Ambient Light Synthesizer

Similar to how the Atari Punk Console functions but his time controlling the oscillation with an LDR and the ambient/surrounding light. The drone is constant, even in a dark setting, but the more light the LDR receives the higher the pitch of the drone becomes. Another simple, fast, and rewarding build using the 555 timer IC.

 

8 LED Random Flasher

The name says it all. Just another cool way of controlling LEDs for various projects. Someone could take this a step further and make a random sequencer. 

Always Remember To Never Forget

The ISD1820 voice recording IC has gained some popularity recently and has popped up in a few other cool projects and guitar effects. This one is pretty simple compared to those. It's a lofi sampler/looper essentially. Signal is split at the input via the 2N5457s and half of that is fed into the recording IC, while the other half remains clean(this allows your signal to be heard while in 'record mode'). There are three separate methods of playback: momentary, latching, or looping. Depending on where the sample rate is set at you get 8-20 seconds of recording time. Once a sample is recorded it's playback speed can be altered for some really cool and unique sounds. Special thanks and credit is due to BASTL and WRAA whose experiments with these voice chips is where my projects all stemmed from.

Wiggler (slow)

Same circuit as the regular "Wiggler" but with modified components/values to allow for slower speeds. Not much else to be said that hasn't already been mentioned in the original post.

Wiggler

A phase shift oscillator, courtesy of the Magnavibe. While it's not as powerful or as sophisticated as the Tremulus Lune oscillator, it's a much easier build and provides the needed controls to drive a lot of LDR circuits. "Depth" controls the brightness of the LED, whilst "Speed" controls the rate between fading on and off. I've also made another version of this circuit that allows for much slower speeds and will post it separately. At one point I made a "compact" layout of this circuit but it wasn't that much smaller and looked a little untidy, but if space is a concern you could shave off a couple rows and columns if you wanted.

Wiggle Wobble

Out of all the subminiature tube projects this one takes the cake. It's a tube powered vibrato, and it's lush as fuck! In the notes it says that by omitting one of the trace cuts you can get more of a tremolo effect, in retrospect I think this would be better implemented via a switch to connect/disconnect the trace cut therefore giving two effects in one. This circuit is a two part build and will not operate without a secondary 'LED' circuit to drive the LDRs. You can use any LED circuit you'd like however I found that a smoother fluctuation(fade) as opposed to choppy(blink) is more desirable in the actual behavior of the LED(s). Rick Holt who originally designed the circuit used a transistor based LFO, in my personal build I used the phase shift oscillator found in the Magnavibe pedal. I'll post a few layouts for the phase shift oscillator(PSU) that I used in another post.

Touch and Go

Another drone synth, but using the CD40106 this time. Really you could make a multi drone synth out of the same chip but I've already done that with the CD4093 design previously posted. This design uses a momentary switch to make/break the power connection to the circuit. The knob controls pitch. In the end you get a pretty fun little 'instrument' that requires very little parts to make.