Building a Synthesizer from Scratch: Part 1

My good friend Hive account@sortna called me the other day telling me to bring my old Traktor S4 controller over to his place for disassembly. The reason being that we would be building a synthesizer from scratch using some of the salvaged parts from the controller combined with parts he had acquired.

The first thing I did when I arrived was starting to disassemble my Traktor controller. It had lots of interesting salvageable parts once I got it open. The parts that I know will be useful to us are fader strips, led displays, sensors, several types of audio interfaces and a ton of knobs.

The next step for most of these parts will be de-soldering and removing the solder that keeps all these components stuck to the PCB.

We followed the instructions from a youtube video made by "LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER" and the schematics he provided to build the oscillator:

SUPER+SIMPLE+OSCILLATOR+SCHEMATIC.png

Super+Simple+Oscillator+Stripboard+Layout.png

Sortna had been out buying a soldering iron, cables, breadboards, potentiometers, resistors & transistors. Here's some photos of the progress of him putting the oscillator together:

This is the finished reverse avalanche oscillator, we plan to run it with 12-18 volt batteries. The next phase is to build a rc-filter and a second oscillator for the synth.

The winter season has kicked in fully over here in Norway now, so I have to pack myself up with way more clothing then I tend to prefer. Especially for just a 15 minute short walk like this.

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Building a Synthesizer from Scratch: Part 1 - Reverse Avalanche Oscillator