Forest Mims Toy Organ (whats the best way to add vibrato)

[Wild Zebra]

Hello, I breadboarded the Mims Toy organ last night.  I want to make a stylophone.  So I was wanting to ad some sort of vibrato effect to make it alittle more interesting.  So I'm open to suggestions.

[mikeford]

Hey Zeb,
I built a similar circuit, but placed a optical photocell in place of a master resistor.  You can place a  rapid flashing LED near the photo sensor and get a great number of vibrato and tremolo effects. I have built a sorta hurdy-gurdy style and a stylophone type  model. here is a link to alltronics. They sell this kit.
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/i ... COPE_.html
 you could build one from scratch, if you wanted to. Anyway, hope this helps.

[Wild Zebra]

Hey mikeford another classy musical piece from you.  Thanks for the advice thats what I was experimenting with last night, but I didn't have the outcome I was looking for.  I got some decent wavering, but nothing with the depth I hoped for.  I built a flashing led circuit a way back and placed a LDR between C8 and the speaker.  One leg to gound the other between Spk and C8.  Here's the link if you want to look, might have to scroll down.  Maybe a diofferent color LED?  have mess alittle more, but any help appreciated.

[Wild Zebra]

http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/diy/ oops double oops go to Oscilators then, 555 basic astable...

[mikeford]

Hey zeb,
just a link to let you hear the piece above. The velleman LED strobe kit  has a  uber fast flash rate! Instead of having a stylus and a bunch of resistors to make the notes, I rigged up a 12 position rotary switch in place of the stylus, with the center pole as the ground. I did not build  forrest mimms circuit, but gutted a little cheapo red keyboard, as I recall (i skipped every other note to give it a 12 tone or whole tone scale, ya know, for that sci-fi 60s  sound!)
I think mine is rigged up for more of a tremelo sorta sound!

here is the link of a video
switch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q-AItvW28Y

anyway, keep playing around with it. else, you may want to consider this vobrato stomp box kit...
http://www.buildyourownclone.com/vibrato.html

rock on!

[Wild Zebra]

Nice one, yep I'm just going to have to fuss with it alittle more.  I'm trying to build a few things for this weekend.  It's the community festival here this weekend.  Lots of music, beer, food, and of course me and my friends making a bunch of noise on DIY toys .  So I'll get back at it next week I had some pretty good results, just exactly what I was after.

[para]

mims' 555 toy organ? an LDR will very rarely get down past 1K when driven by an LED ( should be yellow for the better results too). you need a stronger light source and even then some LDR's just won't get that low. for the best effect using the LDR on the organ you should have replaced R1 or at least placed it in series with it and then maybe add a bypass switch if you want.

and as for spending 11$ on an LED flasher mike come on. i found all of these in a mater of seconds with a google image search. they can all be made for about $2 including the perfboard and you can easily lay it out in a matter of minutes or even do point to point to save space, and these are way cooler then the prefad unit and there are plenty of sequencers in there too.  also there are ways to shape the pulse to get you different results instead of just square on /off.


http://images.google.com/images?svnum=3 ... rch+Images
http://www.electronicsteacher.com/circu ... chematics/
http://www.noding.com/la8ak/images/lm3909.gif
http://www.electronicsteacher.com/circu ... 4017-2.gif
http://www.satcure-focus.com/tutor/page11.htm
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/2qflash.htm
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/flash2.htm
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/gadgets/bfflash2.htm
http://wild-bohemian.com/electronics/flasher.html


steven

[para]

also mike

http://www.jessicajoslin.com/jessica/index.html

[mikeford]

Hello Para
yeah, I know, it's LAZY to buy prefab circuits, but I tend to  spend more time (wich seems to be more and more scarcer with each progressing day!) searching for cool metal objects to use. I will be the first to admit that I am no electronics wiz. I suppose it is a trade off of sorts.... as for Jessica's work, a little morbid for my mortal coil, but clever "steam punk" taxidermy!

[para]

i'm not saying all prefab stuff is bad it just seems like a tremendous waste of money to me, and if you have to build it , time, because its way more complicated then it needs to be. but i actually have a couple things coming out very soon that fall into both of those categories so ... who the hell am i to talk.

and i just figured you might get a kick out of her work, i just bumped into it. also she fetches between $2000 and $5000 for each. it might be time for you to start having shows and moving some of your work... if you are ready to part with it


steven

[Wild Zebra]

Thanks para.  Yeh, I did that too (R1) I was trying in the end to effect the pitch and volume.  Well I toy around alittle more.  It was just such a simple circuit I wanted to add it to the "aresenal"

[Hoovooloo]

Would the LED flasher be able to run off the same battery as the organ circuit?

[para]

yeah it should. if you do try it then make sure you isolate the grounds running to each of the circuits to help minimize the bleed.


steven