DIY hardware

Lounge
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Share interesting do it yourself hardware

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Some things I have built over the years:

The old Mutable Instruments stuff is also worth checking out but you will have to find alternative suppliers.

  • Ambika
  • Shruthi
  • Anushri

If I had more time I would probably build a Deckard’s Dream or Kijimi, that sounds pretty lush.

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Inspired by the announcement of the new Instruo Neoni OSC I was asking about a good additional OSC to enhance the sound palette of my 0-Coast. There were quite a few very interesting suggestions, one of them the dannysound EN129, which is a DIY-Kit.

I build quite a few guitar pedals myself, some really basic ones and a few complicated ones as well (Surfybear Spring-Reverb, Tremolos, etc.). I own a good Soldering Station and I know how to measure things and test a circuit. I think, I could built the dannysound, since it is completely through-hole and nothing looks too complicated.

Before I start I want to warm up a little, so I thought I’ll have a look at some homebrew eurorack modules first. I have a huge collection of electronic parts left from my guitar pedal builds and after a while I came across this guy, who has designed and built 33 modules over the last year. Some are analog, some are arduino-based, but they seem to be mostly basic and doable and he has the schematic and the code on his (japanese) website.

My questions:

Has anybody here built some working DIY-Modules and could share some “Tips and Tricks”?

Has anybody the knowledge to have a look at a few of those schematics (https://note.com/solder_state) and tell me if they are ok, or if they are missing crucial things in the way of “I would never put that in my rack because it could potentially harm my other devices?”

Thanks,

  • mo
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Hi Mo,

No micro-electronics skills here, but I’m a fellow synth DIY fan. Built my own 6u 60hp mini rack and all modules, some kits, some sourced.

I won’t be able to help with the schematics, but I can say this: I was lucky to be attracted to the Plinky synth early on (it is now unobtainable due to chip shortages), and joined their Discord. There’s a Tech talk channel there that is all about helping each other with questions like these. There’s some professional module builders that helped out getting Plinky to market and a whole bunch of DIY enthousiasts there (they shrunk the ambika into a 1/10th version, called amoebika, by converting everything from tht to smd, in 1 night!). The channel is used very much for questions like yours and the people are super nice, so I suggest taking a look.

1 thing I’ve learned tho, it is often cheaper, faster and better to not do the soldering yourself: make a prototype, breadboard it, build the schematics digitally and let JFC print the PCBs + panels and machine solder your components. All of this is usually faster and cheaper then printing your own pcb’s and sourcing your own parts. And if you community design m you can probably build 5 of each and sell the rest to community members for production price, to keep prices even lower.

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That is a really helpful suggestion, I will visit the discord-channel. Thanks!