Arman Bohn sent me a couple of links to his projects - and I took forever to put them online. Sorry about that, been busy.
The first one, the Magical Toolbox, is a multi-effect generator built into a tool box. It has a stereo phase-cancelling reverb, fuzz box and ring modulator - All in stereo. It sounds really nice too.
Arman also built a Transmission Electron Microscope. It doesn’t quite work as intended, but it still looks cool, and the sountrack to the demo clip is pretty nice as well.
“The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.”
- Lloyd Jones
“ADACHI’s self-made instruments are consists of simple electronic circuit, almost case built in tupperware. They never can make precise pitch, but have good sound and noise, easy to operate and carry and worked by battery. Of course the funny and pretty looks are important aspects.”
Here’s a good idea: use an old SoundBlaster card and turn it into a cheesy-sounding General-MIDI box. If I were a porno film producer, I’d definitely need a couple of these for the soundtracks.
DIY general MIDI synth from an old Soundblaster [link & link][via]
I swear, I didn’t see this until I posted yesterday’s post: it’s basically the same thing, but mono (so much for stereo separation anyways), and amplified! I’ll definitely build myself one of these. They’d also make great gifts for guitar playing friends. Refer to yesterday’s project for installing felt in the tin, as it probably helps with the overall sound quality.
I love just about every project that’s built around the Altoids tins. This one is no exception: mini speakers made of recycled headphones. You could also use those cheap mini-speakers that they sell at your local electronic parts store.
I love this: it’s cheap, effective and pretty simple to do. Basically, you take a 2$ Radio Shack piezoelectric transducer and use it as pickup. One thing bothers me a bit though: you need to drill a hole in the guitar to fit the jack. I’m quite sure there’s a way to go around this. And who cares, I don’t have a guitar ;)
I might build an acoustic bass out of scrap wood I have at home, and that sort of pickup would be perfect for it.
How to make a small guitar from an Altoids tin. It may not be a Stratocaster, but it [almost] fits in your pockets. If I’d make one, I’d add some frets.
Another Instructable shows you how to make a guitar pickup. Now maybe, if you put the two together, that is , if you can make a miniature version of the pickup, you can end up with a mini electric guitar. If you ask me, it’s worth trying.
This isn’t exactly a set of instructions, but anyone familiar with the Arduino should be able to make up something similar to this. With nice pads (think recycled mousepads) and some nice packaging, this could make up a great electronic drum set.
I’ll be exploring this in the next year as I’d really like to have a drum set at home, but lack the space and don’t want to spend much money on this. Plus, the ability to control a drum machine by playing “real” drums is more interesting (to me) than playing a “real” drum. I can’t get enough of that TR-808 bass drum.
Check out these instructions on how to build your first synthesizer.
Granted, it’s not a Jupiter-8, but it’s fun to build, fun to play with, and cheap to build too. You can also bend it if you want to get even crazier sounds out of it. I built one myself last year, so I know what I’m talking about. I used the strip board layout and it worked out great. See it in the picture.
