even though would 
be cool to make it somehow loses its magic.

A couple of weeks ago I had what I call a building blitz. I realised I had a 
ton of Radio-Shack proto-boards and just started making things. The first 
thing was to fill up the medium sized Radio Shack project box I had, and 
also to make modules to put in my 16" tall X 19" rack guitar FX synth. 
Actually the guitar FX synth project should end up being a big solution to 
where to put all of this stuff, but the annoying thing is that I now have a 
TON of things that would be cool to put in the project box (which is way 
bigger than a guitar stomp). I love their smaller Al boxes for guitar 
pedals - at first I thought they looked to big and dorky, but really for 
anything moderately complex built on a proto-board it's just right 
(especially I've discovered if you drill all of the holes on one half - 
wiring's less messy).

===> OK I rambled about all of that to share what I've been doing: It struck 
me how cool it would be to put Ken Stone's Psycho LFO in a box alongside his 
Synthacon Tribute Filter. OK so I built those... Actually I built what I 
call The Xtra But Not Exactly SUPER Psycho Modulation Source - using a 4093 
instead of a 40106 - 2 LFO's are variable, one of those is switchable to 
triangle and the others are LO-HI-OFF switchable and all of the rate LED's. 
I did this to make it more versatile than the regular Psycho LFO, but with 
less knobs to mess with than the Super Psycho. Oh but I couldn't stop there 
could I? NO of course not. So I whipped up a Buchla envelope follower. I 
know there are probably many better and simpler envelope followers than this 
one, but I like the way it looks and since all of the modules I was using 
were +/-15V too it made sense. I suppose it made less sense to keep the 
pulse output part of it, but I did because I also made a DOD FX30 that I 
plan to use to gate a percussion synth or a dramatic FX loop. OK that sounds 
like a rather simple plan, but now that I have all of the modules I read 
through Charles Lambs page on the Synthacon with extras and I got to 
thinking how cool it would be to put 292C lowpass gates on each of the 
filter mode inputs. Maybe I could just use the LPG's on my guitar FX synth 
(which I've dubbed the Stokastatron since it has a lot of random CV sources 
on it...).

Well then in a fit I built Ray Wilson's 24 dB/oct filter (using CA3080's 
instead of LM13700's) and ANOTHER envelope follower all together on this big 
Jameco protoboard that I was actually saving for a Badstone project (and 
kind wish I'd done...). I thought this would go nice with the Single Chip 
S&H and Ray's Pink Enough Noise Source that I've had built for aeons.

So I can't decide which filter to put in the box. I suppose I'm being 
ridiculous - especially since I really should put the Ray Wilson filter in 
the Stokastatron.

I was going to have a question here at the end, but I can't really think of 
one now, I guess I answered whatever it was in writing all of this. I do 
like to share what I've been up to. I really should build a web site for it 
all. I suppose I could get started right now since I won't have a soldering 
iron for about a week. I've decided that I should break down and buy an 
expensive Weller iron because I've gone through like 8 cheap ones over the 
last year and it's starting to tick me off. I gave up on Radio Shack's and 
switched to a Philmore and it broke faster than the Radio Shack ones!