Twin T Drums (Practical Electronics 1978)

Will do, just wanted to double check before ordering the inductor. Slowly but surely I am building up my own synth and its so exciting!

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So another snag that is probably an easy fix, i cant seem to find stripboard big enough for this one without paying a rediculous ammout of money. Has anyone condensed this build down at all? Or am i going to have to figure a way to add 6 rows onto the biggest stripboard I have? Is this a common issue people run into building these things?

Build the drums as individual boards and mount them at right angles to the main board using pin headers. gives you a modular design.

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Thanks! will see about doing that.

Another question, there is a High hat In, but no High hat out? I feel like there are a couple inputs and outputs not there? Like there is also only a Snare trig, but no out, and only a noise out but no noise trig. From what I understand in the video you combine the sounds together or something? I am not sure how that is done though, like is that just automatic or what?

Finally, should I connect the third leg of the 100k pots to ground or no?

see now that makes it sound like fun low-commitment evening small soldering sessions.

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I have alot of the inductors in a large bag, if you need one let me know

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I assume you are using this version

the Hi Hat out is the “Noise out” (trigger by the “Hat IN”)

I had taken the basic stripboard and added all the functions of the complete diagram of the module, but I remember that I was racking my brains to understand the path.
I know that the snare is a mix of Noise with High Bongo, but sorry I’m lost in the diagram again :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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Yep thats the one! And perfect! So long as everything has an output. Thanks much! What about grounding the pots? Should I do that?

@SYNTHGUY57 i should be good on inductors for the rest of my life lol, i went and found a set of them with a bunch of different values.

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No. They’re used here as variable resistors, not attenuators.

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Thanks! Im well on my way to finishing this one up. So happy to have this community to ask for help!

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Hi folks, I’m throwing a bottle at sea here before I restart this one from scratch.
Hopefully, someone will either see something obvious that I’m missing, or have had similar issues or have just an idea what could possibly be happening…
Right… So the bass drum and high bongo are working fine, but all other voices behave super weird:

  • on trigger, the clave makes funny white-noisey stuff (like not funny enough to be used in any way i’d like, though)
  • the low bongo will not output anything on triggering, however, when plugging/unplugging the output jack, it gives out a sound that appears to be right.
    -the noise gives continuous white noise - but I accidentally discovered that it behaves like it should do when the power is not connected to the header (not sure what to do with this piece of info, though)
  • I haven’t tried to merge noise and hi bongo yet

What i’ve tried to do so far:
check for shorts, check component values, check paths (a good few times), swap IC (got a few extra of these now), swap transistors

I’m pretty sure it’s something daft, like i mocked-up the path or something, and I guess I should try and reflow all soldering or start from scratch.
Any ideas welcome, though…
Again, it might be something really obvious, I’m pretty new to these shenanigans.
Anyone that’s had the patience to read through all of this deserves a medal already, and who knows, someone might come up with something.

Cheers guys

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Welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

to be sure, do you use this one ?

have you calibrate the decay with his trimpot ?

you don’t do all the stripboard part ?
maybe the problem is from here
snare is make with Noise + H bongo (the 2 that don’t work for you)

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Hi Dud thank you very much for such a quick and kind reply!

absolutely

I did, it just seems to very faintly filter the noise

Yes, I did all the stripboard, what I mean is I haven’t added/summed/mixed them together yet, I don’t know if I’m actually using the right term…
Anyway, unless i got this totally wrong (which is very possible), the summing circuit isn’t included on the stripboard, right?
I figured if they didn’t work individually, they wouldn’t work together… Did I get this wrong?
If I could do without it, I was kinda wanting to skip the summing/opamp part that appears on the schematics you posted… Is this totally silly? I have a feeling it might be…
Should I just try and understand and build this additional mixing circuit?
Am I completely out of it in my understanding that these schematics are like one step up from the stripboard version and corresponds to Sam’s module that he designed later-on? ( my understanding of schematics is rubbish, but I’ll try my best to stare at it some more and make sense of it if I need to)

Also, I’m working in Euro, and while going up and down the thread before resolving to boring people with my problems, I came across this post by Sam:

Could this possibly be an explanation?

I hope I haven’t bored you and everyone else to death with my newbietude.
Thanks again.

your module should work even without the addition of Sam’s part of the complete module (even if personally I added it to my stripboard and recommend it)
and yes if it does not work individually in my opinion there is no chance that it works mixing together (since it is taken from each signal output)
maybe use the complete schem to check all this (this is what helped me to better understand the circuit and correct my errors)

and maybe take a look here too

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Re-check your resistor and capacitor values, if e.g. you used 6k8 instead of 68k you’ll get ultra high frequencies that might sound noisey. Double check your solder joints around that part of the circuit.

Check the orientation of your diodes. If they are correct check that they are not open or short.

Maybe post hires pictures of both sides of your board, someone might see something you missed.

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Wow! Cheers guys for taking the time and responding so fast.
Much gratitude to you two and this community in general.

I will take your advice and add it when I’ll get the voices working!

Will try! It’s good practice to try wrapping my unexperienced head around those anyway

excellent will do, thanks for this link, looks thorough and methodical (unlike me ahah)

Will totally start with this!
Dodgy soldering is a likely culprit, come to think of it.

They seem to be oriented ok, will check again for shorts and maybe just change them

I’ll try all the above first, then do that as last resort, as my soldering is embarrassingly ugly ahah.
Thank you guys so much again
Will report once i’ve made progress or am too frustrated with it (might take a while, I have a few other things on the go)
:pray: :pray: :pray: :pray: :pray: :pray:

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don’t worry about that, we all started like that
and yes some pictures might help
good luck

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I love this build so much. May have a shot at making something similar.

Also, I like the MiniDexed on the right. Cutest one I’ve seen so far.

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Hi folks,
finally got round to diving back into this project.
I ended-up starting from scratch and now all initial voices (BD, hbongo, lbongo, clave) are working perfectly…
…The noise output, however, is just sounding continuously.
During my previous attempt, It was doing the exact same thing, so whatever mistake I did then, I did again. I checked for shorts, diode orientations, and can’t think of anything else right now. Since the inductor is unmarked, I also went and checked its value in my emails, and it appears right, although it comes from a less reliable source than usual. I tried changing it for another one from the same lot twice, to no effect. Does anybody know if a wrong inductor value might be the culprit? Prhaps somebody came across a similar issue? Or has an idea what might be causing this?..
Will sleep on it for now, might post photos tomorow
I’m massively grateful for this community :pray: :pray: :pray: Cheers


Here are some photos.
One might notice that I miscounted vertical rows and am missing a vertical row on one side of circuit (if that makes any sense - silly me) . I made up for it by inserting a couple of wires in the same holes as resistor lugs.