Front: My Italia Mondial guitar. Left display my UAD-2 plug-ins, on the right beta of Ableton Live 8!

The new faster more powerful bad boy on the block just got delivered to my doorstep!



And I finally got the Helios 69 EQ the best EQ UA ever did in my opinion, better even than the Neve 1073 although the Neve kicks ass in its own special way.

It's working... awesome! Built it into a little food box. Now it looks like it came from the bloody Apple store so I sprayed it fluo pink. Revelation of the day: Some things look horrible in fluo pink. So I sprayed it black. Did you know that "Alien" white and fluo pink go on matte, but black is glossy? Now you do.

Here's a tip if you start building electronics: do NOT put in a microcontroller (or any IC for that matter) the wrong way round! I did like a total n00b luckily I didn't break it - phew.

So here's the black version - looks more terrorist now. There's some pink left at the back of the lid - no mistaking it for something that was bought in a shop now.



Here's a vid:


MIDI2600 from Stikka on Vimeo.

My first attempt at a trying to make a stencil that looks like a sticker.



I have to get used to that soft edge stencilly look,  Fine details don't really work. This aint no laser printer! I don't have any of those nasty "bridges" though, the "islands" (the bits that fall out like the middle of a letter "o" are held in place by wire (large size paperclips cut to pieces) and hotglue. Already figured out the wire myself, saw the hotglue in a forum somewhere.



If you get a hotglue gun, get a good one not a cheap pice of crap like mine that breaks after using it only three times. I'm gonna get a good one tomorrow, long cord, indicator light, the works.



Here's a close up of my wirework... fun with the goopgun!



First test on a piece of paper. I will test  it on a wall tomorrow night.
You're all slaves you know?

 
Stencil looks pretty cool.




Testing... OK but not quite there yet.




This... is a design for a stencil in three colours (white, black, fluo pink) will have to tweak the design a bit I think.

It's built, rather nicely with all the wires connect to the PCB with silver plated pins so I will be able to take it apart for bending it a bit beyond its standard palette of sounds.  I have some LDRs that are about 1 MEG in the dark which is the same value as most of the pots, hence the clear plastic case. Acrylic!

Something's not quite right yet, it doesn't go low like it should, so now I need to troubleshoot it. My bro gave me a Scope, which will come in handy. Now when i work out how to use that I'll be the real deal 100% pro bender boy! Probably a case of a wrong value resistor.

To be continued!
 

Commodore 64... say no more!

Everything I've ever used that sounded good usually looked the business as well.
APC is now called 556OSC because that's what it is, nothing to do with Atari.

Recycled clear VHS box.
Glitch body contact & switchable LDR (light dependent resistor) action.
Chicken head knobs.
Line out on standard 1/4" Jack
Street art sticker!

Before starting on the MFOS Weird Sound Generator I built this: the "Atari Punk Console" it's ultra simple and small but it makes great sounds that can be futher processed in for example Ableton Live.

This is the "classic" version, just 2 knobs, though it is amazing how many different sounds you can make with them. I am going to modify it and have light dependent resistors & stuff, which will make it more interesting.












Added a body contact and replaced the blinky LED with a normal one (the blinky one was interfering with the sound) really needs to be green but all I had was red. Hmm.

Tried a Stikka sticker on it but it looked wrong. There's one inside though.