[sdiy] Minimoog clone

[David Griffith]

On Sun, 11 Jul 2010, cheater cheater wrote:

> Hi Bryce,
> I think the community as a whole, also in the future, will profit from
> your work. Please upload anything you have if you can, even if
> unfinished :) It might even draw attention from others and they then
> could contribute to your project. From the historical point of view,
> you also gain a lot from posting to third-party media (like e.g. this
> mailing list!) - so if you have any text, essays, BOMs, walkthroughs,
> etc, it could be a good idea to post it up here. I wager a bet that
> this list will go on long long after your web page is gone - that's
> sadly the way resources on the web work. See it as backup, or as an
> alternative way to access the data, or as free advertisement (people
> get to know about your project). A single thread like that shouldn't
> bother anyone, it's not like we're on 300 bps modems anymore, and our
> clients can thread posts properly (unless someone uses something lame
> like outlook, well then, shame on then).
>
> Either way, regarding the keyboard: the feel of the keyboard is a big
> part of the synth. A scanned keyboard, especially distortion dome
> based one, will in no way reflect the playability of a minimoog's
> pratt-reed keyboard. It will be a prosthesis, so maybe consider not
> having a keyboard at all and use a simple midi->CV/Gate interface
> until then. Maybe the lack of a keyboard will motivate you to get a
> good one :)

I'm somewhat neutral about the keyboard.  Modern Fatar movements seem 
acceptable enough for me.  My big hangup is how to convert a matrixed 
keyboard to a bussed one.  Once this is solved, it can go a long way to 
provide a solution for people who for whatever reason need to replace a 
Pratt-Read keybed.  I see two approaches for converting a Fatar movement. 
One involves dinking around with the matrix connectors.  A microcontroller 
can do this fairly trivially.  I'll have to play around with paper and 
pencil to see if I can do it just with wires.  The other approach is to 
add new buss-style wiring to the keyboard.  Another concern using Fatar 
movements is that they seem to not come in 44-key versions.  What does the 
Minimoog Voyager use?

-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu