Okay, now it’s time for a sad story about how I butchered a somewhat nice idea that I had for a front panel. It wasn’t anything special, just “What if I made it all brown and black with white text on black panels, like old equipment”. You know what I mean? Like Moog or something, but with text on little plates. Here’s what I imagined it might look like:
Something like this. Now, let’s start destroying this idea. But first, the Module itself is a Steiner-Parker VCF from yusynth site. I made PCB using a photoresistive film this time. Well, not a film. I just had a bunch of presentivised boards. Is that how you spell it? Anyway, boards that are ready to be exposed. I had to experiment a lot with exposure time and how to develop it after that… That’s a long story though… Well, I am writing this post anyway, so I’ll tell you. I use an array of smd UV LEDs. I don’t even remember how many of them there. I also have a nail-curing thingie with mercury UV lamps. Yay, toxic metals! Well, they are safe unless you manage to break a tube. I think I have much more lead in my organism than mercury. I also have this hoarding hobby, so I pick up trash and make use of it. One time I picked up an old broken laptop screen, so I took it apart and now I am using it as a frame for all the LED stripes. Wait a second, i’ll take a photo of it. Sorry that it’s dark and grainy.
As you can see, it has hinges on the back and the front is fixed with a magnet thing. I was experimenting with a distance of how far/close you can put your board and that’s why it has all these boxes and stuff on the first photo. You can also see a transparent film with yusynth’s layout for this VCF, haha (you can also probably guess that the boards are positive, not negative type, that’s why the layout is a positive). I forgot it was there! Anyway, so that’s the rig. After that I develop the board. And developing is painful every time. Because the boards were sold without a developing thingie that should’ve been included, but oh well. So I tried washing soda - didn’t work, I tried silicon glue or whatever you call it - didn’t work. And by didn’t work I mean exactly that, it changed absolutely nothing, like it was just pure water or something. Well, so it appear that only the big guns are allowed here, so I bought a drain cleaner with ~70% NaOH in a powder form, dissolved a small spoonful in 100ml of water and it just washed the whole photosensitive layer immediately. But for one microsecond I saw the testing text that I didn’t even expected to see, to be honest, I thought that this “photosensitive material” is just an acrylic paint layer or something and it was a scam. But it worked! Anyway, to keep it short - the pain is to make it work each time, because there’s no way to know the exact concentration of NaOH for each spoon taken. It’s not a fine powder. Anyway, I managed to do it three times now. And I mean three consecutive times. So I got a hang of it.
Okay, so back to visual designs. You know how I do it usually, and if not - well, just scroll up, and you’ll see. This new approach was something I planned to use for bigger things. Like maybe a device of some sorts. We’ll see. But now I might rethink this whole way of doing things. So first of all, white text on black plates - cool, how to do it? Well, one way would be how I made the in/out plates for a reverb tank, right? Again, scroll up if you forgot how it looks, but what I did was - I just sprayed a tin can plate with black acrylic and then I carved the text with a dremel. Well, that was fine for like 5 big letters, but if I want to make smaller text, that wouldn’t work. My hands are shaky and also I would hate it. So… rubber stamps with an ability to make custom texts. I don’t know the exact name in english. But that’s what i did. And by the way, all of that was during winter. Like 5-6 months ago. So I had a lot of time to experiment with it and came to a conclusion that it would be almost impossible to do with the materials that I have and/or can buy for cheap. Acrylic paint was hard to apply and hard to wash from the little miniature letters. Not impossible though! But the effect i was after wasn’t achievable for me, for some reason. Maybe if I do this for a week or so every day for many hours, I would find a way to do it great every time, but my attempts for now with acrylic were like 0/100. The problem was with making text legible. And each time it wasn’t. So I washed all the little letters and binned this idea of using acrylic.
Okay, so no white text on black background. Well, blue text on silvery/metal background works too! And that what I did. I just stamped beer can metal with a stock stamp paint and dried it with a heat gun, because if you don’t do it, it is very easy to smudge. And then I realized that when I spray it with a lacquer, it will just dissolve the text. So I put a layer of transparent tape on top.
