Hello:
Thanks to the help I received from people on the midibox and electro-music diy boards, I have (nearly) completed my MBSID redux. (I say nearly because, although it is operational, I have ordered another SID board from Smash TV and will install a 6581 in it, soon.) This one doesn’t have an official name yet.
A little background:
In 2007, I dove head-first into the MB SID project. With very little electronics knowledge, I was able to purchase the right components, create the optimized psu, and produce a functional synthesizer.
My idea was to put the guts into an NES case; the bastard child of a Commodore 64 and Nintendo NES. I thought I did all the right things, including making a template and purchasing a Dremel, but I misjudged how difficult it would be to cut holes by hand with that tool. The result wasn’t perfect, but somehow fit the lo-fi aesthetic.
I had great fun making tunes with the “NES_SID”, but didn’t like looking at it much, kinda like the Beatles didn’t like looking at Pete Best.
After some research, I decided that the “standard” PT-10 case would be perfect, but I wanted the front panel to be my own. I did like Wilba’s design, but there’s just too much going on for me. All I needed was a basic control surface.
From there, it was “simply” a matter of measuring my control elements and plotting them in Front Panel Designer. (This part was aided by several helpful people on the aforementioned boards.) I was really nervous about sending the final .fpd to FPE because I had never done this before, but I bit the bullet and in a few (long) weeks, I had my front panel.
It was perfect. I mean, this was amazing to me–I had actually done everything right! What made me happier is that it only cost me $30 because of the minimal design.
What about the back panel? Well, as luck would have it, I had a spare set of acrylic panels from an x0xb0x project that I eventually completed, got tired of, and sold. It’s perfect as well. Well…almost perfect. Aside from its fragility, it has the perfect size and number of holes for my inputs and outputs.
Finally, although I love the minimal look, I may add graphics in the future; however, I’ve been reading up on some of the issues you guys have had and am not sure I want to dive into that with this project.
By the way, after listening to the filter capacitor experiments, I opted to change my .068uf capacitors to two .01uf caps (one WIMA 5%, the other Xicon 2%, just for the heck of it). The sound is very smooth on the low end, but the resonance is less prominent. There is much less distortion, which I like.
Some pics (see the rest at: http://drop.io/mbsidv2):
Thanks again!
Regards,
-d
I like the minimal unmarked face… kinda reminds me of that black PC keyboard…
