I’ve entered a new stage of tinkering - building circuits from scratch, rather than merely mucking about in existing ones. The first couple of circuits I’ve built use 555 timer chips to make LFO’s. If you connect the output of these circuits to various places in a toy such as the Radical Rhythm guitar above, you can trigger sounds or effects at a regular rate.
This is a very basic circuit, but I got such a rush when, after cursing and squinting as I smeared solder every which way, something I made actually worked. So, no more anti-theory, I might just try to understand how this shit works.
The Radical Rhythm guitar plays a handful of frighteningly cheesy “rock” guitar riffs, drum loops, and synth scrawls. You may have heard it at the very end of the Daft Punk song from our Valentines EP. At that point it only had a massive pitch control (knob and body contacts) and a 1/4″ output jack. Now it has 2 LFO’s that I made based on the design from the Speak and Spell page at Casper Electronics
This LFO Triggers some of the sounds, basically creating a loop. You can change the speed with the knob. There are three loops to choose from. It has a blinking light to indicate the speed.
This LFO modulates the pitch. You can change the rate and depth. There are low and high settings. Those three screws are pitch shifting body contacts. It too has a blinking light to indicate the speed.
Awesome GUITAR crazy noisemaker!