Alright. Text done. As for a plate I just took a slightly bigger plywood piece. I usually use 4cm wide panels, This time it was 6cm, because the selector/rotary switch was very big. It was a soviet brutalist selector (advertised as mini in 70s, I bet), you’ll see later. And instead of gluing paper on top as usual, I stained the plywood, making it brown. It looked okay.
So the plates on my spring tank are actually screwed-on, because they are bigger and heavier, but these ones are flimsy and light and there are more of them, and i only have this much little screws, so I decided to glue them on. Well, that was a disaster. It turns out the epoxy I was using (I remind you that I developed an allergic reaction to superglue, which is funny if you think about) was unpredictable. Sometimes it cured in an hour, sometimes in 24 hours and sometimes one part cures in 2 hours and the other part - in 2 days. I don’t know why. No idea. Well, I didn’t know that. I tested it two times with, I don’t even remember what it was, but it cured in 24 hours completely. So I though that would be more than enough. And in a day after putting all the plates on the face panel, I took it and the arched-shaped thingy unglued itself from the wooden surface. And i think one or two other things also weren’t ready. Well, the arched thing was sticky, So i just put it back and pressed on it and it was more or less fine, but the other ones I had to add some extra epoxy and… Well, you’ll see.
After that I was a bit sad that It looks more and more like shit. And the color doesn’t make it better. So I thought “whatever, just put a 3-4 layers of lacquer on top and call it a day”. So I did. Or so I though I did. But instead a lacquer I sprayed it with a beige colored acrylic paint… I panicked and tried to salvage it. Again, you’ll see… Then I sprayed it with lacquer this time. And… yeah. Plywood absorbed the lacquer for some reason more greedily than usual. 3-4 layers are usually enough to make it look a bit glossy (it is a matte lacquer, so not like superglossy, just a bit shiny). Aaaanyway… Here it is. The big reveal
On the last photo you can see some flux that I forgot to wash away, sorry if it disturbs you.
I forgot about the knobs. I made these wooden thingies myself! All for this look, the brown woody kind of style. So how i made them? In winter I bought an extra cheap drill press. It was like 100$, maybe less. I fought with it to make it more precise, because when It was working there was no way to make any precise holes. It was like +/- 5mm. So I put a piece of pvc tube inside to make it more stiff, I guess. And it worked! Now the precision is maybe 1-2mm, so about 5 times better. And it allows me to drill holes wood and then cut the cylinders with centered holes on them using the small diamond hole saw. I use this one, because the usual hole saw bits are bigger and also not this deep. Anyway, that’s how I made them. They look fine, I think. Not extremely sexy, but fine in a kind of DIY soul way. Well, that’s it for now! I will probably fix the typos later. Or maybe not. Just be aware that sometimes I make very stupid typos, like “would” instead of “wouldn’t” and stuff like this.
Wait… maybe a little roadmap would be great, like what to expect from me in the nearest future (meaning 6-7 months, of course).
So minus the Korone problem and reverb struggles, I have two project that i am working on now.
A scope! Purely mine. I made it with AIs. It’s based on a bluepill, and there are like millions of them already, so nothing special. But still, a nice project that I am designing a frontend for, lazily, as always, it works already, the basic scope function, I mean, it would also have a tuner and stuff to help with tuning VCOs like CV to frequency converter… I am not sure if it works though. But it does show the waves already! SO this function works, at least.
Hagiwo Burst module. This will be funny when i finally make it work. You’ll have a good laugh at me. For now it just doesn’t work, because I was stupid. It’s based on MH-Tiny instead of whatever Hagiwo used.
Well, there are other projects that are not ready and… it will take me a year at least to even start mentioning them, but it will be a DCO, a sampler of some sort and other things. I hope we’ll all survive to see that! And on this optimistic note – see ya!
P.S. Ah! Silly me, forgot to say. VCF works. Well, it was designed by an actual smart person, so as expected. I noticed that it likes bad chinese TL074s for some reason better than a genuine ST TL084 that I had… I don’t know why. But maybe you’’ disagree with me on that. Because i can see an argument that 084 is more smoother sounding, while chinese chips are rougher, but they have better resonance sound, in my opinion. Weird!