Soundlab revisited

The sound lab is a well known project for beginner-intermediate DIYers. Of course Braska wanted some publicity shots.



Here, we are at the process of connecting the panel.

How I got this panel is a different story that will be posted on another artice.. Well, the hard thing about the soundlab was that, the first time I turned it on, it didn't work at all (surprise, surprise!!). I followed the signal with my soundcard/oscilloscope (crappy method but ....) and found that there were two faulty transistors. I replaced them and TADAAA!! It worked. Not as expected but there was sound comming out of the output. After a lot of debugging and cable tracing, all faults were solved and the SoundLab was playing well. There was the time that I should make it pretty.

To add to the difficulty, I decided on a mod. I would put a frequency modulation knob that modulates oscillator 2 with the frequency of oscillator 1. The mod is very well described at the musicfromouterspace.com (the link takes you directly to the mod).

At the beginning, I was thinking of spraying the panel and then add decals on it but after looking at the decal test results I did, I was dissapointed. So the old trusted method of the photographic paper (like I did on the babybote) was the way to go. With one crucial addition. After letting the photo paper dry, I sprayed it with a clear acrylic laquer. This gave it a more "professional" look ( kitch might be the right word).

So the result was this:







The following pic shows the FM addition.. There is some deviation from the initial plan because it was a last minute decision to add it but the panel was already made




I made a simple CV tester with just a potentiometer and a battery and braska seems to get the hang of it.



This was the result!