Advice for troubleshooting 3340 based VCO

The non-flat tops and bottoms are caused by cap charging and discharging, right? If I slow down the frequency and adjust my scope window it gets really bad:

Here is output for square

There is a 200k/110k voltage divider at the input, bringing it down closer to the triangles levels? Should be about 3v ish on the inverting input

And while I have you here, there is glitch in the raw ramp, before buffer:

That’s approximately the Kassutronics output stage, except the latter has 180k instead of 200k, 100k instead of 110k (both), 10 pF instead of 22 pF and 240k instead of 270k.

Referring to the Kassutronics design, the 180k and 100k resistors on the left form a voltage divider: If the input square wave is from 0 V to about 11 V they reduce that to 0 V to about 3.9 V. Then the other resistors and +12 V supply rescale and offset that to an output of about -5 V to 5 V, or 10 Vpp

I get similar results with the component values you’ve shown. So if your 3340 is powered off +12 V and is putting out a square wave of 0 to about 11 V, I don’t know why you’re seeing only 4 Vpp.

The 10 pF cap is for stabilization and is too small to do much to the signal. (10pF * 100k gives a filter frequency of about 160 kHz.) There’s nothing here that should cause the offset and slope you’re seeing. Is it possible you have AC coupling elsewhere, like on your scope input?

No clue what’s going on with the ramp.

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I’m a dummy, I was looking at the signal after going thru a filter when I was messing around before. Forgot to switch the scope back to just the breadboard!

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The main problem is that I always figure out I’m a dummy after asking here :joy::rofl:

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Next time I’ll just respond “you’re a dummy” and save time…

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:rofl::rofl::rofl: [solution found]

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Looking good!

Gonna quiet the square a little more yet, even though it matches peak to peak

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image

??

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It’s a mixed saw/triangle like the minimoog:

Basically a less harsh saw

I dunno, seems more useful than a sine. Messing with filter you can turn just about anything into a sine. I ended up closer to 2:1 triangle for my setup/taste

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Also, quickly add. The ramp was glitched because it was trying to go over supply voltage at the peaks and was getting clipped! A little offset down and it’s clean

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I finally got all of my VCOs calibrated with the help of the wonderful guide provided, but I ran into a sort of small problem. When I plug my midi to cv converter into the 1/V input of the VCOs, they go way out of tune, with each octave on the octave switch outputting a random note at a random octave and everything being out of tune. I would even play middle C on the keyboard and bring the center note down to C3 and from there it’s all out of tune again. Like I mentioned, I already calibrated the oscillators by using the guide with the octave switch on the VCOs which worked fine for me when getting the 4.000 frequency ratio. However, I have no idea if I have to calibrate them using the alternating 0V and 2V on a keyboard method if I plan to use a midi keyboard or what the work around is when I already calibrated them with the first method then wanting to use a keyboard on them. If I have to recalibrate them, would I have to still aim for the 4.000 frequency ratio with the alternating 0V-2V on a keyboard method? If so, would I need to calibrate them with the octave switch on the lowest position or does the position of the switch not matter? Or is there a work around this? I’m really curious because I am in love with these types of oscillators but I always bump into something I only overcomplicate more

Sounds like either your midi to CV is not calibrated to 1v/octave or the cv source you used to calibrate the VCOs is not calibrated to 1v/octave?

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That’s the thing, my midimuso cv12 is calibrated and outputs the proper voltages. And what I realized is that one of the oscillators is completely calibrated using the same midi to cv converter while the others even after doing the same steps and even swapping chips would not be calibrated. I would be so close to having them calibrated but sometimes they would just skip notes